(upbeat 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'm excited to bring a little bit of new to many of you information your way today. We're gonna be talking about the Classical Conversations Challenge Plus program, and I have a great guest that I think you're really gonna enjoy getting to know today.

Daniel Shirley is here and he's gonna be sharing with us the whys and hows of the CC Plus world. Daniel, I wanna welcome you and thank you for coming. Guys, this is what you need to know about Daniel. I have known Daniel for a really long time and I know he's great and he has a wealth of stuff to share.

So I want you to make him welcome. And Daniel, we're really glad for you to be here. - Yeah, thanks, Lisa. I'm glad to be here as well. - I happen to know that you know a lot about the challenge program from the inside out, so to speak. Tell us, what was your life like as a student, as a tutor and director?

And I also want you to share with people what you do now. - Yeah, for sure. So definitely starting Classical Conversations at the, I guess what, it's not a ripe young age, it's the opposite. (laughing) - A tender young age, let's say. - Yeah, there it is. A tender young age of seven and then having the blessing to move through the different levels of foundations, repeat all the cycles a bunch of times and then transition into the challenge program where I had just a really great, it was kind of like an all-star suite of challenge tutors that I was really grateful for, of which you won.

And so that's fun. - That is fun. - Yeah, I mean, moving through Challenge 4, graduating, we didn't have the senior thesis when I graduated Challenge 4, so that's something that I'm envious of now for my current students. And so I've been directing Challenge 4 for about four years now as well.

And so I'm up to that at least one day a week, most weeks. And then we have been doing the Classical Conversations Plus program. And now for around the last two to three years, I've been managing that program and just trying to make sure that our students really have every opportunity that they can possibly have, that we can possibly provide them to enter into that kind of college portal and be comfortable and confident as they're kind of moving through that threshold, so.

- That sounds really cool, Daniel. And I know that our listeners are excited. I'll tell you the truth. Whenever parents get a chance to hear from a student who has been through the program, they're very excited because all of us moms and dads, when we start out, we have great hopes for our kids.

And we put a lot of faith in the educational path that we choose. And so lots of us, just like your mom, my friend, Heather, just like your mom, I grabbed on to Classical Conversations as a great vehicle for my family to navigate this homeschooling journey. And I believed that it was the right thing.

And I believed my children would learn all of the skills that they needed to learn and be exposed to all the big ideas and great conversations that I really hoped for them to have. But you really don't know how it's gonna turn out. And you have to believe in it because it's a lot of years.

You wait for 12 years and you think, okay, did this, did all the good stuff rub off on them? Was I able to help rub off all the rough edges? Have I prepared my student to go forth and be a lifelong learner, be a self-supporting good citizen of the world and of God's kingdom?

And so, Daniel, I want you to know you're representing and parents are listening to you thinking, okay, so this is what it could turn out to look like. This young man sounds like he has it all together. So I appreciate you being transparent with my listeners today. - Yeah, absolutely.

And I think one of the things, I mean, I wanna kind of revisit that idea of the rough edges, is my student going to have all the rough edges sanded down, so to speak, when they are finished with the challenge program, graduating out of challenge three or ideally challenge four?

And it's really one of those things where the edges are still gonna be rough every time. The edges are still rough in many ways. And so we're not finished work yet and we're still continuing to grow and face challenges beyond college and family life and figuring out what this kind of epic human journey is.

But this is all part of the classical tradition, right? That's what we signed up for in the first place was this continual lifelong journey of forever approaching this kind of end of human beings that we see as Christ. And that's something that's always gonna be ongoing. But one of the things that I remember, particularly in my own experience as a student in the challenge program, was the first time that I went from foundations into challenge A.

And I think this has relevance to parents that are wondering, are my kids gonna be able to engage with the college world after coming out of the challenge program? The first assignments that I had to pull through in challenge A, I remember my birthday falls in October each year.

And so it was like week six or seven and we were doing some kind of geography assignment and I can't remember what continent we were drawing. But I remember having the challenge guide in front of me and looking through my assignments during that week, the week of my birthday.

And for every previous school year, I had always gotten my birthday off. It's like, I didn't have to do memory work, I didn't have to do my math. But now I had this external accountability to my challenge director and this kind of syllabus really in the challenge guide. And in the sixth or seventh grade, sitting there, realizing that I still have to finish this on my birthday and I'm gonna move through this assignment and pace out my work.

And if I do that correctly, maybe I have my birthday off. It was like the acquisition of responsibility. And I very much, when I entered into college myself, the experience was very similar going from foundations to challenge A or going from challenge four into college. It was like, we've kind of been doing this, really like this school wise.

- I think you hit on what is a very common experience for families and for students who come through the program. That's how it was for my girls. They went to college and looked around them in the first several weeks and thought, "Yeah, this is what you're supposed to do." You get the syllabus and you look ahead and you plot out your course and you say, "Okay, there's a paper here and there's a paper here "and there's a project here.

"And oh, and this class has one too." And so you just naturally begin thinking, "How am I gonna juggle this? "And what do I need to do when?" And my girls looked around and saw a lot of anxiety on the part of some of their suitemates and hallmates and realized that one of the best things that a classical education with classical conversations had done for them was to prepare them to be the master of their own work, to be the architects of how their time was gonna be spent and to feel competent to do that.

And it wasn't all brand new. And so that's a really good insight, Daniel, that I think that parents who are listening can really put in the bank and put in their back pocket and think, "Okay, so I'm doing a good thing." And I appreciate you offering that insight. I don't know, would you say that that was the best part of the challenge program to you, that you were prepared to manage your own time and your own life?

What would you say was the best part of challenge? - Yeah, I think that functionally, it seemed like that was the advantage of the challenge program. One of the advantages was definitely the structure of the one day a week in community and then the other days at home, forcing you kind of into this self-paced mode of sorting through your own work and deciding what days you were gonna do what.

And really, if the home is structured this way, the child is moving into that domain of responsibility, then the parent isn't maybe over-nurturing and structuring all of their work. - Right, right. - He's like this. Then the function of managing your own time, scheduling your own work and accomplishing the tasks, I felt like was very formative.

And so those patterns of work ethic are, I think, huge. I mean, favorite part, definitely not, definitely not the development of work ethic. I don't think, looking back, it's like, that was good, but it's not fun. - Exactly. - My favorite part of the challenge program or the best part of the challenge program has got to be the development of the soul of the students and then the fruition of it in the challenges three, like challenge three and four programs.

That's gotta be the best part. As a student, go ahead. - No, I was gonna say, so flesh that out a little bit. What does that look like? What does that feel like for the student and for the family that's watching the student? - Yes. So it can look, obviously, a thousand different ways, more than a thousand different ways, 'cause there's more than a thousand different students inside the challenge three and four programs.

- Yes. - But as you grow and move through the programs as a student, the first thing that is definitely real inside the experience of the student is that that kind of hitting the age of 16 and 17 and 18, and the world just kind of opens up. And I know we live in a different world now than it was 12, 13 years ago, whenever I was in the challenge program, but the challenge program kind of mirrors this increase in activity in the life of the student, whether it be they take a part-time job on, or they're in a relationship that's all-consuming, or they're really into a particular hobby and investigating, yeah, what comes next, all of those things.

The work actually kind of dials back in the challenge three and four years, as far as quantity of assignments and these different exercises that the students are doing, and it dials up in conversation. And so from the experience of the student, it was my, I enjoyed it to a certain degree when I was going through it, but now being on the other side of it and leading it and guiding it, and just watching the structure of the program shift and change into welcoming the opinions, the thoughts, the experiences of the students in the classroom, and having that be essentially the centerpiece of the challenge three and four years, was really, really wonderful.

And so going through it and retrospectively, I think that challenges three and four are definitely the highlight. They're definitely the most fun. We're all philosophers at that point. - Yes, yes. I'm so glad to hear you say that. That's always kind of what I have heard. My girls enjoyed that too, in those same kinds of ways, Daniel, and as I've talked to friends who have students who are coming up into three and four and who are now graduating, they are echoing your sentiments.

It is such a blessing to these students to who have developed these rich long-term relationships with friends, peers, who have wrestled with the same big ideas and have read a lot of the same things, but might have completely different opinions or thoughts about what that means and what should be done with what I now know.

And I think there's so much excitement and so much richness and so much satisfaction when those students have the opportunity to wrestle with big ideas and agreements and disagreements. It is so cool, and it always made me sad, and it made my daughters sad too, for some of their friends to drop out.

Some of your buddies did not stick all the way with challenge through graduation. Okay, I've heard lots. As I traveled as a practicum speaker and as I have lived a lot of years as a challenge director, I have heard all kinds of reasons for families and students not sticking it out through challenge three and four.

What have you heard from families who leave after a year or two of challenge? Yeah, I think one of the common, there are two really common things that I hear. The first one is, I think a little bit of an illusion. It's not quite accurate, but they think that challenge two was such a difficult year workload-wise, that if things just continue to ramp up past that point, which they assume it will, like it'll get harder and harder in 12th grade, then they leave.

Because they're like, if challenge two is this hard, then there's no way we can do the rest of it. And that's what I wanted to mention a little bit earlier too, is that it actually, the workload scales back. Like the students do less project-oriented assignments, even though they're still there.

The emphasis really changes into that more discussion-oriented student leadership element of the challenge program. And so that's one reason. They think it's gonna get a lot harder, and it actually gets a lot easier. So that's something- Preparation-wise. Yeah, because so much has gone into preparing the mind of the student, that by three and four, they don't have as much to prepare ahead of time.

It's all the beauty and the glory of the conversation. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that's the first reason that I've heard of families heading out. The other reason is intimidation by the content usually. And so as you get into challenge three, you've got the introduction into chemistry, which a lot of parents will feel intimidated by, a lot of homeschool teachers will feel intimidated by.

You're engaging in literature that's more complex with Shakespeare in challenge three, and then the "Alien," the "Odyssey," and the "Aeneid" in challenge four. You're dealing with larger history books, the "Discoverers" and "Patriot's History," and you're dealing with just more complex material all the way around. I think that if you recognize that that material doesn't have to be easily approachable your first time through, you don't even really have to understand it.

Mark notes are okay, and that however you can participate in the discussion is the emphasis, that's the goal and the direction, not total mastery of the content. 'Cause like I said, we're gonna be rough around the edges for a long time. If you want to be a perfect interpreter of the "Iliad," you're gonna have to read that book 100 times, and you're not gonna do that by the time you're 17 most likely.

And so recognizing that patience and just abiding in and attending to the things that have been placed before us are important, and so not to leave that too hastily because we're assuming that we need mastery over the content. I think those two things are the reasons that people tend to leave.

They think it's gonna get a lot harder after challenge two, and it doesn't. And then challenges three and four seem to have the most complex content, but it's there for us to attend to, not to master. - That is a great insight and a wonderful encouragement. I love that it's there for us to participate in, not necessarily to master.

And it's a really good reminder, Daniel, to all of us that there's no way that we are going to master everything that we touch fully by the time we're 17 or 18 years old. And, you know, a classical education, if we really believe the classical model, we should always remember that it is repetition that is gonna bring greater and growing understanding.

And so it's really encouraging to hear you say, just read the Iliad, read the Odyssey, sit through your calculus class, watch the physics experiments and immerse yourself in the experience. Something is bound to linger and to last with you. And, hey, if you really want to master this, you're gonna have to read it more than once anyway.

I love that, I love that. I know that some of the families that I have served as a mentor to, as they approach these upper challenge years, many of them began to say things like, well, we're gonna do the upper challenges, but not fully because we wanna do some dual enrollment.

We just feel like for a lot of different reasons, they were interested in dabbling in the college experience while their student was still in high school. And like I said, lots of reasons. I had some parents who said, you know, I want my child to have a little bit of college under their belt while they're still living at home with me.

And I'm still there to talk about big ideas and potential scary ideas and first-time ideas with them. And then some people were just saying, you know what? Our family financial concerns are a concern. And so we need our children to do dual enrollment so that we don't have such a big college built.

There are just tons of reasons. Tell us, tell my listeners about CC+ and how that could address family's needs or desires. - Yeah, absolutely. You know, CC+ has been around for a long time. And so I actually, I did CC+ when I was in the challenge program. And so it's been around- - Did you?

- I did, yeah. It was very different, way worse than it is now. - Well, everything that we start new, we're not good at yet. So we're figuring it out. - Exactly. - So you were in the, let's figure this out position. - Yes, 100%. And so the iteration of CC+ that I was in, whatever, 13 or 14 years ago, it was the American History Strand in challenge three.

And it was aligned to the curriculum to some extent, but we had to sit in a college class, like online before online classes were really a thing. - Oh gosh. - It was a chat room. Like, I don't know if you remember like- - Oh wow, yes. - (indistinct) and that kind of thing, old school.

It was like that, but for an hour and a half and the professor would type things and then the class would type back and the text was all colorful. - Oh gosh. - That's how CC+ kind of started. And since then it's had a lot of development, especially in the last couple of years.

But the way that CC+ works really at the vision of CC+ is to equip homeschool families and open kind of open college doors for homeschool families, particularly classical conversations families. And it does this by partnering with, regionally accredited universities, designing courses with them that overlap with our challenge curriculum so that students can participate in this quote unquote dual enrollment strategy, gain college credit, while not having to sacrifice the attention that I was just talking about, that you should pay to these Shakespeare texts or ancient literature or Patriot's history, some of these things.

- So our CC+ now actually uses classical conversations challenge material to get college credit for what our students are doing already? - Yes, that is true. It functions, the term that we use and we're trying to get more clear with this in the CC+ program, 'cause there's actually several programs that fall underneath the domain of CC+.

And so the quote unquote concurrent enrollment program is the program where Southeastern University has basically looked at our challenge content and said, you're meeting these objectives for these college courses, these college credits. And so we will step in and vouch for you essentially to accredit these challenge courses. If students are willing to opt into that kind of, to the CC+ concurrent enrollment program, SEU basically grants them credit for completing their challenge work.

- Wow, okay. And that's concurrent enrollment, gotcha. - Yeah, concurrent enrollment is the term. I do wanna say that the overlap is not a 100% overlap, meaning that students don't complete everything in the challenge guide to get college credit from Southeastern University. And students don't only complete the listed assignments in the challenge guide to get college credit from SEU.

And so there's a fun back and forth here. The CC+ classes are always quote unquote less work than what's actually in the challenge guide. There are fewer assignments to complete 'cause we don't need everything in the challenge guide even. - Right, yeah, that's a very ambitious program of activity and thinking.

- Yes, it is. And so, but at the same time, in order to satisfy some college requirements and regulations, all the very, the fun stuff, the bureaucracy, there are certain assignments that are not exactly imitated in the challenge guide, but they are in spirit similar to the assignments that students are already doing.

So for example, in the challenge two composition one course that we have with CC+, where students opt in to turn their British literature essays in for college credit, we have a timed writing assignment on week eight, and the university says, you have to do this timed writing assignment. All comp courses have to have this timed writing assignment in this section of the course.

And we say, that's not in our challenge guide, but students do a blue book. They'll do a blue book at the end of the semester. So we encourage families to say, hey, pay attention to and look at the assignments for the CC+ courses of which you can find all of the assignments pre laid out for you to evaluate whether or not you think this overlaps with the way that you're engaging with the challenge program.

Those are all on our student information portal. All that information is available, course codes, titles, assignments, it's all there. But the spirit of that is that students are doing a blue book, which is a timed essay already. And so we're just saying, think of that as being bumped up seven weeks.

And then do the, it's a blue book exam that you're taking just a little bit out of step with the rest of the program. But that's a lot of detail. So I don't know if it's helpful or not, but. - Yeah, I think that detail is great. And a lot of our listeners are gonna be interested in the detail.

And so if they want to revisit and they don't wanna listen to the whole podcast again, Daniel, where can they go? Where can families go to find out more of this information about concurrent enrollment and other ways of participating in CC+? - Yeah, so that would be classicalconversationsplus.com. We just did a new website and so that's fun.

You can see our four programs across the top of the page there. We've got something for CC students in challenge. We've got something for challenge graduates. We've got something for parents. We've got gap year programs. So check that out for sure. The concurrent enrollment program, if you click the get started button on the website, there's a page that it takes you to and a student information portal that's linked on that page.

It has 29 course descriptions for the CC+ concurrent enrollment program where you can go in and get a full roadmap of what these courses look like before signing up for them even. So I would highly encourage families to go in and check some of that out. - Okay, that's great.

So classicalconversationsplus.com and you will be able to see all four of the types of programs that CC+ offers and find out the details so that you can evaluate. For instance, if this concurrent program, the concurrent enrollment might work for your family's goals for your student. Okay, so tell us what are the advantages of being part of CC+?

What are the advantages for students and maybe what might a parent think of as the advantages? - Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that's very fun is that we have this relationship with Southeastern University called directed mission. And so one of the common quote on like anxieties that parents will have is my student's not a good test taker.

They're not good at ACT, SAT, CLT, any of the acronym tests. And with the CC+ program, you actually end up being able to kind of sidestep those standardized tests through this term that we call directed mission. And you can look it up. There are colleges all over the place.

They're starting to formulate these directed mission agreements with different institutions. But if you're a CC family, a parent or student, and you apply to Southeastern University, indicating that you're a CC family, again, that's an important step. - Right, right. - You are directly admitted into the institution. And so you're accepted automatically.

That's a big deal. And so one of the other benefits, I talked to my students in challenge four when they're doing their senior thesis. Say if you sign up for a CC+ course, you get access to a university level library. And so you can actually-- - Oh, that's cool.

- Yeah, dive in and do the research that you wanna do, really fortify your arguments and your ideas with scholarly sources and dig in in a way that otherwise it can be kind of hard to do if you're trying to dance around and pull abstracts off of Google Scholar and that kind of stuff.

Yeah, we've all been there, but-- - Absolutely. - Yeah. And then the other thing in general, we've done this more recently, but we launched this undergraduate program with Southeastern University. This undergraduate program really embodies the spirit of CC+ is opening college doors for homeschool families, because this is one of our programs that's open to both students that have graduated from challenge four, as well as classical conversations parents at any point during their classical conversations journey, where you can get a up through a bachelor's degree with Southeastern online.

And the tuition is just, is crazy low. I think it ends up being about $3,000 a semester. And so, like trying to equip, I know we've had the master's program for a little while now, but I've had questions come in from people like, well, what if I don't have my bachelor's degree yet, but I still want to do this program?

And so we've been pulling this together for the last little while. And so I'm really excited about it. And I hope more and more families will continue to take advantage of the opportunity to finish out a bachelor's degree, to kind of check that box so they can pursue either our EMA or whatever other program they're excited to do.

- Yeah, that is such an advantage for families because I'll tell you, Daniel, there are a lot of moms and some dads out there as well, who when they begin, they feel like God's led them to homeschooling, but in the back of their mind is the strike that they didn't finish college or they didn't go to college.

And who am I to be doing this with my children? And even after they begin to redeem their own education and they really understand that it is about the classical tools of learning that are approachable by everybody and they are doing the work, there's still in the back of their minds, this little seed that says, but you don't have your degree.

And so this is huge for families who are all about lifelong learning, but would love to have that degree in hand. What a blessing. That's awesome. That is awesome. - It's very exciting. And really, again, it's there for families to use however is helpful to them. And so really there's not a right or a wrong way to use CC+, the concurrent enrollment program, undergraduate program, master's program.

They're there for families to be able to enter into this college space in whatever way kind of suits them best. So we try to make things as open and flexible as possible. We try to preserve families' attention, preserve families' finances. And so through our partnership with SEU, they've really made this possible.

And I like to encourage families like check it out, hop on board, see what you think, at least learn a little bit more about it because this relationship with Southeastern University is super, super cool. I don't exactly know how the Lord has placed us in this spot to have this relationship with this institution, but check it out because it's definitely a unique opportunity.

If you want to look up average tuition for college in 2024 and then compare with some of the numbers, I can tell you, but it really doesn't do it justice unless you kind of do the research yourself and figure it out, but just compare it a little bit. And I think you'll probably come to the same conclusion that I have, which is just that it's a huge, huge opportunity for as long as it lasts.

And so just really grateful for it. - This has been so exciting to me, Daniel. And I will confess to you that what I thought that I really wanted to know about was more the concurrent enrollment. And actually, I think I might want to have you come back in a few weeks to talk about, or maybe sometime this summer, as families really begin to consider if they would like to do a concurrent enrollment with some of their older challenge students, 'cause I'd love to talk specifics about that, but what I think this has been as a surprise to me was how much more CC+ is than just that concurrent enrollment avenue.

And the biggest mind-blowing blessing to me is just what a blessing CC+ can be to families with students at every level. Like you said, current challenge students, challenge graduates, parents, people who are looking for a gap year program. What I want to suggest to our listeners today, what I want to suggest to you guys is go check it out.

Go to classicalconversationsplus.com and find out what's out there for you and see, like I have seen today, that there's a whole lot more than maybe we ever considered and that this might be what God is calling your family into, and we didn't even know. We found it on the way to something else.

And so thank you, Daniel, for bringing that up. And will you come back and talk to me again about the concurrent enrollment program? - Yeah, absolutely, I'd love to. It's been a great time. I've enjoyed your hospitality. - That will be great. So listeners, Daniel and I will get together and we'll try in the next several weeks to roll this out because I feel like a lot of you may be thinking, hey, this might be just the thing for my overachiever challenge student or for our family to see how college and this student match up well.

So you stay tuned and we'll get you more information on that. One other piece of information that I wanna share with you about something that is out now, you guys have heard me talk a lot about the Copper Lodge Library books that Classical Conversations Multimedia put out. We have a new edition of the Copper Lodge Library called English Epic Poetry.

It's a collection of English poetry. It does include a lot of the poetry that your student will read in the challenge program. It has Sir Gawain and the Grey Knight, selections from Canterbury Tales, there are parts of Paradise Lost in there. The cool thing about our editions is that the collection includes an introduction that gives you historical context for the pieces as well as tips for reading epic poetry.

And there are a lot of footnotes that will help you with hard parts of the text. They're also, the books are really beautiful and they're bound so that they're really wide, nice wide margins, which encourages our students and all of us as readers to take notes and really be having a conversation with the book and with the author as you read along.

So if you are interested in this new edition from the Copper Lodge Library, go to copperlodgelibrary.com and you can find out how to get a copy and see what other titles are available. So thanks for being with me today, guys. Daniel, thank you again, and I'm already looking forward to our next conversation.

- Until then. - All right, bye-bye. (gentle music) you