(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 super excited to welcome you to this episode. I have a great guest for you who is going to shed some light on homeschooling teenagers.

Woo-hoo, we all need light about that. And about one of the specific projects that your challenge student either is going through or will be going through. So Deb Switzer is here. Deb, thank you so much for coming on to talk about the art grant proposal today. - Thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited to talk about it. - Well, one of the reasons, Deb, I'm excited for you to be here is that you have experience, okay? You have experience with your own teenagers in your home. You have experience with teenagers in your local community. And I know that either they have rubbed off your rough edges through the years or you have just gained a lot of insight either from making all the mistakes or from doing everything right.

And you're gonna share both of those with us, right? - Oh, absolutely. You better believe it. - So guys, if you tuned in and you really want to hear all about the art grant proposal project because you don't know anything about it, rest assured that we're gonna get there and we're gonna give you everything you need to go forward with joy.

Now that's a big promise, but we're gonna do our best. But before we get there, I want to talk to Deb just for a minute about some general learning along with your teenager ideas. Do you hear what I said? Learning along with your teenager. Unless you are vastly different from me and I suspect Deb, you don't know everything yet.

- You know, surprisingly that is definitely the road that I am on. I'm learning along the way. - Well, and I'll be really honest. Some of the things that I thought that I knew everything I needed to know about, I really shored up my education as I taught my girls at home.

Like I seriously redeemed huge pieces of my own education by teaching them. - Yes, absolutely. And me too. It is incredible to walk through challenge with your teenagers and find out one, how much you don't know. And again, also have the opportunity to be able to learn alongside your teenagers.

It opens up so many doors of opportunity for learning and understanding as you build relationship with your child and you read things together and you start to understand together. And it's also the most humbling place because there are so many opportunities where you just have to look at your teenagers.

I don't know, I really don't know. And we're just gonna have to dive in here together and go on this learning journey together. But I do think that that's probably one of the most encouraging parts. It's humbling, but it's also encouraging because your kids get to see that one, you want to learn and two, that you're always learning.

You're always on this journey. There's never this place where you've arrived. And so you get to do that with your kids. It's such a beautiful bonding time and a time of just growing together as mother and daughter or mother and son, it's beautiful. - I love that. I know that when I had my, my girls are grown now, but we went through all the way through high school with them so they marched through the entire challenge program with us nipping at their heels or leading them or in lockstep with them, depending on what subject and how familiar I already was.

But I'll tell you, even in the subjects that I loved, so I had an affinity for it and/or I thought I got really good instruction either in high school or college, there were still assignments, books, projects that I had never done myself. And so there were times that even in subjects that I loved, I felt like the blind leading the blind.

And so parents, I want you to take a deep breath. If you are stressed about the art grant proposal project, I want you to take a deep breath. Many of us never did anything like that. In school. And so we sort of think, I don't know what I'm doing and I'm supposed to be teaching this child.

You're gonna have to help me. And so we're going to, we're going to. But like I said, I wanna just ask a couple of questions and help us explore maybe the challenges and the adventures of learning alongside our teenager. You, Deb, you already gave us some of the good stuff.

It really builds camaraderie with your student for you to learn alongside of them. You are, I love what you said about, it is very humbling and it provides opportunities for our kids to see that, hey, mom, dad, they don't know all this stuff, but they are committed to learning still.

This is a grownup who already has a college education or already has had a job or already is in charge of our home and they seem pretty with it, but they don't know how to do this and there's still things for them to learn. And I think it's a beautiful thing for our children to grow up thinking that learning is just what our family does together.

- Yes, and at that environment that we get to create as parents, it just provides this place for open communication and questions. This whole classical model thing that we're doing is all about being able to ask questions and to discover along the way. And the world does not give us answers, just, hey, here's everything you have to do, point A, point B, point C, and let's go ahead and have you follow that.

Instead, it's a journey of discovery for everything that we face. And so this common place of being able to ask questions and discover together without having all of the answers right in front of you, that's part of the growing process of becoming a teenager and becoming a lifelong learner is that we are able to find that place where we can ask the questions and go on that road of discovery.

Our grant is a great place where we get to discover and learn along the way and not have all the answers right in front of us. - That is so great. That is very encouraging. Okay, so that's a great feather of encouragement. I'm gonna stick in my cap and we're gonna come back to it.

What do you think, Deb? 'Cause I know you have been a challenge director for a number of years and you've seen the learning journey play out in countless families. What have you seen as the biggest challenge for parents as their students move into the upper challenge years? I mean, how do we stay involved?

And I used to tell parents that what you're doing as a homeschool mom and dad, you're working your way out of a job. And so the older our students get, the less of a job we should still have. But what do students still need from us? - Yeah, there's no doubt that, especially I could speak from my own experience as my children got older and were going through the challenge years, that they were starting to learn things and experience things that I just couldn't keep up with anymore.

When you have a bunch of children at home, you can only learn so much at a time. That's why it's a lifelong journey. And so as they were starting to get assignments that I didn't know or I didn't understand, I started to have those homeschool stress panic attacks. What do I do now?

And am I gonna ruin their lives? 'Cause I don't know how to do this particular project. And so I think that having that time to just want, well, one, giving yourself tons of grace to know it is gonna all be okay. They're gonna work their way through that project and actually not being able to have everything right there is actually a beautiful growing experience for them, like I talked about before.

But it's also this sense of just carving out, like I have a, my way of dealing with it was I carved out a little bit of time every week where I said, let's just touch base about the things that you're feeling uncomfortable with, or let's spend a little bit of time talking about something that you've learned that's been amazing this week.

And then let's also figure out what we need to dive into together and finding that special time that was just for them where they knew they had my undivided attention, that I wasn't gonna be over here and over there and working with their siblings. But I said, you've got me for this half hour or this hour or whatever it might be, and I'm fully focused on you.

That was a gift, not just to my kid, but it was a gift to me too, because it was an incredible time of just saying, I am completely focused on you right now. And I loved those special moments. I just, I talked with a mom recently who just said, I'm gonna take my daughter out once a month for a coffee date and just talk about the books that they're reading.

And even if I haven't read them, we're just gonna talk about it because it's a special time to talk about what they're reading. So those little things in the midst of it being a little bit scary, I mean, like, I don't know what I'm doing, those times to just sit down and connect and say, well, we can work on it together.

We can figure it out together. And I think that that's a blessing for the kids. They love when we spend just that little bit of time with them and they know that they have our undivided attention. - Undivided attention is something I think all of us value. I know that when I can tell that somebody is really listening to me, and when I feel like they have all the time in the world to spend with me doing whatever is most important to me, I feel important.

And I feel supported by that person. I feel loved by that person. I feel heard. And it really helped. It gives me both freedom and the bravery to open up about things that are bothering me. Things I'm not good at. I mean, I think sometimes as our students get older, they feel like they're supposed to be good at fill in the blank by now, right?

And so when they have a moment of, I don't quite have this, or I'm not sure about this, or I have hit a concept that is beyond me in the moment, a lot of times they don't want to admit that to us. And so I think, I love your idea of making sure that every week your child knows that they are going to have a period of time where they have your absolute undivided attention.

And if there's nothing wrong, we'll talk about all the things that are right, or we will study something together that we both love, but there is time set aside that they know they'll have your ear and your eye and your full attention. And that is really important. - Yeah, and it's, again, you know, this whole homeschool thing ends up being so much about relationship.

And I mean, just consider how incredible it would be to, you know, on those weeks where things are going well or whatever it might be that you can say, where did you find God in your studies this week? And we have this time and we can talk about that.

And, you know, embrace that and enjoy that moment and that wonder of, oh, you saw God in the cells of biology or in the language of the choice that was, you know, there in the word and you saw it somewhere else and in a piece of literature and just being able to see God in all of it versus just like a Bible study or at church, but God's in all of it.

And let's enjoy that together. And let's see that even in the struggle, God's in the struggle too. So let's enjoy that as well. - Yeah, and sometimes that meeting time every week is a prayer time. Lord, we do not get this. I'm not, I am missing the link. My student is missing the link and I am not helping to excavate this problem.

I mean, I need help. What are we gonna do? - I can't even begin to tell you how many times with my oldest, who's now, you know, she just graduated and got married. And, but our big joke is chemistry because I had to dive through chemistry with my daughter.

And I have hilarious pictures of her with her like hair over her head and just like hands in the head and just suffering through chemistry with me. And now it's like our biggest point of laughter because we just laugh about how much I blew it, but that we still struggled through it together.

And it's a point of like just enjoyment in our lives. Now we just laugh about, you know, hey, you tried mom and you didn't do so great, but that's okay. - It brings you together. Yeah, I still have the twin whiteboards that me and my younger daughter used to do the, and that, you know, that's where I discovered that, oh, I don't have a chemistry problem.

I have an advanced math problem. And so, and it's like, okay, we're gonna have to, there's only one way. We finally both came to the startling truth. There's only one way to the other side of this chemistry module and it is to go through it. And to do that, we're gonna have to press together.

But you're right. It absolutely draws you together and it teaches you things about yourself. It teaches you things about your child. It teaches you things about the faithfulness of God that He leads you into hard things and through hard things. And He teaches you when you least expect. He taught us lessons that I was not expecting to learn in the midst of a different lesson.

So it was great. - It's good to remember, I think in those moments when it's hard and you're ready to pull your hair out and say, why am I doing this? To just reflect back and say, you know, God, I prayed and I really believe you told me to do this.

And it may not look today the way I thought it was going to look, but it doesn't change the fact that you told me to homeschool, that you want this for our family and that I can just embrace that on the days where it looks so beautiful and perfect and Pinterest-y.

- That's awesome. - The days where I wouldn't post in a million years. - I need to say this. I mean, I feel like I need to remind us, probably nobody listening to this had God say, I intend for you to teach your child stoichiometry. I intend for your child to know the fourth principal part of the Latin verb, amore.

No, I feel like what God called you to do is to raise your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, that you were called to teach your child to know God the Father, that you were called to help them along the way to become a beautiful human who knows how to worship the Lord.

And so take a deep breath, parents. We are doing what God called us to do when we are introducing our child to the Lord Jesus. And we do that through all of these subjects and all of these projects and all of these problem sets and all of these books, and even through the art grant project.

So let's go back to that. How can, Deb, how can parents move through assignments like this? What can parents do when they're called to shepherd a child through an assignment that they are wholly unfamiliar with? I mean, like I never had to write an art grant proposal in my life and never even attempted it until my girls were in challenge.

What are we as parents supposed to do with stuff like that? - Oh, it's the most important thing is to remember, first of all, you're not alone, right? So, so many parents, including myself, have never done anything like this. And you sit there and you look at your computer or your guide and you go, I don't know what to do.

So remember that you have this beautiful community with you. You have a director who is gonna be able to provide you with some great information and provide your student with some great information. And more than likely, or there's a good possibility that you've had a community that may have already gone through it with another challenge to community that's gone through it already.

And you can go and you can ask questions. You can say, "Hey, did you do this last year? Can you show me what you did or what it was like?" Because those conversations are what helped to shape and form and put some more dimension into what is this project actually going to look like.

So I would say use those resources first and foremost, ask questions in your community, ask questions of your director. Those, the conversations are what bring things to life much more than just reading the paragraph about the art grant and the guide. Although that's an important paragraph to read. - Yeah, yes, yes.

- Those conversations really put the flesh on it. There's also like, you have your guide which gives you a good overview of the project and what's going to be expected. And there's a great tutorial overview on CC Connected about the art grant to give you a little bit of like, what is this project and how does it come together?

So I really recommend that as well to just kind of get that overview, watch it with your student, watch it together. - Yes, oh that's great. - And then ask questions and answers together to kind of just help form it in your mind a little bit more. - I love that.

Okay, so you have, all right. All right, parents, you might have to stop and then wind back a little bit 'cause Deb gave us a ton of good information and she mentioned several good resources. The guide, obviously. Okay, I say obviously. All right, I have to just be really transparent.

I had been a challenge tutor myself for a while and one of my daughters made it to challenge one and she was working on her research paper and her dad was her challenge one director. And when she turned in her paper, he had some rather, I felt, critical feedback for her about some of the ancillary documents, about her bibliography and about some title page that she was supposed to have.

And I was very affronted, okay, so why did you not? And he said, "It's in the guide. "I'm expecting all of my students and parents "to have availed themselves of the guide." And so parents, the guide is more than a syllabus that list when assignments are due. Is that not true, Deb?

- Absolutely, the guide is there to help put all of these different dimensions of these projects together. And sometimes things are more vague and sometimes things are more specific, right? So you might have in that challenge one research paper, there's something very specific that someone might be looking for.

In the art grant, you might say, "Well, give me the specifics. "Give me like this point A, point B, point C." And the guide isn't gonna do that for you on the challenge to our grant project and our type A personalities. If you're like me, you might start to-- - I want a list.

- Yes, give me my checklist and give me all the things. But this is a creative project. And we don't want to squash creativity with a checklist that makes students feel that they have to line up in a certain way to be able to succeed. We want them to explore ideas and to think through all the creative ideas that they might come up with.

And how might I make a visual and what kind of visual do I want? But if you're on a certain timeline or checklist for that, it has the ability, especially with like such a variety of personalities and students to just box them in. And we want students to really explore their creativity and all the different dimensions of the project.

So using the guide as your basic framework, but then understand that there's a lot of freedom here because we want students to explore their creative juices when it comes to this project. - Oh my gosh, that is so good. Okay, so you heard what she said. There are lots of places you can go to get help and support.

If you feel utterly out of your depth, you're in the deep end and nobody gave you a kickboard, here's the deal. The guide is always there and it will have some guidance for you and your student about the art grant project. You also can talk to the tutor, the director of your child who will give some, hopefully some good suggestions gleaned from past experience, her own, his own, or other families' experiences.

You can consult with other parents in the community. Community mentor moms and mentor dads are the best resource ever. Somebody who's got children a little older than yours who have walked through this, they have, listen, y'all, they have already made all the mistakes that you're getting ready to make, and in love can say to you, and don't forget this, and by all means, don't do that.

And this was some, and this is what I wish I had done, okay? So avail yourselves of those. But then Deb, you mentioned something on CC Connected. What, how can parents get into that and what might they find there to help them? - Sure, so there is, there are two resources out on CC Connected for the art grant.

So if you go into CC Connected and you just go into the Learning Center, you can type in art grant and it's gonna bring up two things. The first thing it's going to bring up is a tutorial overview. And so again, I think that is a great tutorial to watch right alongside with your student, take notes together, talk about it afterwards, start talking through ideas.

That is such a huge benefit. Another portion of the art grant is as you come up with your idea, you're going to start to fill out what is called the art grant application. And so that has all kinds of different questions that are there for the invention stage. So it's a blank one so that you can have multiple copies of it.

So you know how you write things in and you're like, it's a hot mess. I don't know what to do with this. - I wish I hadn't done that. - So you make a few copies of that 'cause your ideas are gonna change over and over again. And then you can fill that in and you can also type in it if you want to, 'cause it's a Word doc.

But that's available to you to be able to have multiple versions as you keep going through the invention process. - Oh, that's so good. So there are lots of resources, okay? So y'all all take a deep breath with me. (Deb breathes deeply) There are resources, there are resources. All right, now let's talk a little bit about the project.

Deb has whetted my appetite and yours too, I bet, by saying that this is a creative project, a bit looser in structure than some of the projects our Challenge students will tackle during the Challenge years, mostly because we want students to feel the freedom to create and to explore, and I dare say, to chase their interest a little bit.

So let's talk specifically about the Art Grant Project. When does it happen? What challenge level is doing this? What time of the year? All of that stuff. - Sure, so the Art Grant Project happens in Challenge 2. It's a great connection with the Western Cultural Studies that all the students are engaged in 'cause they're studying the arts, they're studying art and music.

So in the first semester, between week six and week 10, they're introduced to the Art Grant Project, which starts on week six and ends on week 10. And they get to basically think through, the arts are a place where people ask for money all the time, right? And so they're going to think through an idea that they could take any passion that they have and how that might connect to the arts and any form of the arts.

And how would I pitch an idea, basically? The way I present it, we're in the middle of this right now with my students, I say, think about "Shark Tank," guys. All these inventors are coming in with all these ideas and they're pitching their ideas and then they have to take questions.

It's an art version of the "Shark Tank." And so then they basically just think through an idea, how would it connect to the arts? They fill in the application, they create a visual. So that's another portion of it is they create some form of visual to go with their speech.

It's a five minute memorized speech with their visual. And then they're basically looking at what is a fake board of their own students or their own peers. And they say, "Hey, here's my idea." And all their fellow students rank the ideas in terms of who do I think has the best idea for receiving a fake art grant.

- Right. - And they have a ton of fun and they get to have a lot of creativity as they think through what kind of ideas they want to do. - Oh, that is so cool. All right, so I know you said that this happens in "Challenge 2" because it fits in really well with the cultural studies of art and music that they do.

But more than that, why do we do this project? What skills are our students practicing? And how does this advance their grasp of knowledge and understanding and wisdom? Why are we doing this? - Yeah, so they are learning so many skills. It's one of my favorite projects 'cause they just learned so many different integrated skills for life and all the different content that they've been learning in "Challenge." So obviously one, they get to express their creativity and think through their passions.

This whole project is a great precursor to the senior thesis in "Challenge 4" because they're going to find something that they're passionate about, they're going to be able to present that. And then they also have to take questions and answers about that project, which is very similar to the senior thesis, but this is on a much smaller level.

So they're learning that skill of just being able to know their project so well that they can answer questions about it from the board or their colleagues or peers as they do that. They also just get to practice either technical skills or artistic skills, depending on how they want to do that visual.

So some students are going to do a PowerPoint presentation and they get to think through what actually makes a PowerPoint presentation? I feel like that's a great business world skill. PowerPoints are done all the time. And this is one of the times where we're like, technology is okay, you can do PowerPoint here.

And make something beautiful that enhances your presentation. Some students are very artistic and they want to create a board or they might create their own mini sculpture of a version of a sculpture that they want to promote it in a park. They get to work on those creative skills.

I also love that it reinforces the challenge one budgeting skills. So all those economics discussions that they had in challenge one, now they get to put some flesh on it as they create a budget for their project. And what does that budget look like? And how would I enforce that budget and work within that budget?

How much money do I actually need to do this project? Do I need more? Do I need less than what I'm asking for? And so those are all questions that are real life applications, right? We all have to deal with money. So that's definitely a skill that they're learning.

And those great memorized speeches, they've been practicing those. And this is just another avenue of practicing a memorized speech and those rhetorical skills to really just practice being persuasive. Here's why my idea is worth you giving money to, right? - Yeah, that's great. You know, I discovered when my girls were doing this and we're gonna talk about, one of the hardest things, getting started and coming up with your idea.

We're gonna talk about that in a minute. But I did notice that after we got started, after we got in the groove, these skills that you just mentioned really were sharpened in my children as they went through the steps and stages of this project. I watched them learn to manage their time because, you know, like you said, this happens sometime between week six and 10.

Well, that's four weeks, you know, that's four weeks of time in there. And if you lollygag around until week nine, then that is not a good management of your time. And that bites you and you learn quickly. That was a bad idea. I hope I never do that again.

And so I saw that my girls quickly began to manage their time better when some things took longer than they had anticipated. Or they had to start over because they had not considered all the possibilities of things that might happen to either derail or shift the focus of their projects.

Not everything works out like you think it will. And when you get in the middle of it, you realize you have now gained valuable insights that you wish you had known at the beginning of this project. - Right, and I think that- - That's a great thing to learn.

- It's a blessing to learn. So, you know, I think as parents, we can start to just be upset with our teenagers saying, "Oh, you waited till the last minute," or "Why are you changing your idea?" Or, you know, but this is part of the process, right? Is that they are becoming a stronger decision-making adult as they go through this process and have to make choices and reap the consequences of those.

So it's not a bad thing if your child is halfway through their project and says, "This idea is terrible. It's not gonna work." And we think, oh, you know, of course we would prefer that that didn't happen. It causes stress on mom too. - Yes, it does. - You know, I'm laughing 'cause I've had this conversation.

I'm like, "Why are you changing your project right now? What?" 'Cause now I have to shift and adjust my whole life for this. - Right, exactly. Oh. - But I think it's, in a way, it's their learning as they go, the consequences of like, "Did I really go through that invention process well?

Did I really think it through? Did I really spend time on that arrangement canon?" And, you know, "Consider the way I have to present it or is it gonna make me backtrack?" And so each of these canons is a learning process. And so the Art Grant gives them an opportunity to learn each canon of rhetoric.

It involves all five. And they are able to see, "Hey, maybe I'm strong here, but my arrangement canon needs some serious help." And projects like these help you learn yourself and where your strengths and your weaknesses are so that you can know where I need, I'm gonna need to account for more time on this part.

- Yes. - You know, because it's not my strength. And instead of just brushing through it and then finding out that it's a disaster later, I'm going to spend a little bit more time or ask for some more help when it comes to inventing or arranging or elocuting or I need you to drill me a little bit more for the memorizing.

Whatever it might be, these are the projects that help you learn where your strengths and your weaknesses are. And it's good. It's a good thing. - And it helps you own the whole process, not just the finish, but the whole process. And you know what? I feel compelled to say, "Parents, let your child, let your student learn the hard lesson." And sometimes they have to learn it the hard way.

Sometimes teenagers think, "I got this, I got this, I got this." And then they don't have it and it needs to buy. I feel like my daughter and I both very viscerally remember her art grant project because we were, like all of our families do, getting all our stuff together night before.

Mom's a challenge director. She's got her art grant. Her sister has all her challenge A stuff. We're getting everything together. And I said, "Get all your stuff." And I drove a carpool of other kids and I was very committed to getting there early so I could meet with parents who had issues or questions.

And so we, "Hurry, hurry, hurry, get in the car. Have you got all your stuff?" "Yes, I have everything." "Okay, we're getting ready to leave." "I'm ready." And we got halfway and she said, "Oh, we have to go back." I said, "Excuse me?" She said, "We have to go back." I left my poster.

I left my visual aid and today is presentation. And I just kept driving. And she said, "I left my thing. We have to go back." And I said, "You know, you need for us to go back. I can't spare the time to go back." And she said, "Well, then I have to use your phone 'cause I need to call Daddy.

I need to get." And I said, "Okay, you can call. I don't think Daddy will do it. And if Daddy asked me if he should, I'm gonna tell him no." And she was so mad at me. And in fact, she had to give her art grant project without her visual aid, which made it, you know, for the "Shark Tank" judges much less effective than it would have been.

- Right. - And I think that she, it took a lot of weeks for her to quote, unquote, "Forgive me for that." But what I noticed is that it was a very valuable lesson because she became much more an advocate of getting her stuff together. And she has grown into a grown-up.

- Yeah. - Makes her list and checks it twice. So it was a hard lesson. It was a hard lesson that it paid dividends, okay? I love that you laid out for us all through this parts of the project from settling on an idea to doing some research that would help you design a project and set a budget, you know, arrange how you would structure your proposal, but then also arrange how you would tell about it.

And then creating your visual aid and actually delineating and practicing your presentation. I think one of the hardest things is to realize after you have put, you know, three or four or five weeks even into a project is realizing that everybody doesn't know what you know about it. And so you have to set the stage so that people can understand the passion that you feel and maybe buy into it.

How much freedom do parents and students have to design a project that their students could feel that degree of passion about? How are they supposed to pick a topic? What would you say? - Yeah, the process, I think that's the hardest part of the Art Grant Project is choosing what on earth am I, what is this idea that I am going to pitch, right?

- Yes. - And students often just sit there and look at you and they say, I have no idea what to do. Give me an idea. My kids looked at me at home and said, please just give me an idea. - Just tell me what to do. - And so it's kind of working your way backwards and saying, well, let's ask two, I had my kids answer two questions.

I was like, what are you passionate about? What do you love? Let's figure out what you're passionate about and what you love. And then the second question after we would talk about that was we would say, okay, now how might we be able to incorporate that with the arts if it's not already an arts oriented thing?

And then moved it one step further and said, how can that bless a community? So looking at three stages of it, what's your passion? How might that fit in with the arts somehow? And how might it bless a community? Because really when you're asking for the Art Grant, it doesn't have to be a service project, but quite often it's in some way blessing a community 'cause people are gonna be giving money to it, right?

And so there's gotta be an audience that is going to enjoy it or participate in it. And so I know for my, I'll just speak for my own two children, like my daughter and my son are very different. So my daughter loved music. And so she was already there in term of the Arts Grant 'cause she's like, I'm a music person.

I love the arts. This is great. And so she was thinking through about how to give lessons to inner city kids and give classical music lessons to them. And then my son though, he's a sports guy, right? And he's like, I don't know, I don't sing, I don't dance.

I, you know, he's like, I play sports. And so, but he started to think about a missions trip that he was on and how all the kids played sports. And he was like, well, what if we were able to design clothes, you know, like little soccer uniforms for these kids overseas with like a clothing design that would help this missions organization.

So he went from his passion of sports to thinking about how that could go with the arts and then moved it into how it could bless a community over in Botswana, Africa. And so that was his process. And lots of kids have things that they're passionate about, you know, I think I posted something in the form about, you know, if you're a Save the Turtles person, right?

And you can create a mural on a, you know, in a city block or a statue of some sort that is going to try to bring awareness to that passion of yours. And so it's trying to meld those three things together, your passion, how it goes with the arts, and then how it blesses a community.

Those three things are going to help you form that creative idea that you're looking for. - Oh man, Deb, that is absolutely perfect, okay? Because you have given us the big picture of why this project is so good and what skills our students are gonna sharpen that are gonna be useful to them for the rest of their lives but also how you've given us some really practical ways of narrowing down the hardest part of the whole project, deciding what to do.

I think that you hit the perfect formula. What do you love? What are you passionate about? How is that related? How might that be related to the art? And what could you do with that to bless a community? How could this be a service that others would be motivated to support with giving?

That is just really good. And what a beautiful outlet for our students to think about the way the Lord has placed giftings and yearnings in their own hearts, and then what they could do with the passion God has given them to serve the world in which he has placed them.

- And I think people might even, I love the testimonies that come out of the Art Grant Project because it brings in a level of awareness for the student that they didn't know before where they're like, oh, I could actually do something that could serve the community, or I can have an idea, whether it's arts-based or not, that can actually be a blessing to others.

And so I had a student a couple of years ago, and her art grant proposal was about music again, and working with music stores to get donations of instruments to impoverished families. And she did a great job, but the best part of the art grant was after the whole project was over, she actually went to a music store and pitched her idea and said, hey, there's this family that has eight kids, and they don't have the money for lessons, and I'd like to give them lessons for free, but they need to be able to have the cello to be able to rent.

And the music company just listened to her idea and said, sure. And so they rented these cellos for free to this family so that my student could give free music lessons to this family. And it was such a beautiful application of living out these ideas. You never know what's gonna come out of this idea of breaking out of our normal academic mindset and saying, I wanna put hands-on application to the study of the arts and my passions and all these things and see it lived out.

It's just, it's a beautiful thing to watch. - Oh my goodness. That's the most inspiring thing, that the testimony is from our students is that they are able to make a difference in the world. Can you imagine being more empowered as a teenager than to see that you have learned to make a lasting impact on the world?

That's the coolest thing. I think that would be my favorite part of shepherding a class full of students through the Art Grant Project. Deb, thank you so much for making this seem like not a scary thing, but a very exciting and empowering assignment for our students. Thank you. - Thank you.

- I just really appreciate it. And parents, I suspect that you now have a brand new appreciation for this process and for this project with your student. I suspect that we're going to have some stellar Art Grant Proposal Projects. And I would love to let you know of a way that you could celebrate your student, that you could celebrate your community, that we could all celebrate together at the wonderful ways that our students are impacting their communities.

I want to tell you about something called Honorable Mention. It is a process for celebrating together. If your community or your student has done or is doing something noteworthy, I want you to know that we're collecting those stories, those accomplishments, those events. We want to celebrate and share the excitement of homeschooling.

So we want you to provide as much information, as many details as possible to completely tell your story. And then share your story, whether it's of the Art Grant Proposal or something else, share your story at classicalconversations.com/celebrate-together. Okay, so it's all one word. Here we go again, classicalconversations.com/celebrate-together. That's where you can share your stories and we will celebrate our successes and our growth together.

Again, Deb, thank you so much for being an inspiration to all of us who are tackling things we never thought we could. I appreciate you being with me today. - Oh, it was great to be here. Thanks so much, Lisa. - All right, families, we will see you guys again next time on "Honorable Mention." We'll see you guys again next week.

Bye-bye. (gentle music) you