Every Day Educator is off this week for the holidays. Please enjoy listening to one of our most downloaded episodes, Lessons from Down the Road, Academics Aren't Everything. Happy New Year. Welcome, friends, to this Every Day Educator podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Bailey. And I am glad to spend some time today with you, my fellow educators, as we ponder the delights and challenges that make homeschooling the adventure of a lifetime.

As always, I want to encourage you to check out all the great offerings on CC Connected and on our podcast channel. But don't forget, although our 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 happy to welcome you to another episode of the Every Day Educator podcast. We are continuing with our series, Lessons from Down the Road. You know, as a young homeschooler, lots of times I wished that I had somebody to ask about my burning questions, somebody who was farther down the road than I was, who had a little bit of experience under their belt, somebody whose brain I could pick just for a minute or two.

And so in this series, we are offering some wisdom from fellow homeschoolers who are a little farther down the road. Today I have with me one of my dearest friends from Classical Conversations, Shelly Stockton. Shelly, I'm so excited to spend a little bit of time with you this morning.

Oh, thank you. It's good to be here, Lisa. I do wish, Shelly, that we were on the screen porch together with a big cup of tea, listening to the rain. But I guess this is the next best thing. And I know that our listeners are eager to hear what you have to share with us today.

We want to talk today about how really and truly academics aren't everything, that there's a little something called life skills that we want to pass on to our children, too, just to set the context and to show people that you do have the credentials to share with them. I want to ask you, Shelly, to share with us how long have you and Greg homeschooled and why did you begin homeschooling?

Well, we homeschooled for 25 years and our youngest twins graduated a couple of years ago. Why did we begin? Well, I think our reason for homeschooling changes, which a lot of people's do as they do educate. So our situation was a little strange because when our oldest daughter was young, we just sat and read books to her all day.

So she read very early and really, she read so early that we just fell in love with education. And all I wanted to do is to read good books with her, right? So a little selfish, I just wanted to keep her home and read books with her all day.

So we started early on and then we kept homeschooling really by the grace of God because we wanted to learn alongside and just keep a good eye on our children's character as they grew up. Oh, that's great. You know, it's so funny, Shelly, your experience mirrored ours a lot.

Our oldest, I think her first word was book and she would go around all the time saying, read me this book. She was little, really little, read me this book. And so we did. We read a lot of books. And like you, I just was a little jealous to see those light bulbs come on as she learned things.

And I enjoyed that experience so much. I think I had a friend say, oh, you and your husband are such natural teachers, you're homeschooling, you just don't even know it. She was a homeschooler and thought that we should consider that when our youngest or oldest was little. And so we were glad we did.

And like you said, I think for a lot of us, the reasons that we keep homeschooling flex and change with time and sometimes don't you feel like, Shelly, it changes as we as the parents mature and as we grow and what we see is God's mandate for us? Absolutely.

Yes. And He reveals new things to you and then your children change as well and they grow. So what they need and where you can direct them also changes. Yeah. So you said that what you loved to do with your oldest was to read and to share and to share the learning as you and your husband really liked learning with your children.

Was that your goal when your family started homeschooling, that you would learn together? Did you have formal academic goals in the beginning? Well, I think our goals when we first started homeschooling was just to survive the day. Yes, we can probably all resonate with that. Also, I really wanted to learn to love learning instead of just seeing it as some undesirable task to get through.

Oh, cool. I prayed a lot as I'm sure you did as well, Lisa, in those early years for God just to help me love what I ought to love and to get to a point where we would enjoy subjects that even those subjects that were difficult for us. So we really wanted to weave learning into our normal lives.

So did we have formal academic goals in the beginning? Probably not really in the elementary years. We wanted our girls to fall in love with books and explore the woods outside of our house and just be curious. Yes, be curious. We valued being curious, too, as young parents. We actually loved it when our girls asked us questions that seemed odd or beyond their years or sometimes impertinent to other people.

They were curious about everything. And because we liked exploring alongside of them, and we liked framing the explanations that would satisfy their little minds, we reveled in the questions. But we discovered that there were other people who were discomfited by our girls' questions. I can remember one time when a single—well, she wasn't single.

She was married, but she didn't have any kids—came to a Bible study at our home. My husband's a pastor. This gal came to our house to Bible study. As she was leaving, our oldest daughter was following her down the sidewalk. She said, "Ms. Kim, what is slavery?" Kim had no context that we had been reading about the Underground Railroad from a library book that we had gotten.

She did not know what to say to this little five-year-old person about slavery. I discovered that other people were not as welcoming of the questions stage of life as we were. But yeah, our goals kind of mirrored yours, that we wanted to encourage that kind of curiosity and encourage the natural questions.

I think that you're right. A lot of us, Shelly, especially with elementary aged or even preschool children, we don't have academic goals that go beyond, "I want you to love books," or "I want you to learn how to read," or "I want you to learn your numbers and your shapes and your colors." I do remember thinking, "I want you to build a strong base of general knowledge." This is before we found Classical Conversations.

I was reading the Well-Trained Mind and a lot of classical ed books. That whole broad foundation and memorize a lot of stuff to get you prepared to think deeper thoughts resonated with me. But those kind of general goals were what I had before we found CC. Now, once we found Classical Conversations, I had some more concrete goals.

What about you? How did becoming part of a Classical Conversations community give some form or structure to your homeschooling? Yes. Well, our original plan was we were going to enter the girls into a Christian school when our youngest children became school-aged. I would just hopefully find a teaching role or something in the school.

But then I met Lee early in the days of CC when our oldest was in fifth grade and our youngest twins were three. Lee sat down and showed me the Classical Conversations scope and sequence. We fell in love. Greg and I pored over that scope and sequence. God just began to open our eyes to really expand our vision of education.

It was okay to have early goals to be different. Now he was growing us in our vision. It also resonated with us that classical home education just seemed to be the best preparation we could give our children. The methods really embraced the child's nature. They emphasized skills over job training and offered this broad perspective with this Christ-centered worldview.

We thought it just looked very doable. Yes, those are the same things that drew us into Classical Conversations too. It wasn't just that the scope and sequence was really sound academically. I do know when we first saw the scope and sequence, my husband was really impressed with the junior high and high school level scope and sequence.

He was like, "Man, this is so amazing. These kids are going to have what we had as sophomores in college when they're still in high school. This is an excellent education." But the deeper we went and the more we walked along and the more we learned about, as you said, the classical model and how it really takes into account the nature of the child and the skills that can be grown at all those different developmental stages, we were won over.

But what really captured our hearts was the Christ-centered nature of education. The whole idea that the purpose of education is to know God more deeply through what He's made and what He's done and what He's shared with us, that really resonated. It helped us to fold our non-academic goals for our girls into our broader education plans.

I wanted to ask you, what are the other goals that you had for your home school? Or did you even consider these non-academic goals that they even belong to the realm of school? Did you have non-academic goals that you folded in? Well, of course, like many parents, we wanted our children to have time together.

We wanted them to become kind, integrous humans. We wanted them to learn to ask forgiveness regularly and just be able to give forgiveness regularly. And the skill for which we had many opportunities to practice with five daughters. We just wanted to have time for family devotions and to instill a dependency of God and His Word with our children.

We knew the academics would come along as we were diligent and learned ourselves. But we really wanted to give lots of room and space for them to grow in the Lord. That's awesome. That's awesome. And you said you had five daughters. So as a mom, did you have homemaking goals or business goals, or what other skills did you want to grow into your daughters when they were little?

And did you realize when they were small that there were things like meal planning or laundry or wise shopping that needed to be skills that you were honing while you were teaching them to read and do arithmetic? Well, with five kids at home, of course, cleaning bathrooms and doing their own laundry was really important.

It was right up there. We tried to model the importance of attending church and just serving others outside of yourself. And we called it looking beyond the end of your own nose, looking beyond yourself, and then respectfully listening to others just who don't agree with you. Thinking orderly was important when you make decisions and just being content at home, being happy to be at home.

Oh, wow. Those are good. Like you said earlier, those are good character building skills and practices that you want to give your children opportunities to stretch themselves in. You know, being content with what you have and being content with your circumstances is something that will take our children farther than being fluid in Spanish.

That is a life skill that a lot of us maybe did not consider on the intentional list of subjects to be covered. But I know for us, as our children got older, we put more attention into developing their character, their godly habits. As we saw, how important that is for peaceful living within a family, right?

Yes, you get lots of practice. Yes, you get so much practice. I don't think I taught any of my younger children besides the first one how to tie their own shoes, you know, because the oldest does that. So there's lots of organic things that happen when you're home together that maybe you didn't write on a list somewhere, but they're happening and children are learning to serve each other.

And one of the things that I learned from another mom once is that when two children would have a little rift or a little argument, have each of the children go clean the other child's room. Just things like that. What a lovely habit. That's a great idea. Motivation to be nice next time.

Right, right, right. Isn't that interesting? That's great. That's great. As you look back, Shelly, what would you consider your successes as a homeschool mom? And what do you think contributed to your success? Well, we certainly did not home educate perfectly, if there is such a thing. Right. I have given up.

Yeah. Our daughters worked and learned and played together a lot. They often sought their siblings input as they completed projects and assignments alongside each other. That's neat. So, of course, it's easier for your mind to think back and think, what did I not do well, right? Absolutely. Now that they're all in their 20s, I love that they still value their sister's opinions on whatever they're working on, college papers or work issues.

They seek each other's advice and help. So I guess the success is that we just did life together. And as a result, you know, we have those happy stories to laugh about. And we also have those stories of struggle and failure that humble us. And honestly, those stories are probably mean regularly told more often with the end in mind to keep us humble.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I don't offer you guys up as farther down the road and therefore perfect. As much as I do to help our listeners see that, yes, we might be farther down the road, but we took a lot of detours and a lot of wrong turns, maybe, or we stepped in the muck at the edge of the past a lot of times.

But we kept going. And we're still alive to tell about it. Yes, we're alive to tell the stories and our children are alive to tell the stories. And sometimes I look back and I tell people that our biggest success is that our children still like to be with us.

Our children still like to be together. Our girls, like you said, seek each other out for advice and fellowship. And our kids still come home. I mean, my daughters are 27 and 25, and they still call home and say, "Now, when is family vacation?" Because that still means all of us all together.

And I love the successes that we still talk about big ideas and we still talk about what we've read and we still talk about what's going on and where do we see the truth and how can we find the truth and how can we sift through all of this information and how can we help each other think about things.

And so that, to me, is a success. Yeah, I think that classical homeschooling, it is simple. It's not easy, but it is simple. And there's a difference. I think one thing we did is we were just consistent. We didn't change curriculums every year and get fearful that the fruit wasn't coming soon enough.

And to be honest, those CC parent practicums helped tremendously in that. We just simply prepared and plotted and prayed and just kept moving forward in God's grace. But it's hard to take credit for any success, because when you get to that, finished with that thing, you realize it's really the mercies of God that have kept you and have brought you this far.

So we look back and we see so many times where He really just carried us when we lacked the knowledge or the patience or the diligence. Most weeks I would write some Bible verse or admonishment on the board, something like, "Do not grow weary in doing good," or "Love a patient in kind." And it was funny because the girls years later were talking about that, and they thought I wrote those on the board for them, but it was really for me.

I needed as much encouragement and carrying from God as they did. Yes, I know. And sometimes they, you're right, they did not always realize that we were fellow strugglers on the homeschool journey. And I look back and I see that the Lord used the homeschooling of my children as a refining tool for me.

It taught me to trust Him. It taught me patience. Not that I have arrived, but it was a continual teaching of the Spirit. A sanctification of sorts. Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So those are awesome life skills that we have been taught by the Spirit and that hopefully our children have been taught within the confines of our homeschool.

What other practical life skills, Shelly, did you try to teach your girls? Did you teach them to cook? Did you teach them to grocery shop or to sew? That's true. Yeah, they did come to the grocery store with me a lot. And we did, at some point, I kind of gave that over to them.

Oh, that's awesome. And they all did their laundry early. I would give them a budget. One thing fun we did is there used to be a show where you would give a budget and you would try to redo a room for a certain amount. So we gave our girls a budget and we said, "Okay, this room in the basement is yours to redo." And so they tiled, they bought the tile and actually went to tile.

They painted the doors, added some baseboards and just made this room into like a family room downstairs on a budget. So that was a fun project. We still laugh about it as we look, the tile's still there. So we look back at it and we thought, "Oh yeah, yeah, 12-year-olds did that, we can tell." Right, right.

How fun. That's a great learning activity. Wow, and you empowered them. And I can imagine that they felt really important that you guys trusted them to do that. What confidence building that had to be. It was pretty fun. Yeah. Okay, if you look back, are there any life skills that you realized as your daughters grew up and maybe moved on or moved out that they had not internalized as well?

Were there any deficiencies that you discovered in your homeschool so far as practical life skills came? Well, when I think about the question, "What do you wish you'd had done differently?" The first thing that comes to mind is maybe more governing principles, I guess. More trust. I wish I trusted the process more and maybe played more.

Oh, absolutely. I wish I had taken on less stress and less worry, not taken the whole thing so seriously as if it all depended on me at the end of the day. But we found, and of course we all know, wrestling with a subject that is difficult is sanctifying and healthy.

Wrestling, being at home, being content at home, doing life differently than your neighbors do. It's sanctifying and it's difficult, but it's also healthy. It's part of growing. Ultimately, I think I came to a point, I needed to rest in the fact that God's yoke is easy and His burden is light.

And I think that homeschooling parents will do well as they think about all the things they need to teach their children or should teach their children or maybe aren't teaching their children. We just need to take a big breath and remind ourselves that this whole burden of educating and keeping our children alive and as well as making sure they get a good job and can actually feed themselves when they leave.

Right, right, right. God has created them for a purpose and He's not going to abandon that purpose just because we didn't drill Latin pronouns or teach them to separate, you know, colds and darks and the laundry correctly, right? So He's going to open the doors of opportunity for our children.

But I was sort of resting in this fact when we went to, recently this summer, to a college visitation with one of our daughters. And they don't have the meal plan there. All the rooms are with full kitchens. And so one of the professors said, or whoever's leading the event said, "This is the time to teach your kids how to cook." And my daughter and I looked at each other, you know, she'd been cooking for six years.

So if you're learning two months before college, that might be difficult. But so just being part of home and letting them pursue and learn what they're interested in as far as the life skills, I think is helpful. Yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom, Shelley, in what you've said about teaching your children to do these tasks when they're young and at home.

You alluded to your daughter had been cooking for six years. So she, you know, you began to teach her to do her own laundry and to cook for the family when she was 12 or 13 years old. And so she had plenty of time to practice those skills so that they became good habits by the time she would have to depend on herself to do that.

And I think that a lot of us as parents do for our children what they could do for themselves if we would only teach them. And sometimes I looked back as my daughters got older, I looked back and realized that some of the things they did not know how to do well was because I had done it for them, either in service to them or, frankly, because it was easier for me to do it.

I could get it done faster than to watch them fumble through a task. But, you know, I came to the end of our older daughters as she was getting almost ready to graduate, and I realized that there were things that she was still a novice at, and it was more my fault than her fault.

I mean, you know, she was willing to let mama do all the work that mama would do, but I had not shifted the responsibilities. And so, listeners, I would encourage you to be practical in some of the things that you teach in your homeschool, whether that is budgeting or cooking or home repair or, you know what, how to talk to somebody on the telephone, how to make an appointment on the telephone, how to handle a discrepancy in a checking account at a bank.

So all of these are practical life skills that are easier for us as parents to handle on behalf of our children, unless we realize that our children are going to grow up and go out of our homes, maybe not confident in being able to handle that on their own.

So that's an encouragement from me. MJ: Yeah, and maybe if we want to call this a life skill, I think it really is a life skill. And many would agree that, you know, just keeping a habit of regular Bible study and prayer. That is a life skill, and it cannot be overstated.

I think that that one habit really nurtures all areas of life. I didn't learn that skill till college. I remember a college professor challenging, I went to a Christian college, challenging me to do this, and I remember how difficult it was. So just being disciplined to do what God puts in front of you to the best of your ability and being aware of your own failings without dwelling on them, asking God for mercy.

These are the things that parents can model and allow for their children to participate in. GW: Yeah, that's great, Shelley. And, you know, for whatever reason, a lot of us compartmentalize and homeschool is supposed to be academic skills and maybe some practical skills. But yes, you've helped us to remember that these spiritual disciplines should also be part of our homeschools, because those are the strengths that will truly carry us as adults into adulthood that will make our lives what God intends for them to be, far more than Latin or a science research paper or a history timeline.

So looking back, because your girls went through the challenge program, how did their CC studies help build life skills as well as academic skills? You talked about the skill of listening, the skill of weighing decisions. How did the CC studies help build those skills in your girls? CT: Well, you know, we memorize a lot in foundations, and that's a lot of skill.

How many things do we still have to remember and hold on to as a mother and as a working adult? So memorizing, just paying attention, being curious, and learning alongside people of various ages, doing life with people of various ages, not just being comfortable around people that are like me, but learning to communicate with those people who are not like me.

But you know, those challenge themes of ownership, what are they? Ownership, discipline, freedom, noble choices, consequences of leadership. They're woven into six years of assignments, and they're excellent preparation for just being a good human, a God-centric person. AC: Yeah, yeah. The time that our students spend in community is so valuable for practicing the fruits of the Spirit.

Living in community, we all know that. Living in the community of our homes is a way to practice mercy, right, and patience, and kindness, and gentleness. But living in community and having our challenge students in community with one another, where the whole goal is to wrestle with ideas, and to take the point and the counterpoint, and to debate one another, and to push against one another, but to learn how to do that with kindness and with tolerance in the best sense.

I am being quiet and respectfully listening and open-mindedly considering what you have to say so that we can wrestle together and perhaps learn from one another. That is a mind-blowingly valuable skill in the world today. AC: Yes. Amen. AC: I just think that's good. And you know, the skills that our students learn of research, of how to ask a good question and then go about finding respected resources to research that question and to find out the nuts and bolts, pieces of information that will help us make a good decision.

That's a life skill. Those research skills really, I think, help our students. CM: Yes, as well as the debate skills that you mentioned earlier, just learning to listen to the other side, and think orderly, and then not get emotional when somebody disagrees. AC: Yes. CM: You know, to bring ethos into it as well, and just thinking about the other side.

You know, teaching our kids just to seek first the Kingdom and develop skills that make Him known, that's so important. But God will make room for their giftings, because He ultimately has a plan and a purpose for them. But one thing I try to remember is that just to empower your children to make, when appropriate, their own decisions.

We don't make all our children's decisions for them now that they're adults, right? We're mentors. They come to ask us, but we do well, really, to entrust them to the Lord because He's omniscient and omnipresent, right? He's omnipotent, and He's all good. And I am not. AC: Right, right.

CM: So it really makes good logical sense to put all these things, put our children under His lordship, especially in the lives of our children. AC: Very, very true. Okay, so we're coming to the end of our time together. And I know that some of our listeners are saying, "Okay, so you ladies are obviously done.

Your children are done." Okay, here's what I have to say to you. Your children are never done. You're never done with your children because we have nurtured a family atmosphere of learning and a family reliance on one another to refine us and to help us. They're always going to come back.

But how do you know, Shelly, that some of your lessons took with your kids? How can you tell that some of these lessons that you tried to teach them, they really have held on to? SH: Yes, you just enjoy them. I just enjoy my little children so much. We can have conversations about things, and I see them turning into good people, people who love the Lord and who are growing in their virtue and just using the skills that they learned at home and in classical conversations to seek first the kingdom and to be good workers, to do things for all the glory of God.

My son-in-law is working on a doctorate, and he gave me the biggest compliment this last weekend. He said that his wife's education, my daughter's education, really helps her to see things more broadly, like awareness of the past, awareness of the origins of where that thought came from. He said that she often integrates thoughts and ideas from many disciplines into conversations and decisions in a way that he felt like his education did not prepare him.

He was a proponent now of homeschooling because of the way, just watching how she thinks. To me, that was a win. I'll take that, right? MJ: Absolutely. Yeah, that makes me want to give a big cheer. Yeah, that's awesome. SH: Just remembering that he has a plan and a purpose for our kids.

It's not really up to us to make all of our decisions, all their decisions for them, because he has a plan for them. MJ: Yeah, yeah. They have been given to us from the Lord, but they are not our projects. I can remember thinking when my girls were little, and I felt so blessed that God had entrusted these little lives to me.

I was so excited about what I could make of them, what I could help them to become, and the masterpiece that they could become. One day I was thinking those just ridiculous thoughts, and I felt the Lord saying, "Yeah, you have it wrong. You're not the artist. That child, she is a masterpiece, but you're not the artist.

Actually, you're the tool. You're the tool that I am using many times to chisel away something from their lives that they don't need." TG: And maybe vice versa too, Lisa. MJ: Absolutely, absolutely. TG: Their struggles also sanctify us. I just wanted to say a word of encouragement to maybe the moms out there, the homeschooling parents who have a child that maybe they're wondering if he's going to make it or is struggling with something.

Put it in the Lord's hand, put it under His Lordship, and then do your diligence, and then let Him do the sanctification. I don't know that there's a better lesson in how to trust the Lord by taking this responsibility of what He's given us, to love these kids and to direct them and teach them His ways, and then to see perhaps sometimes our own sins magnified in them, our own failings magnified in them.

And I tell you what, it has led me to my knees so many times. Just being aware that it's His work and that you have a part, but it's not all on your shoulders, and just give it to Him, put it under His Lordship. MJ: That is actually a beautiful encouragement, Shelly, something that we can all remember.

It is very encouraging to know that it's not all up to us. It's not all in our hands. What's your biggest aha? As we come to the very end of our podcast, Shelly, what's your biggest aha from the journey? Or what's the last word that you would like to share in encouragement to these parents?

SH: So I guess my final word would be to trust. We talk about this in Challenge. Trust that the Holy Spirit is at work. Trust that there is truth and it can be known. Trust that your child can learn the truth. I appreciate this quote by Matthew Henry. Reading authors from past encourage me, and so often I'll read a quote or read theologians or pastors.

This Matthew Henry is from the late 1600s, and he writes this, "So that we may not complain of what is, let us see God's hand in all events. So that we may not be afraid of what shall be, let us see all events in His hands." So putting all things under His Lordship and in the Lord's hands is a good lesson for us to remember.

AP: It absolutely is. It is absolutely. Academics aren't everything. What does God have for us to learn on this homeschool journey? Not just our children, but us as well. Shelly, thank you so much for sharing these lessons from down the road. SHL: It was nice talking with you, Lisa.

AP: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Listeners, I hope that you feel encouraged, that you now maybe have a broader vision of what the Lord is calling you to in your family's homeschool journey. Thanks for joining us this week, and we'll see you again next week. Bye-bye.