(soft music) - Hey friends, I am so excited to welcome one of my dearest and oldest classical conversations friends to our conversation this afternoon. I am blessed to have with us today, Melissa Ellison of Virginia. Melissa, how are you doing? - I'm great. How are you, Lisa? - I am so excited to get to talk to you.

- Me too. - I miss regular conversation with you and I feel like we could probably just talk and talk and talk about many things, personal as well as homeschooling. So I'm gonna make myself stick to the subject at hand because I want my friends to get to know you as much as they can also.

So let me start by asking Melissa, how long have you and your husband Mike homeschooled? - We have homeschooled, trying to think, well, my one son started a piece of Darien's and foundations when he was four and he is now 21. - Oh my goodness. - And we graduated him.

So, and then we have one that's younger than that. So it's probably been, so how many years is that? (all laughing) - About 18 years, about 18 years. - Sometimes I ask people how long they've homeschooled and they start counting from the birth of their children, which I completely-- - Yeah, that's true too.

I mean, I got pregnant with my youngest when I was in my first year in foundations and he is going to be 18 next month, so. - Sometimes I ask people and I understand them saying that they homeschooled from birth because the things that we pass on to our children and the things we teach them are not just academics.

And so a lot of times I feel like, yeah, I've been homeschooling their whole lives. My child's almost 30, I've been homeschooling for almost 30 years and that's why I have gray hair. But so, so I understand. - It's probably longer, but that's with Cece because I homeschooled a couple of years before I found Cece.

- Yes, and so did I. And so I also have to clarify when I tell that to people too, 'cause we started before I knew anything about Cece and I was just, you know, maybe we'll get to this. I was making it up as I went along by myself.

But let me ask you, why did you and Mike begin this journey? - Well, to be honest, I was homeschooling. I had, I guess I had two in school and I had one that was younger. And so we were homeschooling and Sarah, our oldest was doing actually, she was doing a traditional homeschool curriculum and we moved and our builder, his wife was starting a Cece community in our town and she invited me to join them.

It was the first Cece community in Virginia and it was incredible. - Oh my gosh! - And you know, Duran and the Stockton's, Kelly Stockton and so she invited me to join them and I was like, oh, I can't, I just paid all this money for this curriculum and you know, I can't do that plus this.

And so I just finished out the year with Sarah at home and then that summer I went to a practicum and Lee was there and so I heard her and I got to introduce to the program and was so excited and we joined for the following fall. - That is so cool, that is so cool.

I was also hooked after I went to a practicum and did not really know how in the world I would find the ability to pay for that program but it looked really wonderful. So when you guys started your homeschool journey, even before you found Cece, did you have goals for your homeschool, like for education or did you have a family mission or anything when you started homeschooling?

- I don't know that we had anything formal but I know that my husband and I both did not want to put our children in public school. We did not want the government to have them that many hours a day and we wanted to be the ones to instill the biblical worldview, the God that I use and I was blessed also to be able to stay home with my children from birth so I wasn't ready to give them up.

(laughs) So that was really, you know, I guess the main reason that we started homeschooling. - Yeah, I remember telling people I started homeschooling because I was too jealous to want somebody else to have the light bulb moments. - That is true, yes. (laughs) - It was fun to learn things or to watch them learn things and be excited and I kind of wanted to keep that.

Yeah, I love what you said though about the biblical worldview being really important to your family and recognizing that probably a government-oriented, funded, guided school was not gonna pass on the values that you wanted. Yeah, so you and I started homeschooling in relatively the early years. Before there was a lot of support, frankly, out there, what were your early years of homeschooling like?

Where did you find support? - Well, I would say that definitely the CC community, you know, you found like-minded people and moms that you could commiserate with, right? And I started in CC my first year, I was a tutor and so I had, you know, they had their practicums and three-day trainings, that kind of thing.

And then really quickly, I think the following year, I became a state manager, or I became a director, then a state manager, so it was a really quick, you know, kind of going up the rungs. 'Cause like you said, we were just starting out and there was a lot of need for leadership.

But I would say that, you know, the support was within the community and the moms there. CC offered as much support as they could. It's gotten a ton, I mean, there's a lot more. And then, too, you know, our husbands, right? I mean, our husbands were really supportive. They couldn't be there on a day-to-day basis to help, but they, you know, were supportive.

And their role as the head of the home and, you know, that kind of thing, so. - Yeah. - That's what I would say. - Was your family, how did your family feel about like your mom and dad and aunts and uncles and extended family, how did they feel about homeschooling when you told them that's what you were gonna do?

- Actually, my parents were very supportive. My mom has been a teacher forever. And she's still teaching. And, you know, I don't even know how many years later, probably 50 years later. But, and over the years, she actually, even she taught in a Christian school for a long time.

And then over the years, there's been times where she has not been working in a school setting and she has helped to homeschool my children and other children that, you know, were in our, you know, community kind of thing like. And so they've been, they were very supportive. - That is so great.

I've heard lots, and I know that you have too, as you've served as a leader in Classical Conversations, we hear lots of stories of families who are not supportive, who are super suspicious, sometimes even spouses who are not initially excited about homeschooling. I can remember my own mom and dad and even my sister thinking that we were doing this weird thing, this counter cultural weird thing to their grandchildren and nieces.

But there were great moments of repentance a couple of years in where they each individually came and said, yeah, we were so wrong. The results that they saw helped them to go back and take a second look at what we were doing. And they really became supporters of our homeschool endeavors as well.

So why is community so important? You've mentioned a couple of things, but I wanna just really synthesize all those answers. As homeschoolers in the world that we live in now even, why is community so important? - Well, I think God calls us to live in community, right? And it's important because, number one, if you have two, if one falls down, the other lifts them up, and if one is cold, the other keeps them warm.

And so I think God really meant for us to be in community and that it's for encouragement and we can share each other's burdens and pray for each other. And it's also to sharpen us, right? To challenge us when we need to be challenged and hold us accountable when we need to be held accountable.

And so I think it's a wonderful thing that God has made us to be in community. - I do too. Community is awesome. And that's why I, that's one of the reasons that I absolutely fell in love with Classical Conversations, that classical Christian community. And it's the community that keeps us going.

I've said for years and years, and pride comes all over the countries, that as long as we don't all have a bad day on the same day, we can all keep going. And that's the power of community. When you and your husband began homeschooling, did you know what you were doing?

(laughing) - No. (laughing) Do any of us know what we were doing? - No, and sometimes I think if we did know, we might be afraid. - That is true. - Very, very afraid. - That is true. (laughing) - So how did you, but you kept at this for 18 years, so you must have learned what to do.

How did you learn to homeschool? I mean, did you read about it in books? Did you go to conferences? Did you have friends who became mentors? How did you learn how to homeschool? - Well, I would say at the beginning, it was, I really didn't know anyone. Or if I did, it was very few people who homeschooled.

Like there was no one in my church that was homeschooling. We were kind of thought of as kind of a little odd, you know, because we were old. We didn't have a lot of young families in our church anyway. But yeah, so I didn't really know. And my oldest daughter, Sarah, had been, our church had a Christian school.

And so she was there for kindergarten and first grade. And they did a BECA. And so I just got online and got the BECA homeschooling curriculum. And that's what I did. - Yeah, and just look what you found. - So yeah, so I basically did that. And I started, you know, I would read, I would, you know, research.

And I ended up at the ATAB Heave Conference in here in Virginia. And, you know, went to all kinds of seminars and, you know, visited all the vendors and kind of saw what I liked. And I just did different things. And then, but as I, as you know, as you get more children, you can't, you know, doing a traditional curriculum, especially, you can't teach everything to all of them in one day.

It just was too much. And it was about that time, I guess, that when we had moved and I was introduced to classical conversations, I was, I had just put Sarah, my oldest, I had just started some like video homeschooling with her, with Rebecca, because I was like, I can't do her and my, you know, my next child, Jonathan and the third one.

And so I had kind of was putting her, you know, in front of a computer, which I didn't really like, but I felt like I didn't have a lot of choice. And then was introduced to classical conversations and went to a practicum and saw how I could homeschool all my children with the same thing at different levels and very appealing as well as the classical model.

And so that's when we started with classical conversations. - Yeah, that is great. I can imagine how frustrating it was to think, gosh, I'm doing this with Sarah, but now I have this one. Now I have this one. And if I add any more, what in the world? So I think that's cool that what you found refreshing about CC was help to homeschool all of your kids together so that it really was family learning.

- It was, yeah. And even the little ones that weren't in school picked up a ton. - Oh my gosh, right? I can remember when my youngest, we were memorizing, we were gonna memorize this long passage from Philippians with our older daughter, who was four, she was four, almost five, and her little sister was just sitting on the couch with us at night.

I mean, she was just, she just was like the lump that was sitting there. She was just along for the ride. We weren't trying to get her to memorize. And one night when I said, okay, let's start, I thank my God. And she started saying the verse with us 'cause I didn't say, you know, Stephanie, let's do this.

I just said, let's start. And she started rattling it off. And I thought, oh my goodness, there is something to this repetition thing. - That's right, that's right. I love it that you found a way to learn as a family, which becomes, the more that we understand about building a family culture and being lifelong learners, the more appealing learning as a family becomes.

So that resonates with me too. Let me ask you this question, Melissa. Are you still learning? Are you still learning at the homeschool? - Definitely. I am not homeschooling anymore, but I definitely am always learning. And that's one thing I see with my kids too. I think I see a love of learning which I really value because you don't see that, I don't think in our culture very much.

And, you know, just to see that they love to learn and they're still learning, you know. - I love that too. And I often tell people that that is one of the happiest byproducts to me of homeschooling and especially homeschooling classically, that my girls really do, A, know how to learn, right?

'Cause those classical tools are just awesome and they become just your knee-jerk response to whatever you need to learn in whatever area of your life, not just academics, but they also really love to learn. - Yes, yes. - And that's just beautiful to me. - It is beautiful. - And we've talked about the fact that the classical education is really, 'cause I suspect that if Sarah had stayed watching videos for her education all day, that she might not have loved learning so much.

- Oh, I guarantee you. (laughing) - So I really think that classical education is onto something. Let me ask, and I know we both have admitted that we didn't know a whole lot about classical education when we started. I mean, I had read "The Well-Trained Mind" and I kept getting-- - That's off to you.

I'd read little pieces of it here in the yard, but I don't think I got through the whole thing. (laughing) - Okay, I couldn't afford to buy it. It was a really fat book. - Yeah, it was. - And so I would check it out from the library and I'd read some chapters and I would think, yeah, that's really good, but I just can't.

And so I would turn it back in and then I would be convicted and I would check it out again and I'd read some more and then I would turn it back in. And I really, and I thought, this is it. I mean, so I didn't know to call it classical education.

And I just, there's something about the classical model that resonated with my soul. And I knew I want my children to be curious. I want them to be learners. I think that memorizing, I knew from being a kindergarten teacher, memorizing is super easy for them and it's very natural.

I want us to dig deep. I want us to do it as a family. And so I tried doing that at my home by myself before we found CC and it goes really, really well for about two or three months. And then it gets hard to keep pulling all those resources and to evaluate what is it that we should be learning and is this gonna end up being anything at the end of all things?

Will it tie together? And so I worried about that. And that's one of the things that really drew me and my husband to classical conversations is that there was a plan. There was a purpose. It was going somewhere. I wanna ask you, what did it look like to educate classically at your house when you started out?

- Oh, that's many years ago, Lisa. (laughing) If I can remember correctly. (laughing) You know, it was just around the kitchen table or on the couch, reading books and wrote memory, those kinds of things. My kids, and I'm sure yours too, especially when they're little, they love the songs.

So doing lots of singing and just hands on kind of things. And I remember, I was kind of like you before I found classical conversations, like I was a little bit nervous. Like, how am I gonna make sure my kids know what they need to know? And are they gonna be not prepared?

Like people are gonna be able to say, oh, they were homeschooled. So they don't know what public school or whatever. - Right, exactly. - But one thing that always stuck with me and I still say this, my oldest daughter, Sarah is homeschooling her little ones, her kids with classical conversations.

But I remember saying this too. I've said this to lots of people. I remember Andrew Poodle was saying once that, with the memorization and the classical model that history and science, no one knows everything about history and science. It's always evolving. It's always, there's always new things. And so not to worry about learning everything, because you can always, you teach your child how to, like you said, you teach them how to learn, you teach them how to research and they can find out the answers themselves because we're never gonna know everything about everything.

And so teaching them how to learn and teaching them how to find the answers is just as important as not being worried that they don't know everything. That was very reassuring to me too at certain points in my journey. - I love that. I think that is really true.

It is reassuring to have somebody say, there's no way to learn everything. So stop making that your goal. 'Cause I remember wondering, how am I gonna teach the things, teach them to be good at the things that I wasn't good at or that I didn't fully understand or appreciate?

There were things that I could do, but I didn't appreciate it. And I knew if I tried to teach that, it would not inculcate love in them because the love was not in me. And so I thought this is gonna go awry somehow. But that classical model, I love, love what you said, that it's teaching them how to learn and how to find answers that is the best thing to be teaching them.

And so what classical education looks like at home, yeah, what you said is really true. It's a lot of reading, a lot of hands-on, a lot of chanting and singing because it's a lot of memory work in those early years. And then even in the challenge years, as they become ready to use all that memory work to compare things or to solve problems or whatever, it still doesn't exactly look like what we came up through the public school doing.

But it is a beautiful life of asking questions and running after answers. - Oh, I like that. Yes, running after answers, I love that. - Yeah, I like that. How did you grow in your understanding of the classical model and what helped you most? - I would say just immersing yourself in it and trusting, you know, just trusting, like with classical conversations, I just, I'm one of those people that I just kind of trusted what Lee said.

It made sense and I, you know, and then being a learner yourself and just walking the path and trusting the process, trusting the model, trusting God through it all, you know, just kinda, and you just grow in your knowledge with, you know, community, other people around you and asking questions yourself, you know?

So, and seeing the fruit of it, you know, you see the fruit of it in your children as they go through the different, you know, the different stages of learning and what a beautiful thing it is to see when they get to that, you know, dialectic and rhetorical stage and you're like, wow, you know, this does work, you know, and so.

- Yeah, I know that I, like you said, grew in my knowledge of the classical model by reading, by going to practicums, by listening and that repetition is not just good for our little kids, it's good for us to hear those same ideas about the grammar of a subject, the vocabulary and the rules and the dialectic of a subject learning to wrestle with the big ideas and make those comparisons and then the rhetoric of it using what we know to be creative or to solve a problem or to pass on our passion, all of that I learned, like you said, by doing and by living it and by, frankly, by becoming a learner myself.

- Yes, and just like you said, we all start at that grammar stage, you know, no matter how old we are, if we don't know something, you know, so you and me and, you know, hundreds and thousands of other, you know, classical conversations parents are, you know, that's how we learn the classical model, if we didn't know it, was starting at the grammar stage and, you know, walking through it ourselves, so.

- That's so true, by doing it, by doing it, over and over and over. I can remember back when we were state managers together, it feels like a lifetime ago. - It does feel like a lifetime ago. - When I would go and talk about, speak at a practicum about the classical model, even though I was still learning about it and I'm still learning about it after all these years, I would go and talk about it and every year, I could talk about it with a little more assurance and a deeper understanding because I had walked a little farther along the path with my children and I can remember in the early years telling people how amazing the challenge program was because I truly believed the example that was set and what Lee had said and what I had read, but I didn't have a kid in challenge yet.

But when my girls got to be challenge students, every year was a jaw-dropping aha moment for me because I saw a little bit more clearly how those pegs that we had spent all those years pounding in, all those little pieces of knowledge were really being pulled out of them at the opportune moment and they were wrestling how to put them together into some beautiful way of understanding the world and what they were being asked to do or even understanding themselves.

And it was just great. So I think that you're onto something. We grow in our knowledge of the classical model as we use it and as we employ it. (gentle music) you