(soft music) - Welcome friends to this episode of the Everyday Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey, and I'm excited to spend some time with you today as we encourage one another, learn together, and ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime. Whether you're just considering this homeschooling possibility or deep into the daily delight of family learning, I believe you'll enjoy thinking along with us.

But don't forget, although this online community is awesome, you'll find even closer support in a local CC community. So go to classicalconversations.com and find a community near you today. Well, listeners, I have a treat for you today. I have a dear friend with me today as a guest, Brittany Lewis.

Brittany is a longtime challenge director, a longtime homeschooling mom, lots of experience under her belt with her own children, as well as mentoring students and parents and families through her own local community for years. I asked Brittany to come today because as we draw near to the end of the year, I know that lots of you families are maybe growing weary, maybe becoming anxious for, ooh, have we done it?

Have we accomplished the goal? Are we running the race well? And then there's a special group of you who are coming around the final curve of the final year. Of your homeschool journey with one or more of your students and so I remember that and I know how tender your hearts are and I want us to try to cast a vision for this last year and especially for this last home stretch, kind of as a ministry to you parents who are pulling in to across the finish line for maybe the last time, but also, I want us to try to make sure that you know really for the parents who are close to the end of the journey but are wondering is the final lap really necessary?

So Brittany, I've probably dug us a big hole to fill in 45 minutes, but I think you're the right person for the job and I really appreciate you coming on. - Oh, it's such a joy. This is one of my favorite things to talk about. - I'm so glad.

I know you have a heart for parents and for students who are at the end of the journey, but I want people to know that you do have the credentials to talk about this, that it has been a tender place in your heart for a long time. Tell our listeners how long you've been a challenge director and why did you agree to ever become a challenge director in the first place?

- I think this is my 11th year. This year I'm a challenge three tutor and it's my third time to do challenge three. I've tutored all the levels by God's kindness to me all the way from challenge eight to challenge four, but challenge three and four I've tutored the most.

So I've tutored challenge three, this is my third time, and challenge four I've tutored four times and I am supposed to tutor challenge four next year. - Oh my word. - I'm super excited because it is really my favorite year, although three and four are full of such goodness.

- Yes, yes. Well, I love that. So it seems like challenge four might really be your favorite. And so I wanna know what do you love about challenge four students, about the challenge four material, about the way y'all can approach the material? What is it that you love about challenge four?

- Man, I think it is a super rare gift to get to have that final year with seniors. I think they're wrestling with lots of important questions. Everyone, whether they're in CC or outside of CC, if they meet someone at the grocery store or on the ball field, people are asking them, what are your plans next year?

And so often students have mixed feelings about being asked that question all the time, but it's a good question to consider. And it's at a time when they really are listening, they're looking for answers. Many of them finally realize the education that they've been given and they have hearts of gratitude.

They see how everything's integrated and they have learned to look for Christ in all of their studies. And it's just the sweetest year when we're studying some really ancient books that have been foundational for educated people for generations, books that Christians in particular have treasured, even though they're pagan books, many of them.

So they're curious about that and they have the opportunity to, anyone could read those books alone, but to have a community of like-minded peers digging in together, persevering that last year and doing hard things together and getting to converse about big ideas and important questions and study theology together is just a rare gift, not easily replicated anywhere else.

- I think you're right. And you love being, it sounds like you love being in a front row seat to watch that wrestling. - I do. I love the students. They are such a gift to me. They're a joy to pray for and serve. And their families often are wrestling through all kinds of hard circumstances as God always in His kindness gives us to refine us.

And it's a joy. I learned so much from them. I don't walk in knowing all the answers, but I know how to search for the answers and they want to search for the answers. And so it's just a joy to spend time with young men and women who want to have those kinds of conversations.

- I think it's beautiful, Brittany, that they have you. A person who also loves to wrestle and search and who delights in watching their, whether it's fledgling searching or experienced searching, that you really enjoy and appreciate what they have to say about subjects too. I think that you are a gift to them and I appreciate you.

How many students have you mentored through the end of your journey? I mean, you've graduated your own children, but if you've been directing for 11 years, you've mentored a lot of students. - Yeah, and when our challenge program was just starting out, we had older kids join us in younger years, and so they graduated early.

So if I counted all of them, and plus I have three children, and so my youngest will be Lord Welling and Challenge Four with me next year. And I think it's about 40-ish students. It may be a little bit more, a little less. I was trying to count, one of my classes gave me a quilt with their names on it, which is super sweet.

It's in my bedroom. Yeah, so there've been people that we've just had the blessing of having with us for a year or so, just because their family's removed or they just really couldn't homeschool or something. But it's been a joy to watch these young men and women seek Christ or be encouraged to seek Christ if they aren't doing so already.

- Mm-hmm. Well, clearly we have come to the right person for advice about how to encourage families who are in that last lap of the journey, and then also, Brittany, I want us to be sure that we have enough time to encourage families who are wondering if the last lap is worth it, if it's for them, or what could they, you know, I just really, my heart is a little heavy for communities all across our country that, where parents and students are saying, "I don't know if I wanna stay for challenge four." So I want us to address that.

But let's talk for a minute, because about the end of the journey, about that final year, what is so challenging about the end of a journey? And you know, it's me and you, so we can talk metaphorically, and then we can talk specifically too. What is so challenging about the end of a journey?

- I think if you're a homeschooling parent, you have devoted so much of your time, energy, and days to homeschooling, and it can be really, it could really pull at your heart to feel like you've got this last year with your kids, last year with your senior. It might feel like a season is coming to an end, or a journey is coming to an end.

And so I think, rightly so, parents really do, because they love their kids, and they want what's best for them, and they want to serve them well. They think about how to spend that last year. Also, because you've been spending so much time homeschooling, you can be really weary.

You can see so much growth that you think that they're really ready to launch out early. The world tells us, I think it's particularly hard, because we know that as members of CC, that our purpose, like Leigh reminds us so much, is that sound academics should glorify God. There's something missing if you don't have that in your curriculum, there's something huge missing.

And it's not something you can just tack on, it's integrated throughout. And so our goal is to cultivate wise and virtuous young men and women. But we can forget that purpose, or perhaps we can be tempted by the allure of earning dual credits, or hurry up and grow up, or my child really wants to work a lot of hours, so I'm just gonna let them finish out, they've got enough credits, why keep going?

And also just life circumstances that you can need fellow people like Moses needed to hold up your arms at the end of the journey. - Right, right. - And so I think there's a temptation to not move forward. Also, just the challenge for curriculum, if you look at it in a catalog, can feel kind of daunting, but I'm here to testify that it is for all of us.

There's something about wrestling with math and physics that is humbling and wonderful to help us see the world a different way. There's something lovely about getting to the final year of Latin studies, six years, very counter-cultural to do that and you finally get to taste what it's like to read an epic poem that Christians valued for generations in the original language when we read and translate parts of the Aeneid, the parts we choose to translate bring up some really big questions about eternally significant questions.

There's all kinds of beauty in there, there's books and opportunities to explore Jerome's Vulgate in Latin. It can feel like, wow, I don't know if I want to do that and then the senior thesis can perhaps, maybe you're looking at your kid and you're like, I don't know if my kid can do this, but I can tell you I've seen all kinds of students with all kinds of giftings and challenges really have a victorious experience with the senior thesis and so I think looking at all those things because it's the last year, we just need to be prayerful about how we spend that time with our students, but we also need to remember that it's really the beginning of a new journey for them and it's a new, we transition from being their homeschooling parents to really their coaches and their friends and that's the best part of the year for me, that's why even if my daughter and I just have a small class this next year, I think it's worth the time because I wanna read and have those conversations with her about things that really matter before she's gone, before I just give her to the world.

And so, but also I know that watching my other two, one's a Marine and one's in nursing school and married, they're both married, I know that there's a new journey too that begins and you know that Lisa, because you're such a wonderful mom and grandmother. So it's just the beginning, but it can feel like an end.

- It can, it can. It is a beautiful, it is a beautiful way to end tying the loose ends up together, you know? I did love that and like you said, it's your, as the parent who has loved on and mentored and really worked yourself out of a job over all these years, it is beautiful to be able to tie a bow with your student on how you have learned and grown together through the years.

And it is also very humbling to kind of let that position shift. Like you said, you become a coach and a mentor instead of a straight teacher. And there is more almost camaraderie in the learning that last year and you learn from them and they learn from you and it really gives you an opportunity to help them see that they are ready to spring forward and that they are prepared.

And you sort of spend that last year, you know, going around and visiting the things that you've spent so many years on and showing them that they are ready. And I think that that last joint visitation gives them a lot of confidence and maybe settles their nerves for going forward.

- Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And I've had all kinds of students in my own family, I've had students that really struggled to do the work or didn't want to sometimes. I've had, I guess we all have times where we don't want to. I've had a really eager student who knew what she wanted and was going for it, couldn't wait to get to the next.

- Yes. - I've had reluctant students who love to learn but they just kind of woke up mid year, even changed their senior thesis to say, I got to tell more people about this education I've been given and I've been missing it this whole time but I finally see it now.

I've had a student who went on to become, you know, win all kinds of awards as a student scholar. And is pursuing seminary studies and he would say, don't miss that last year. That last year is so important and all those things I began to study then, I'm still studying now and it's so rich, I'm so grateful for those times.

And I've had one student who was, he was actually, it was actually his junior year because of his age, he used his year to love a class of students who were so vastly different in their opinions. And as he dug in and asked his questions, he was wooing them toward the truth and blessing his neighbor.

I mean, like, it was astonishing. I thought he and the other student I mentioned, I thought you guys are bound for ministry. The Lord is gonna do my things with you. And then another student really was struggling. Her family was really struggling. She didn't think she was smart enough for college studies and she dug in, her peers loved her.

She asked hard questions. She wrestled with her senior thesis and felt so victorious. She went on to college. She's in some sort of scholarship program now. She's just thriving. I mean, like there's, there are testimonies. I've seen life changes happen that year. And I think that's why I'm so passionate about it.

Why I want the students I love to go forward because I've seen so many different men and women really grow that last year. - I agree with you. I have seen both in my own home and in the communities that I have served, I have seen children, students that come into their own at the end of this journey and you think it's a butterfly.

It's a butterfly, you've been growing this whole time and you did not believe that your wings would, that either that you would ever have wings or that they would be this beautiful. And as you kept pushing and wrestling and wiggling and persevering, you recognize, you come out and you are so changed and you are almost amazed at what God has done in you.

And so that last year is beautiful for so many ways. And I appreciate you sharing the different ways that students respond to the end. So, okay, let's think about our challenge for students. We have talked a lot about them being challenged and stretched and having them grow. What are the things that stretch our challenge for students the most in that last year?

And I mean, I want you to talk to us about the academics obviously, but I also want you to help us as parents and as community mentors to see how those students are being stretched socially and emotionally and maybe spiritually. - Yeah, I mean, there's lots of great opportunities for stretching that final year.

Academics, I think students, because they're really growing the art of rhetoric and they're really stretching their study skills, they grow in some scholarly strengths or virtues. You learn to read really closely some challenging texts, you learn to discuss and lead conversations in three of those strands without notice. So there's some good accountability and opportunities to just practice talking about harder things, leading conversations on those hard things in a way that is gracious and loving.

That said, there's some big questions that come up, we do study the Bible more and students often realize that they don't know it like they thought they did. They realize that they know what their churches have taught them or their parents have taught them, but they don't know where it is and often they've read stories from scripture, but they remember like parts of them or maybe they just got the parts without the dark challenging parts of scripture.

And so wrestling with those things can bring some important questions and learning to listen to each other in all our different denominations is a really good way to practice loving rhetoric as we seek the truth together and that can be a good challenge. It's an investment to read these great books to sit at the feet of mere Christianity, C.S.

Lewis, to sit at the feet at - Mm-hmm. - Homer and Virgil and Daniel Boorstin who's a world-renowned wonderful historian to study and wrestle with math and physics and really see how we finally apply algebra and a little bit of trig to that studies. It transforms the way we view the world and so that can be a really good study.

Often I've heard students exclaim, "Oh, that's why we studied that part of math. I finally get it, oh my word." I see how it comes together. Those students who really love math and who have really had a hard relationship with math grow. - That's cool. - Socially, I think everyone's asking big questions.

They've got friends outside of CC and perhaps NCC and in their churches and on their sports teams and who they work with who are wrestling with some big questions that we see our culture struggling with, that can be a challenge. Perhaps they're in new relationships or they're just wrestling, learning to love each other better because we come together in community to practice that and we fail and have to say we're sorry and ask for forgiveness.

So I think learning just to be peacemaker, also just doing these hard things together for just lifelong friendships. I mean, I've seen the beauty of that. And emotionally, I think there's a lot of pressure on our students for perfection. Society tells us, students have testified to this. I always ask them to begin the year.

What do you think the world is asking you to be? What would it look like if you were successful? What does that mean? And they're often like, well, if I look a certain way, if I'm physically strong, if I'm gifted in sports, if I'm gifted in academics, if I'm great at a vocation, there's all these things plus on top of that as Christians, we want to grow in Christ-likeness.

I mean, it can feel if you forget the grace that God gives us and the perfect work of completion that His Son has done for us. It can feel like a lot to bear. - And also while you're wrestling with what should I do with my life? What are my callings?

- Right. - And the senior thesis actually, I think is a great opportunity for students to really figure out, dig in, take a personal inventory and figure out what am I interested in? What do I want to learn about? What would I like to study? - Yeah. - What are my next steps in life?

What should I do with my life? - Yeah, that's really good. And that is actually a lovely segue into one thing 'cause I really did want to ask you in detail about the senior thesis because I know even some long time CC families, maybe there was no such thing as the senior thesis when your student, when you and your student joined the classical conversations community and you started thinking down through the years, although I know when you start foundations, it's really hard to envision senior year as ever gonna come.

But even for families who started a long time ago, they may not have been considering the senior thesis. It wasn't a thing. And so I know that lots of our listeners probably have some questions specifically about the senior thesis and maybe some fears or some anxiety about the senior thesis.

So I really wanted to talk to you. So okay, okay, what is it? What is the senior thesis? - So the senior thesis is an opportunity which I think is really rare for most students who aren't gonna go on to doctrinal work or have to write a senior thesis in college.

In fact, I've had lots of college professors that have been our judges say, wow, my students aren't doing this. My students have never done this. This is quality work. And so it's an opportunity to bring all of the classical skills that we've been honing together and practice writing or first researching a topic of the student's choice, anything they want to do that can be turned into a debatable thesis.

So it needs to be something that has both sides, but most things are. I've seen a wide variety of thesis choices, but it's an opportunity for really most of a year to dig in and to research something of the student's choosing. And that's really important that it's their choice that they choose to decide to research this particular thing.

And then they practice the canons of rhetoric on it. They invent, they research all that's been said about that thing on both sides and try to suspend their judgment of what their thesis is going to state in that debatable thesis. And then they arrange those thoughts and that good scholarly research into a good solid outline.

And then they write a paper and it's not as long as you think. It's like 12 to 20 pages, I think. I haven't looked at it in a year, so I should go back and look at that, but it's not very long. It's 12 to 20 pages, I believe.

Double spaced, one inch margins, like Times New Romans, like not super tiny. - Yes. - And then they've got a really good annotated bibliography of sources that they've collected and they practice. After they've written this thesis, they hand it over to some judges to read in advance. We give them a few weeks to do that.

And then they show up to stand upon the thing that they have written and defend it. And the judges are often excited to do this. They're not there to grill the students. They are there to ask them good questions. And they often have all kinds of questions to ask the student, perhaps questions the student hasn't considered before.

Yeah, and so it's a great opportunity for students to realize, wow, I know how to find out good things to say and to really evaluate and build an argument. I know how to persuade others to that argument. And I know how to defend that argument. So it's one more chance to bring all those skills together and to have just this victorious moment at the end of their journey all the way to the summit of the Challenge Leadership Program.

And they realize, because the judges often say this, and I've seen judges move to tears and start asking the students for life advice. And the students are blown away by that. They're like, well, I'm not a father yet, or I'm not a expert on this, but if I were you, I would consider this question.

You know, they learn that they have a voice that matters that adults in their community want to hear. And I think that's a great gift to give our students right before they launch. And that's not to say that every student is gonna write the perfect senior thesis or that it won't be super hard.

I mean, to be honest, and my son would tell you this if he was on this call with me, I mean, I was with him 'cause he needed company and someone to say, you can do this, come on. - Right, a cheerleader. - Here's the next step. And we were there working 'til the very end.

And we have a really funny story of the last, when we were printing it out and trying to deliver it. And we still laugh about that today. And I tell him, man, as much as we rustled together, I don't trade one of those hours where I really doubted he was gonna finish and I was the tutor.

So he, but he did, he did. And he learned that, I mean, he was the one that dad started asking for his advice about how he should spend time with his son. Jackson was so humbled by that and said, well, I'm not even a dad yet, but here's what I think is best.

This is what my dad's done for me. And I don't know, I've just seen that. I've seen students really grow from this opportunity. But it's laid out in the guide really well. It's planned out for weeks. They start early first semester thinking about those things. And they do it together.

They get peer feedback, the tutor's feedback, parent feedback, they're encouraged to choose a mentor to coach them who can also be their judge. So there's an opportunity really for students to explore a love they have, or a big question they have, or perhaps a future calling, and to really grow from that experience.

- That's, I'm just, I'm so energized by that. I have to say, my girls went through, they graduated from challenge four before the senior thesis was a part, before it was a part of what we did. And I look at it and think, wow, that, yes, it looks daunting and it sounds like such a drag, man.

It sounds like a hard thing to do. But as a parent and as a tutor, I look at it and think, just what you said, what an absolute blessing of an opportunity to both prove to yourself and to a wider community that the classical tools of learning work, that your students believe in.

Do know how to research and invent and weigh things and then slice and dice and put them in ways that are clear and naturally follow and are persuasive. They've learned all about the modes of persuasion. So I think that that is a beautiful thing. But I love what you said about the students growing into the confidence that they are prepared.

I think it's gotta be beautiful for students who kind of took their parent's word for it, that this was a good education and that this is all gonna, we're all trusting that this is gonna come out in the end and you will have a good education. But for those students to come through and at the end, see that, wow, I do know how to do this.

I can tell if something is a biased source or an unbiased source. I do know how to weigh the voices in the research that I'm doing. I do know how to assemble an argument. I do know how to consider all the sides. That has to be so empowering for students.

- Yeah, I think it's such a gift to our students. And I've had a few returning students say, wow, I was asked to do a senior thesis now in this Honors College program. And I'm so thankful that I had that experience and I get to try it again, but I know what to expect.

And I'm ready because I have these tools. And they're reminded one last time because there's not a ton of other writing involved in Challenge Four. - Right. - I mean, students write speeches but they memorize and deliver those speeches. So there's a lot of emphasis on memory and delivery.

And so this last point, I mean, they get to take it all the way to the end. They may have had all that experience writing IEW papers and essentials and they might've had all that experience with lost tools of writing and all the other writing we do in the Challenge program of various kinds.

And they get one more time to practice those tools and it's a really memorable practice. So I think it's a gift to our students to be able to do that. - Yes, and I love just what you just said now that they have, you know, they worked and have been working on all of these skills for years.

They've been working to become better writers, more organized writers, clearer writers, writers who know which word to use when and what kind of persuasion they are employing to speak to the specific audience that they are addressing. We've practiced so much of that. I really, I like that we are offering our students the dessert at the end of the banquet, you know?

And they actually get to eat it and to celebrate it. We've taught them how to cook the banquet and how to prepare, but let's have the banquet and let's eat the dessert. I wanna ask you a little bit, 'cause you have mentored your own children and you have taught a lot of different levels of Challenge.

How do the early years begin to prepare the students for this last capstone event? Because I'll tell you the truth, Brittany, I think that parents who are contemplating jumping ship after Challenge two or three, I personally think that they need to take a good hard look at what they might be shortchanging their student over.

So I want you to speak a little bit about how all the years of the classical education have been about preparing our students. It has, I mean, it's so, I always just marvel at the way Challenge began, how it was begun first and then foundations and essentials was created out of a need that we saw.

And my students in Challenge four have often relied upon memory work and you don't have to have been in Challenge four. I have had students join us in Challenge four even mid year and just excel. But it does help if you've got some of those memory pags and that opportunity that you've had all those years to present your ideas in presentations and foundations and write and wrestle with ideas as you're writing all those essentials papers and growing in your knowledge of language.

And every single piece of it is this, it's a part of this beautiful tapestry and the finishing parts where you finally see the picture come together are in Challenge four after you've wrestled through the early parts of the Challenge program and done things like probably that you wouldn't have thought all your kids would do, I didn't.

Science fair, mock trial, all the debate we do, all the writing and experiments and everything that makes it so rich, all those presentations and writing. And then finally, to be really focused on the art of rhetoric and thinking about how I can lead my neighbor to the truth in a winsome, compelling way where I'm checking myself first for my argument, the holes in my argument, and I'm applying the logic that I've learned that has given me a sharp mind and I'm thinking about how I can choose my words carefully and learn to listen really well and respond in the way that my audience needs and craft something like that for my particular audience.

It's such a gift. I look at our world and we're coming up in an election year and I hear the way that we throw words around like weapons and here we've been given an opportunity to train up our kids to use their words in a way that helps persuade their neighbor to truth and perhaps woo them to the kingdom, by the way, that we, and of course, the work of the Holy Spirit to do that, but it's a leadership program and so this is the final year of learning to lead well and looking back on the challenge for graduates that I know, I'm encouraged by our future, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren's future.

And my kids look fondly back on this and that's why my daughter, Lucy, is looking forward and she's like, I've been waiting since I was eight years old to do this. I can't wait to do this next year. I think it's exactly what I need. I need to wrestle with these things too and also share that with my brother and sister, that legacy and inheritance that we're trying to pass on with them.

But I mean, even when we study the Greek and Roman gods, the students are singing that song for foundations. - Yes, yes, yes. - Everything really does build to prepare them for that. - Yes, and I can remember watching my own girls go through their challenge for a year and get so much out of their community discussions, to go to class and to talk to classmates about what they read and sometimes to discover that their classmates had much different ideas or positions from the same reading.

But by challenge four, it was beautiful in the way that they offered grace to one another. Oh, it wasn't, well, something must be wrong with you because you didn't arrive at the same conclusion that I did, it was more like, that is so interesting, will you help me to understand it?

Will you help me see it? Oh, I never considered that or even, huh, well, what if you thought about it this way, would you still think the way that you originally reacted? It just the thoughtful give and take of questions and the whole idea that we could have discourse without dishonoring one another and that we can have discourse that included disagreement that did not sever relationships and did not halt a conversation or halt the learning is just, you alluded to it, it's not synonymous with what we see in the wider world today.

- What our students do in class does not look like what people are mostly doing. - No. - As they discuss politics or religion or any other fraught with peril concern. - That's true, I think it's such an opportunity too. I mean, as in the history of classical Christian education, just as they're finishing right now, my students are studying philosophy and thinking about the big ideas and what thinkers have thought before us and asking big questions, which prepare them to apply these things to their study of the book of all books, the book of wonders, the Bible, God's very word and that is to prepare them to study that together and so to have a year of, it's just a dessert year where you're really studying a lot of poetic language, which helps you read your Bible better and you're really digging into scripture as part of the reasoning strand and having those conversations and learning to listen to each other, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing for the church at large to learn to do?

And for families and relatives to learn to do that, neighbors to learn to do that, it's a gift. - Think how much we would learn from each other and I think how much happier we would be if we weren't afraid that our opinions or convictions were too flimsy to stand up to scrutiny.

I think a lot of times we hold our positions in barbed fists because we are afraid that they are not well considered enough to stand up under quote unquote attack and so we just don't dialogue, we just monologue to people. People stand next to each other and just because they're both talking back and forth does not mean there's a dialogue.

Sometimes there's completely closed mind on each side of that conversation and what I love about challenge four is that's not encouraged. We are gonna have dialogues and not parallel monologues and it's beautiful and sometimes hard and sometimes messy and oftentimes uncomfortable but infinitely worth it. - I agree. I also think it's an opportunity to grow in humility.

To be able to say I don't know or I was wrong or I think I believe this but what do you think, what does the Bible say? Let's look together. Let's go home and think about this question, ask our pastors, dig into the Bible and come back and revisit it next week and to see the students, they often tend to gravitate towards one big question sometimes or a couple and I'm not saying your student would graduate from challenge four with all their questions answered because you ask your whole life, they're big important questions and worth pursuing those answers to but having that practice together in a place where you can trust each other and learn from each other and try to practice virtue as you seek wisdom is really worth it.

It's a rare gift. - It really is. It really is. Okay, so parents that are listening to this who think, man, I wish I had been able to do this. Can I personally sign up for challenge four myself? How can we as parents help our students? What's the parent's role?

- I think the most important thing to do is to pray and to remember your purpose and to seek God's kingdom first and to then encourage your students to coach them, especially important to listen to them with their big questions often, which are not convenient times for us. - Yes, oh my goodness, that's so true.

- Just to be there and be willing to also let them disagree with us as parents and to seek truth together. I think that's important because they learn that their questions matter. So some kids are gonna need more coaching and more accountability. And you know your child best, like what your child needs and what you need to work on.

One of my kids needed a lot of coaching for different, they all need a different coaching for different seminars. - They all need different kinds of things, yeah. - Yeah, we all have different giftings. We're all in different places of learning all the time. So encouragement and pointing them to Christ is the most important thing.

And then just being there to disciple them. I think if you have the book, "The Conversation", my favorite chapter, which I try to read it every year, is the one called "Confident Parents". It's at the beginning of the "Conversation" book. And in there Lee reminds us that of what the point of this whole thing is, what we should be pursuing together.

And I think going to practicum, meeting with like-minded people, talking to your tutor and seeking what's best for your student is really important. And reminding your student of the reasons, because we all forget, especially in February. - Yes, especially in hard times or when you're tired or when you're tired of it, yeah.

- Yeah, yeah, talk to them. I mean, like I really want my students at home and my students in challenge to be able to articulate the kind of education that given and explain it to someone else 'cause they're asked all the time. - Exactly, yeah. - So help them, help them ask those questions and make time to talk to them, encourage them and coach them.

- Well, I have to say, Brittany, you have given us so many good, inspiring, heartfelt reasons to stick it out for challenge four, to pursue that glorious end to this beautiful educational journey that we've been on with our children. I really appreciate that. If you had one sentence to say to a family, who's trying to decide, am I gonna stay?

Are we gonna stay this course for this last year? Or are we gonna go pursue something else? What would you say? - I would say, please consider prayerfully persevering for the last leg of the climb. Sometimes that takes a big leap of faith because we don't know what it's going to offer our students, our particular student, or we doubt that.

But one of my favorite chapters from Wendell Berry, Standing by Words, he says that, and he's talking about marriage, but I think it could apply to just sticking and staying and not knowing what's going to happen. He says, "The faith rather is that by staying "and only by staying, we'll learn something of the truth, "that the truth is good to know, "that it's always both different "and larger than we thought." And I've found that students don't really know sometimes, or they doubt why they should be there, or if it's for them.

But upon staying and digging in, they reap such a harvest. It's a practical preparation for a pilgrim's life and a secular world. It's a final capstone year of soul fattening education that's focused on growing Christian leaders, preparing them for the world's fight and the soul's salvation, as David Hicks says, in Norm's Inability.

And I just wanna encourage you to check it out, find someone in your community who has done it and talked to them and go for it, don't leave. It's been such a gift to our family, and so that's why I feel so passionately about it, and a gift to me too, and to my husband, as we've grown alongside our kids and in our community.

Trees, one of my favorite images that I used in a graduation speech a few years ago for my daughter, Isabelle's class, because my dear friends had recently bought property and they had these giant pecan trees growing around their house, and they kind of worried 'cause they were so tall, like what happens in a storm?

So they had an arborist out, and they said, "Well, those trees actually are stronger "because they've grown their roots together. "They stand in a storm." - Oh, yes! - So if you have the blessing of having trees that have grown together, it's worth staying and finding out the fruit that comes from that one more year.

- Brittany, that is beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. Families, I hope that you have been inspired. I hope that this has moved you to prayerfully and thoughtfully consider what God has for your family at the end of your journey. Brittany, thank you for sharing from your heart so very much.

Parents, I know that we are all trying to do our very best for our children and for our families. And parents, you may be thinking, "I wish I knew better how to do this. "I wish I could be Brittany. "I wish I had the right questions to ask "or the right way to assess or the right way to help." I wanna tell you just as we break, I wanna tell you about something that I think might really bless your family and bless you as the lead learner in your home.

It's the Classical Learning Cohort. You can join the Classical Learning Cohort and you meet online six times through a semester with a small group of other parents who are on that mission to grow their understanding about classical education. You and this small group of parents meet with an experienced mentor who can really give you some hands-on practical ideas of how to get better and better.

If you want more information about this, go to classicalconversations.com/cohort. Registration has already begun, so don't wait and check out classicalconversations.com/cohort for more information on the Classical Learning Cohort. It will help you to become the lead learner that you want to be in order to help your children be all that God is calling them to be through this education that you're offering to them.

Brittany, thank you again. I appreciate you, friend. I'm praying for you and for your band of Challenge 3 students as they hopefully become a posse of Challenge 4 students riding together to the end of that journey. - Thank you. - Families, I appreciate you and I'll see you next week.

Bye-bye. Thank you.