Homeschooling for Mere Mortals: Interview with Charity Miner
June 15, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
Big News: Homeschooling is Possible!
Today’s episode hits close to home. Charity (my wife of twenty years) and I talk through our decision to homeschool, how we think about homeschooling, and why homeschooling is achievable, even for families that, pre-pandemic, never gave consideration to this education option. Also, through the magic of podcasting, our own children learned about their new job preparing one dinner each week!
Charity and I tackle:
Why our family got started in the homeschooling business
A day-in-the-life look at being a homeschool family
The role our co-op, Classical Conversations, plays in our family’s homeschool
Raising kids with a growth mindset
An extensive list of resources linked below
Take-aways:
The joy of living an integrated life and how Charity designed her life the way she prefers - which makes things easier rather than harder. For Charity, living an integrated life means, among other things, homeschooling our children.
The overall goal is to raise excellent adults. Homeschooling lets us tailor academics and home life to fit that objective.
Homeschooling ramps up gradually – you don’t (usually) start out with a highschooler; instead, you start out with a baby, and begin academics at the pre-k level.
Homeschool Resources
The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer
Rethinking School: How to Take Charge of Your Child's Education by Susan Wise Bauer
Books Charity is reading
The Story of Britain from the Norman Conquest to the European Union by Patrick Dillon
The Grand Sophy (The Georgette Heyer Signature Collection) by Georgette Heyer
The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde
The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Philosophy of Christian Classical Education (Revised Edition) by Ravi Jain and Kevin Clark
How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart (The Great Courses) by Robert Greenberg
TRANSCRIPT
[music]
[00:00:02] Matt Miner: Charity and I have always been planners. Way back in the dark ages, by which I mean the first half of the 2000s when we were in our early 20s. We had high hopes to grow our family. We knew we would need to educate our prospective progeny, and we pondered what approach we’d take for their education.
We considered public school, private day school, and homeschool. At that time we became close friends with some families that were about 15 years ahead of us in life. Younger than our own parents, but more experienced than we were. And they homeschooled. We looked hard, benchmarking if you will, the children of these families to other children we would know in public and private schools. We were drawn to the homeschool model right out of the shoot.
Its 15 years later, and we couldn’t be happier with the choice we made. Does who you hang out with matter? Yup, it matters. Friendships with two families over a brief half decade set the course for Charity’s career and became a cornerstone for how our kids are raised.
Besides that, if you have wondered what homeschooling is all about, and have pondered homeschool choices in your family, today’s show has your name on it.
[music]
[00:01:08] Matt: Hey, and welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast, where my guests and I serve up hard won wisdom about work, life and money. We teach you how to be a debt free millionaire in your 30s, 40s and 50s, and build a life where money works for you, not the other way around. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide, and for the last decade my family and I killed debt, built wealth, and helped other people do the same thing. In 2018 I stepped away from corporate work to serve clients full time as a fee only fiduciary financial advisor. If you’re a MBAs, entrepreneurs, and other professionals and you want to get organized about money, learn what you don’t know, and make a financial plan to work as hard as they do, this is the show for you. Learn more at workpantsfinance.com. And while you’re there, sign up for subscriber only content and special invitations at workpantsfinance.com/resources.
On today’s show, we will talk about the Miner Homeschool philosophy, strategy, and experience. A key theme emerges from the interview. That theme is homeschooling is possible!
With that in mind, here's your money guide quick tip. Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right." Among other things, this quote speaks to homeschooling. When Charity and I meet new people, and they learn that we homeschool our three kids, often the first words out of their mouths are, "I could never do that."
My goal for today's episode is to debunk that statement. It may be that you would never want to homeschool, and it may be that homeschooling would not be the best choice for your family. Homeschool is not a right fit for every situation, and I'm very thankful for the existence of other school options including government schools here in the US. Still, I hope today’s episode leaves you with a conviction that if you want to homeschool you can homeschool. It’s not easy, but it is achievable.
My guest is my bride of 20 years, Charity Miner. Charity tells the story of how she got started on a homeschooling career, why Charity and I believe it's the best educational option for our family, and why homeschooling is more achievable than many people think.
You might love or hate this episode. On the one hand, if the idea of homeschooling causes you to break out in a rash, please skip it.
On the other hand, if you've nurtured a secret desire to re-imagine education for your elementary, middle, or high school student, or doubted the wisdom of the state and its education philosophy and approach, or considered that you, as your child’s parent, have value to offer your child’s education, this episode is for you. If you’d like to exert control over your family’s time and take vacations in May and September rather than July, or if you just want a glimpse of our family’s story and habits, please stick around. Listen for the theme homeschooling is possible as Charity and I discuss our experience and our views on this important topic.
This flashback Friday episode is called Homeschooling for Mere Mortals: an interview with Charity Miner. Go to workpantsfinance.com/28 for links and resources.
[music]
[00:04:18] Matt: Charity Miner, welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. Before we get into the meat of our discussion, my first question is, did you have to travel far for the interview?
[00:04:31] Charity Miner: I believe I had to come about 10 steps, Matt.
[00:04:33] Matt: All right. It's nine steps from the main floor to the basement.
[00:04:36] Charity: Yes, you could do count stairs.
[00:04:37] Matt: Welcome to the basement recording studio of the Work Pants Finance podcast.
[00:04:42] Charity: Thank you for having me.
[00:04:44] Matt: Man, it's just a pleasure to have you here. My question to you as we begin this much anticipated interview in both the schedule of the show and my life personally is, so my listeners know who you are, can you give us the short version of your story?
[00:04:59] Charity: My story is quite a broad question. I could talk a lot about how I am a mother, or a student, or a wife, but I think what I'll talk about instead is my professional homeschooler capacity, the part of my life that encompasses that. Do your readers know how our story started?
[00:05:21] Matt: I don't know. This is the part of the podcast where you get to say what you want-
[00:05:25] Charity: Oh, what I want.
[00:05:26] Matt: -in three minutes or less.
[00:05:27] Charity: Oh, shoot. Okay, so I'll go fast. Matt and I are married. When we got married in 2000, I wasn't quite sure.
[00:05:35] Matt: We were married in 2001. It's usually the husband who makes that mistake.
[00:05:40] Charity: [chuckles] Right, it's been 19 years, not 20. Sorry, when we were married in 2001, the 2000s, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. We met these really awesome teenagers and they were not only interested in the things that we had to say as adults, but also they were interesting to talk to. Because we had access to their parents, we said, "What did you do with these children to make them like this because we would like our children to turn out this way?"
They said, "Well, by the grace of God, they have turned out this way. We have prayed and we have raised them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and we have homeschooled them." We said, "Ah, well, we were already planning on doing those other things, so when we have children-", this is how much we plan you all, "-when we have children, we think we would like to homeschool them."
I started to research what it would be like to homeschool and got my Elementary Education Degree. Ended up getting that and specializing in multicultural, multilingual education, just a huge mouthful to say, ESL. Saw some of the benefits and some of the drawbacks of publicly educating a child and decided that homeschooling was really the way we wanted to go.
Then I ran into a book called The Well-Trained Mind. The author, Susan Wise Bauer, really convinced me that, not only is homeschooling an easy and doable thing, but also that classically educating a child goes with the way that their brains developed. In my degree at the time, I was learning all about the development of a brain. The research that she showed and the practical knowledge that she showed about classical education really made a lot of sense in terms of brain development.
Then we had children, and we started homeschooling them from the start of teaching them what "no" means, how to use the restroom. That just naturally- as we read to them, -that leads into teaching them how to read, and the whole process was quite natural from there.
Then we joined Classical Conversations in 2011, I believe, and have found it to be such a beneficial model and method that we have continued on classically educating our children using the Classical Conversations curriculum and the Coop from there. We've gotten very involved in that.
[00:08:18] Matt: I think the other thing that's interesting here, and I'll just chime in because I'm involved with these children, is that we decided, like you said, starting with the word "no" and then teaching them how to use the toilet.
[crosstalk]
[00:08:29] Charity: The potty.
[00:08:30] Matt: A lot of that was on you, but homeschooling is like that. Which is that you start at the level where your child is at, and you just build from there. You're not educating high schoolers right out of the gate. That's something that I think is important for people to realize, is that homeschooling just builds on the parenting that you're already doing with your children. This is a show about life and money, and homeschool teaching has been your career. I wanted to ask you, what do you absolutely love about where you are today with life, work and money?
[00:09:01] Charity: My life is completely integrated, life, work and money. My family is not only happy where we are, but we are content. My children are at peace. My husband is happy doing the work that he's doing.
[00:09:17] Matt: Even podcasting.
[00:09:18] Charity: Yay, and my kids are turning out to be awesome people.
[00:09:22] Matt: I don't know anybody I like better.
[00:09:23] Charity: Right. These are people that I spend 24/7 since they were born with them. They are growing and changing. I do know them quite well, but I also I'm surprised by them and really appreciate who they are and the addition that they add to our lives, the joy that they bring. They truly do bless our family quite a lot.
[00:09:50] Matt: All right, folks. There's the recommendation, an integrated life. No, we have worked hard on that goal-
[00:09:55] Charity: It's true.
[00:09:56] Matt: -to bring these things together. What would you most like to change about where you're today in life, work, and money?
[00:10:02] Charity: I wish that things wouldn't change, actually, but I know that they will. That's something that-, I'm calling it a mommy midlife crisis, -as I'm watching our children, who I love and appreciate more and more every day, get closer and closer to leaving as they should, as I'm preparing them to do. I'm preparing them well to do that. It's causing a little bit of grief because I have to say goodbye to them at a certain point.
Whatever time a mom of a kid who goes off to school and work, it has with their child and still experiences that grief. I have spent 10 times that time with these children, they are such a part of my life that contemplating that change is hurtful, it hurts. I would really love to not change, but I also know that the alternative just hurts my children, and so I definitely don't want that for them. Also, I want grandbabies at some point, so they're going to have to leave. [laughs]
[00:11:04] Matt: It's been an interesting thing, as a homeschool family, I feel like or at least the way we're doing it, we're actively pushing our children to grow up. At the same time, the more that they mature, the more we enjoy them. I'm sure that we will enjoy them even when they're grown and gone, but it will be-
[00:11:22] Charity: Different. Yes.
[00:11:22] Matt: -different, for sure.
[00:11:24] Charity: There's some fear in that change, right?
[00:11:25] Matt: Yes. Well, from the outside looking in, you've ticked a lot of the boxes we were aiming for when you and I founded the Miner family in 2001. You've got three amazing children, you get to homeschool, a husband who could be worse, at least on his good days, and you've designed many aspects of your life to fit with who you are. What's a challenge or difficulty that would surprise someone who didn't know you well or what's something you thought would be one way when you got to this point, but really is not like that at all?
[00:11:51] Charity: I think anybody who's done anything from the time that they were a fairly young person knows that something they thought would go a certain way, rarely goes that way. I would say that one of the biggest challenges to homeschooling is just like everything else in life. That is, what do you do when something doesn't go according to plan?
Matt and I are planners. Both our oldest children, we like it when we can control as much from the outset as possible. We have one child who didn't go according to plan. A lot of people would look at him and say, "Wow, he is so smart." In fact, they do. "He is so smart, he's going to make it."
We know that when you have a child as gifted as our son is, it is not a boast. In many ways, it's easier to teach him, but in many ways, it's hard because you have to teach them out all the things that you don't teach a kid how to emotionally deal with disappointment. His emotions are so strong. How to socially adapt to the changes and the intricacies of social interaction, not only as a kid, but also as an adult.
With a gifted kid, it's not like ADHD, it's not like dyslexia. There's no curriculum out there to help you navigate how to parent, how to teach. Each one of them is completely different. They have some traits that are similar, but it's like we're writing the book with him. Getting those resources, learning those things that I needed to know, figuring out-- it's called Towie as he- twice exceptional, does he have a disability along with his abilities?
There's a lot of uncertainty there for quite a bit of time. Figuring that out, reading lots of resources, immersing myself in the multiple sources that is available to gifted children and their parents and their teachers has provided a lot of information and a lot of comfort for me that we're doing what we can with him, and he's doing a really good job.
He's a hard worker. Of course, he's very smart, but he's also maturing emotionally and socially in ways that I find very encouraging, especially this past year. I would say that that is one thing that appears to be something that makes my job easier, but it actually makes it much harder, because there's so much uncertainty surrounding that particular child.
[00:14:36] Matt: All right. If you could tell us what it's like being a homeschool mom, either right now, in the midst of this crazy pandemic or in general as you reflect on 2019, which was maybe a more regular academic year for our family. Give us what it's like doing this job.
[00:14:52] Charity: I would say that COVID schooling is not homeschooling, even our day-to-day-- It didn't look very different. All of the extra things that a homeschooler does, they were all canceled. I think most of the world experienced this sense of relief when all of those things were canceled at first. Then the pinch started happening. We were unable to meet weekly with our Coop. We were unable to have our in-person piano lessons, we had to cancel our year round swim practices.
Homeschooling is often criticized for being socially inactive, when actually, the homeschooling community is much more active in the community at large than many other families are. We travel a lot, we go to many different places, we have many different sources for education, for the opportunities that education affords. We are unable to do those things right now. It hurts us a little bit because we are accustomed to having many sources of social interaction. Scrambling to get that need met requires many different ways of communication.
[00:16:12] Matt: I think even with that, it's like, yes, we didn't have to figure out a curriculum or how we were going to teach these kids. In fact, we're having the exact same struggles that any family is having with a pandemic right now, which is how to be appropriately sociable and not lose track of people and do things like this. That's been one of the changes that we've experienced with the current environment, just the same as our neighbors who go to traditional school. When we tell new acquaintances, we homeschool our children, we frequently hear, "Oh, I could never do that." How do you think about a response to that?
[00:16:47] Charity: I often provide some flip response like, "Sometimes I can't do it either." I know that that response really stems from fear. I think most of the comments I get are positive on homeschooling or positive on us homeschooling, but negative on the ability of the speaker to homeschool. I thought about this because even other homeschoolers talk about their fear, that what they're doing is not going to be the best thing. They think it is, but they're not sure because they haven't seen it.
It has recently occurred to me as I've been talking with other people who have been interested in possibly homeschooling, especially this year due to COVID, that I started off knowing the end, seeing the positive results. I started off seeing those teenagers that were human. [chuckles] Not that teenagers aren't human, but they were able to talk to adults, they were able to socialize and talk with younger children. They were interested in people who were older. They showed such social adeptness that we said, "We want our kids to turn out that way."
We've had the opportunity to see from even a very young age, even our early married years, families who have homeschooled and seeing the implementation with the teenagers, but also seeing that in their younger children, because usually homeschoolers have slightly larger families or much larger families than other people, because we really like kids. The observations that we were able to make in these families showed us, "Okay, this is what you do with a three-year-old or a five-year-old. Pretty sure scientifically, if you do it that way, they'll turn out like these older kids in that family."
Because we had that end result and implementation modeled for us, I don't think either of us have had much fear, certainly, almost no uncertainty regarding that what we're doing, in general is the right thing. I think sometimes I have personally thought, "Maybe for this particular child, we might not homeschool the whole time." There was a long time where I thought that we would not be homeschooling through high school, so much so that I chose our homeschool name, somewhat foolishly. [laughs]
I'm probably going to have to change that if it's going to end up on a transcript. PS, Minors Teaching Minors is not the most professional name for your school, but I really thought we would be going to some classical Christian, private high school by this point. We just love it so much and we're enjoying it so much.
[00:19:35] Matt: One of the things about pursuing the growth mindset is how much you can fit in over time. What do you think about that?
[00:19:43] Charity: Most day school kids are asked the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" They usually have a pretty ready answer. "I want to be a firefighter, I want to be a policeman. I want to be President. I want to be a doctor." Most homeschool kids are kids. They don't have an answer to that question, they stare at you a little bit. They don't know what they want to be when they grew up. They know what they want to do. Our daughter, Lucy, she said to me one day, "Mom, I want to be an actress, and a mom, and a writer, and a teacher, and an artist." She had this long list. I said to her, "Lu, you know what? You're going to have a long life. I bet you can fit all that stuff in." She said, "Yes. I think I want to be an actress in high school." I said, "Great time to be an actress, honey. It's the perfect time."
I think not pigeonholing them into one thing and asking them what they want to do. Now, she just did a project on what she wants to do when she's 23. She cared very little about what she was going to be doing for work. What she wanted was to have a camper van. We teased her that she wanted to live in a van down by the river, but she wanted to tour the world or tour of the United States in her camper van. That's what she's going to do when she's 23.
These are the kind of concrete plans that our children have and that many homeschool children have, because they're never asked that question. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I think that's too hard, especially if you've got a growth mindset and it pigeonholes them too much.
[00:21:17] Matt: Good deal. Thanks, Charity. I do feel though, like we had that model. I reflect even on Stephen Covey's recommendation, "To begin with the end in mind," and we were blessed to be able to do that. How do you help someone else see that end goal who's asking that question? Maybe if they're asking the question, they might not have run into those families that we know.
[00:21:40] Charity: Right. I generally share with them our story about that, but now that I have an almost 15-year-old and a 13-year-old, usually the people who are talking to me have gotten to know my children too and so I can show them the evidence with our own kids. Not that there aren't excellent children who go to public or private schools, but this has worked really well for us and for our kids.
[music]
[00:22:09] Matt: Today's episode is brought to you by Lucy, Josh and Ben Miner, the subjects of their parents homeschool experiment. If you need editing, freelance writing or other virtual assistant tasks, you may be able to make a deal with Lucy. If you like coffee that's always roasted fresh for you, Josh Miner, the small batch homeschool roaster can get you rigged up for local delivery or mail order with a variety of organic, Fairtrade delicious coffee beans. If you need tall grass made short in Northwest Raleigh, Ben Miner will make your lawn look amazing at a very fair price. Please get in touch through the website and I can connect you to any of these young entrepreneurs.
[music]
[00:22:51] Matt: Charity, if someone wanted to be like you, a homeschool mom with the world's best family, at least, for them, what should they do and what should they avoid?
[00:22:58] Charity: Well, we've all heard the phrase "lifelong learner". I quibble with that one a little bit because it separates being a learner from your life. We are learners, that's who we are. If we are learners and I am teaching our children and other children how to learn, then their life needs to be filled with learning. We organize our life so that we can't step through our house even without tripping over learning. We have maps on the walls. How many bookshelves do we have Matt? I think-
[00:23:33] Matt: Many, many.
[00:23:34] Charity: -six, seven, eight? I don't know. They're all throughout the house. There's bookshelves in the dining room, in the living room, down in the basement, in the kids' rooms. We're filled. We're a house that's filled with learning. I wanted our children to understand or to get the feeling, showing them through example, that lives are learning, our life is learning. Not should they be a lifelong learner where they're going out to find learning, their learning should be part of their life.
Our schedule is formed on the same principle. We get up, we eat breakfast and then we pile up on the couch, and we do a one room schoolhouse kind of learning. We call it "couch school", other families call it morning time, or something like that. What we do is we just read. Whatever we can do together, we do together on the couch. We do our Bible time then, we have our history readings, and science readings, and poetry, or Shakespeare that we're memorizing.
We have maps that we learn and we recite. I have the kids go find things on the globe and all sorts of things that we can all do together. Then they break out for their individual work and they come to me for help. Or, we preview what they're supposed to be doing for math or grammar or writing, and then they go and do it.
Then chores, we consider we're all members of a family, and so we should all be doing that family work. They each have- it's own a rotating schedule, a big chore and a little chore. Since they were about, I don't know, Matt, what do you think? Six, seven, something like that. They've been rotating through the big chores, which are laundry, emptying the dishwasher and-
[00:25:30] Matt: Cleaning the bathroom.
[00:25:30] Charity: -cleaning the bathroom. That's right, because that bathroom is scary. Each one of them takes that chore for an entire week and they know how those rotate. They run a load of laundry every day because we're a large enough family, that's what we do.
[00:25:47] Matt: Well, they're supposed to.
[00:25:47] Charity: They're supposed to. They're kids. We're managing that. They're learning how to live. This year, I plan- now that they're older- to have them be responsible for one dinner per week, each one of them. Of course, we will have dinners that flop, or burned, or someone will forget that it's their day, but that's all part of that learning that is a part of our lives. This summer, I started having them fold their own laundry. Now, I sort their clothes out from the rest of our laundry and I fold our laundry and Matt's laundry because he still can't fold his laundry. [laughs]
[00:26:27] Matt: I can do many other things.
[00:26:28] Charity: He does other things well. [laughs] He has outsourced that to me and I'm happy to do it. I fold the laundry and the kids they do their own as of this summer. Then there are small chores or things like servicing the Roomba, or clearing the table and wiping it down. Those sorts of things.
[00:26:49] Matt: The other thing, too, that we discovered when we started trying to set this chore calendar up in our family and school, was this idea of the week per task made not having to manage either a change in task each day or someone feeling that they got the sucky chore that was either harder or took longer. This way, if there is a sucky chore, everybody gets it once every three weeks. That rotation just goes on and on.
We're to the point now where when someone is at a sleep over or when we anticipate them growing up and leaving the house in a few years that we wonder how we're going to get all the work done. We're either going to need a smaller house or more help because I don't really want to go back to it all.
[00:27:29] Charity: Fewer animals. They also cycle through who's taking care of the dog and the chickens. Hopefully, we'll have fewer animals, maybe just the dog when they leave.
[00:27:38] Matt: Maybe just the dog. We want the dog to outlast the children.
[00:27:41] Charity: [chuckles] It's such a part of our day this learning. I was talking to a mom who was considering homeschooling. She was telling me about the end of last school year when we were all COVID schooling, and she said, "Sometimes I would just have my daughter not even sign on to the online portion of her class. We would just go outside in the backyard and gather rocks and count those." She had a younger daughter. I said, "Yes, yes, that's exactly it."
Make it part of what you like to do. Our family, we don't love to be outside to learn. We might read outside, but we are not going out and finding rocks to count them, but that's what her daughter wanted to do. She took what her family loves and made it learning. Turned it into a purposeful learning experience, which anybody can do.
[00:28:35] Matt: The theme of this show is Learning From The Experience Of Others. One question I'd like to ask you Charity is, if you could give my audience one piece of advice that you wish you'd heard earlier in life, what would that be? Or, what's a piece of advice that's been particularly helpful to you?
[00:28:48] Charity: I've been chewing on this quote that I read recently. It's, "Homeschooling is parenting intensified." Linda Sutherland said that. I was thinking how right that really is. If you can potty train a kid, you can teach them how to read. If you can teach a kid how to read, you can teach them how to add. If you can teach them how to add, they can multiply, et cetera, et cetera.
New parents are rarely given a teenager to parent. We're given a baby and that baby changes your schedule up and you learn that you're going to have to give up a lot in order to raise this child. The same way that no one hands you a sophomore and expects you to teach them Algebra 2, they hand you a kindergartener who just wants to sit on your lap and learn how to read, and read stories together and really enjoy that. That's how couch school got formed for our family. It's just like you learn to parent with their growth just the same way you learn to teach with their development. I'd say is, we're such planners. We look ahead so far that I had a 5-year-old and I was thinking about having a 15-year-old, and I was saying, "What do we do now to help that time be easier?" Everybody just blinked at me and now I would say, "Make sure you're doing the stuff with the 5-year-old really well because that all plays into a 6-year-old, and a seven-year-old, an eight-year-old."
As we raise our children, we are trying to raise them with this growth mindset where we're teaching them to be entrepreneurs. We're not just teaching our 15-year-old, we're trying to get her to a certain point. We want her to be an adult. We want her to leave our house even as sad as that makes us, personally, it makes us happy for her. We decided to teach our children to be entrepreneurs, to think with a growth mindset so that they can take that mindset and do whatever it is that they want to do.
Usually, if you've trained them to be an entrepreneur they know how to sell themselves well to an employer if that's the track they want to take. As we're teaching them to be entrepreneurs, we are employing them. It's so funny to see how each of their personalities come out as we've encouraged them to think about ways that they can earn money.
Because money is used in our household maybe a little bit different than other households. Right, Matt? We have our children pay for things that they've broken, not just from an accident, we don't have them do that. If they've been told not to do something and they do it, they break something, they have to pay for it.
Every once in a while a kid will get stressed out that [chuckles] they haven't been taking good enough care of their teeth and they've heard of other people having to pay for their cavities, other friends having to pay for their cavities. Having that kind of mindset about money and about earning money in our household has been interesting. We were just talking about it the other day how Josh has his coffee business and everything is equal.
[00:32:01] Matt: Straight down the middle.
[00:32:02] Charity: Straight down the middle. He pays for his stuff and he expects us to pay for anything we use of his. We are his customers. Then Lucy is employed to be a virtual assistant for Matt. That fits in really well with her personality. Ben is such a person' person that he and Matt are in business together. Josh enjoys having his own thing and he does it. Lucy enjoys having some direction and helping out. Ben loves to go in together with someone else so that he has that person component. They're each doing very well in their businesses, but they're also doing it in a way suits them best.
[00:32:52] Matt: Good deal. Well, Charity, what have you been reading lately or what have you read in the past that's been helpful, or important, or you think might be useful to people who are listening to this show?
[00:33:02] Charity: The dangerous question to ask a homeschooler because we are inundated, and surrounded, and we love books, most of us. There's a saying, "when you're teaching a kid how to read that they should be reading below their level, at their level, and above their level." I was thinking about what I was reading, so was contemplating this question, how to limit that list. I decided to limit it to what I'm reading that's below, at, and above my level.
What I'm reading that's below my level is The Story of Britain. It's by Dylan. It's a kid's book but it's a really well done kids book. It's pretty thick too. At my level, we're here on vacation a little bit and so I've been reading some beach reading, The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer. Also The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Then also I say that I read K-Dramas because I don't know Korean, but I've been enjoying my K-Dramas, of course.
[00:34:01] Matt: You do a lot of K-Drama reading.
[00:34:03] Charity: [laughs] It's really fun. I'm picking up some Korean, I guess. Then, above my level, which I'm saying is a book that is teaching me something and also maybe has some words that I need to ruminate on, or figure out the meaning of. That would be The Liberal Arts Tradition by Clarke and Jain, and also How to Listen to Great Music by Robert Greenberg. I've been enjoying those.
Then I would recommend to your listeners, because some of them are good, but maybe some of them would be not of interest. If you're interested in homeschooling, my favorite author is Susan Wise Bauer. I've already mentioned her book, The Well-Trained Mind, really helped me in my early years of contemplating homeschooling and classically educating. Her most recent book is called Rethinking School, and I would recommend that to anybody.
Honestly, even if you don't have children, it really gets you thinking about the educational system and how to maneuver yourself and your child or a child, through the educational systems. Some good things to think about with special education, with preparing for college, even with elementary education, and how that all works. I would recommend Rethinking School to anyone.
Also, if you're thinking about homeschooling, www.ambleside, that's A-M-B-L-E-S-I-D-E online.org is a great resource for those living books where it looks boring, but it's actually, once you open those pages and start reading, they're beautiful books. Most of them are in the public domain because a lot of them are very old. Then shout-out to my girl Amy at humilityanddoxology.com. She's got a lot of great resources and good tips. She's even doing some interviews right now, and I believe she interviewed Matt at one point.
[00:36:03] Matt: She did, and actually preview and probably will say a little bit more about it later, but I think we're going to release that interview probably as the next episode of this show, which is Budgeting for the Homeschool Family. That'll be me responding to Amy-
[00:36:15] Charity: Awesome.
[00:36:15] Matt: -on her video. Well, is there anything else you'd like to share today, Charity?
[00:36:18] Charity: Yes, I have to laugh because my life is so integrated with my work that it's so hard when Matt talked to me about doing this interview, I was thinking, "What do I say?" Because I don't have anything that is so distinctly delineated in my life. I was thinking about it. A small friend asked me while we were walking, she said, "Charity, what do you do? What's your work?"
I had to think, "How would a kid see my work?" I said, "Well, I volunteer at church. I do some things for my family, and I care for them. I sit on many committees and help out at our homeschool coop and at our church. Do some bible studies and work there." Then she said, "Well, what do you get paid for?" I said, "Well, I get a very small fee to direct conversations between sophomores."
That was the answer she wanted, so she trotted off. I was thinking, "I guess I'm a professional homeschool teacher." I guess that's what you would consider me, even though I don't really get paid for that. We feel the need to quantify our work in our society and we do that by how much we're paid, or what our title is, or how many people we've helped, or just in a number of ways.
I can't quantify my work that way. It's my life's work and so, I guess, the quality of my children, which isn't even necessarily up to me, I can't quantify it. That's just what I was thinking as you said, "Anything else." Anything else? It's everything. This is my life and I love it and I can't think of anything else that I could be doing that would be helping our family and the people who are the most important to me, than the work that I'm doing.
[00:38:12] Matt: Charity, how would you like people to follow up from this interview?
[00:38:15] Charity: If you've listened to this interview and gotten to this point, and would like to contact me with any questions, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. You can contact me through Matt. If you are interested in homeschooling, specifically with Classical Conversations, it's a great model, even just for a year for this crazy year that we're all living in right now.
If you needed help with curriculum, if you're brand new and you have no idea but this whole thing that we've been doing sounds cool to you, I would encourage you to look up classicalconversations.com and find a local group near you. They have informational meetings right now in your area. It is a worldwide curriculum and coop but is run locally. Guaranteed you have someone nearby who is doing exactly what I'm doing, maybe in a slightly different way because we're all different.
I would highly recommend that you find a Classical Conversations. They are happy to come alongside you, to answer any questions. Even if you figure out that it's not for you, you'll come out with knowing someone in your community who is really trying their best to do the best for their community and for their own families.
[00:39:35] Matt: Well, Charity, thanks for coming on the show today and for all the time that you spent with Work Pants Finance. I'm excited to release this interview and help other families as they think about education choices for their families.
[00:39:46] Charity: Thank you, Matt, Bye everyone. [music]
[00:39:52] Matt: Now you know how and why the Miners homeschool, and if it's a topic you're considering I hope you feel empowered to charge ahead learning more about homeschooling. What are the key takeaways? One, Charity talks about the joy of living an integrated life and how she's set things up the way she prefers to live, which makes life easier rather than harder. For Charity, living an integrated life means, among other things, homeschooling our children.
Two, the overall goal is to raise excellent adults and home-schooling lets the parents tailor both academics and home life to fit that objective. Three, homeschooling ramps up gradually, you don't start out with a high schooler, you start out with a baby and you begin academics at the pre-K level. Four, there are many excellent resources available to perspective home-schoolers, including classical conversations which has been the cornerstone of how we get school done.
[00:41:26] Lucy: Matt Miner is a fee-only, fiduciary financial advisor and Founder & CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina Registered Investment Advisor where Matt provides personalized, unconflicted, advice to clients for a fee. He’s also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him! Matt is a Certified Financial Planner Professional and holds a Series 65 securities license. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Finance from Arizona State University, and his MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids and money, taxes, investing, and other personal finance topics. WorkPantsFinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. You are an individual and probably need personal advice for your specific situation. You should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs
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