9. Classics Allowed with Savannah Penny

In today’s episode, we get to hang out with Savannah Penny from New Brunswick, Canada. Savannah knew as a senior in high school that she would homeschool her children because she could tell her education was lacking and that it was dumbing her down. In our conversation, Savannah talked about homeschooling as the best educational option out there, navigating friendships and busy schedules, and preparing kids for an amazing future. In this show we learn a lot about excellent literature and the importance of reading great books and classics.

Connect with Savannah
https://www.classicsallowed.org/

Homeschool Philosophy and Curriculum
https://tjed.org/
Hold On To Your Kids

Screen-Free Audio Player
Yoto Player

Websites
Classics Allowed
https://simplycharlottemason.com/
https://readaloudrevival.com/

Documentary
https://www.thehomeschoolawakening.com/

Books
The Pilgrim's Progress
War and Peace
Summer of the Monkeys
Where the Red Fern Grows
The Hiding Place
The Screwtape Letters

This Golden Hour
Free eBook Course
thisgoldenhour.org

Transcript

Tim Eaton: 0:06

Hi, I'm Timmy Eaton, homeschool father of six and doctor of education. We've been homeschooling for more than 15 years and have watched our children go from birth to university successfully and completely without the school system. Homeschooling has grown tremendously in recent years and tons of parents are becoming interested in trying it out. But people have questions and concerns and misconceptions and lack the confidence to get started. New and seasoned homeschoolers are looking for more knowledge and peace and assurance to continue homeschooling. The guests and discussions on this podcast will empower anyone thinking of homeschooling to bring their kids home and start homeschooling. And homeschoolers at all stages of the journey will get what they need and want from these conversations. Thank you for joining us today and enjoy this episode of this Golden Hour Podcast as you exercise, drive, clean, or just chill. You're listening to This Golden Hour Podcast. In today's episode, we get to hang out with Savannah Penny from New Brunswick, Canada. Savannah knew as a senior in high school that she would homeschool her children because she could tell her education was lacking, that it was dumbing her down. In our conversation, Savannah talked about homeschooling as the best educational option out there, navigating friendships and busy schedules, and preparing kids for an amazing future. In this show, we learn a lot about excellent literature and the importance of reading great books and classics, and Savannah emphasizes how crucial it is for parents to model learning and the skills and behaviors they want their children to cultivate. Hello again and welcome to another week's podcast. We're so grateful to have with us, Savannah and Savannah, could you just give everybody a little bit of background about what you do and where you are and how long you've homeschooled and how many kids you have just all that kind of stuff?

Savannah Penny: 1:54

Yeah, sure. Thanks. It's really nice to be here and I've been homeschooling for a while. I had my first child of six about 19 and a half years ago. And we knew right off the bat that we were gonna homeschool. I knew in grade 12 actually that I was gonna homeschool. Wow. I graduated the top of my class with the valedictorian. I had a full scholarship that I took advantage of. I went to University of Calgary and really enjoyed my time there. But I knew that the educational model we had was not working all that well. It didn't work really well for me, and I was the top of my heap, my little heap, I should say. It was a little heap. I felt like I was on the top of it, and it hadn't done me any favors either. In a way I realized how it was a system that made me feel smarter than I was. I was very good. I knew this about myself. I was good at regurgitating answers. And then I would just let information drain from my brain. As soon as the test was done right, I was good at making sure my essays looked, my presentations looked but I knew people in my own family, some of my friends who were really smart, really intelligent individuals in other ways that were different than me they were problem solvers. They were better they had more street smarts than I did. And yet I could see how this system didn't reward those. Oh, interest, it rewarded interesting, my kind of smarts. And I didn't like that system. So I knew right away upon graduation, literally from high school that I would never send my kids through the school system, funny enough. Wow, that's interesting. Yeah. The list now is as long as my arm. I've got a lot of reasons why I promote homeschooling now. I have six kids, my oldest is 19, like I said, and my youngest just turned eight this week.

Tim Eaton: 3:33

Wow. we have six kids. Our oldest is 19 and our youngest is nine. Oh my gosh. Love it. Yes. We're like at the same stage but like that's pretty mature of a senior in high school. So how did you know that homeschool was an option at that point?

Savannah Penny: 3:49

Okay, let me just give you a little more detail before I

Tim Eaton: 3:51

No, totally. Yeah, go how you want.

Savannah Penny: 3:53

So I'm sitting in a grade 12 comparative, civilizations class, and we're studying old poetry. And we come across John Keets and my teacher says John Keets started writing poetry when he was, 16 years old. He started publishing. And the poem we were reading that day in our class was one he had written at 18 years of age. Was 18 years old, and I knew I was I was pretty intelligent because there I was with straight A's, all through high school. And I could barely comprehend what he was trying to communicate in this poem. And I thought, That's weird. why can't I understand what an 18 year old, a few hundred years ago put on paper? He's a genius. Yes. So that was a moment for me where I went. Is there any other way to do this? Later on I read an essay this was first year university. I read an essay about Pilgrim's Progress. A difficult read. Yes. But every farm kid, even the kids who didn't go to school, a hundred, 150 years ago would know pilgrim's, progress in and out, would know the King James version of the Bible inside and out. And I thought, so something's happened to dumb us down and I just wanted more than that for my kids. On the other hand, I had two brothers, very smart people. My dad would sometimes give us challenges where he would say, okay, let's pretend. I just drove over some glass with the car and now we have a flat tire. Without any instruction. He would say, can you figure out how to change a tire? And my brother was just magic with that kind of thing. And yet, whoa he struggled to pass his classes. those two things on both ends of the spectrum just really sat strangely with me. And I thought, there's gotta be something else. So I didn't know a whole lot of homeschoolers. I think if you had asked me about homeschooling in grade 12, I would've racked my brain for some examples and Right. Probably they would've been through the media, through movies that I'd been exposed to that stereotypes or homeschoolers as weird. Socially, totally inept. But I did start to be aware that was an option. I lived on the west coast. My older sister had kids at the time. She's eight years older than me. They weren't old enough to be in school yet, but she had already started talking about looking into different methods of homeschooling. So when I came across Thomas Jefferson education, which lays out one sort of method of homeschooling. Yes. And I read it and I just, inhaled it. And that wa that was it. There was no question for me that was how I was gonna raise my kids.

Tim Eaton: 6:22

was it your sister that introduced that to you or?

Savannah Penny: 6:24

Yes, she and a few of her friends who homeschooled right from the start as well. They put that book in my hands. All of them promoted it. I was just starting a family. And so I did read a few other homeschool books by other people. There was a Charlotte Mason one on my shelf. And I really liked everything that I read, but generally I agreed with everything in the TJ ed model, the Thomas Jefferson education model. So that's what we chose to go with.

Tim Eaton: 6:50

It's interesting to me that your realization or your insight in grade 12 about why is it that it seems like so many kids in the past could understand these things and I've heard explanations like. Oh, it's because their entertainment was reading. At nighttime they gathered around the hearth and it was reading. And yeah today there are so many ways to take somebody's attention and entertain and I actually think the term dumbing us down is accurate, and that's been used a lot in homeschool circles. But that's awesome. So your situation and your motivation to start really dates back to just your experience with education. How have the motivations to homeschool evolved for you over the years?

Savannah Penny: 7:30

Yeah. I really wanted to avoid what I saw some people choosing to do with their children, which was homeschooling as a means of sheltering. For a while I thought of sheltering in a negative light. That's how we've been, I think, trained to see it. Yeah. Now I see it very differently and I think sheltering is part of what it is to be a parent sheltering appropriately. But yeah, it's evolved. Simply, I just have more and more reasons why I think it's a good idea. I went through a few years where I really could see that there were pros and cons to both ways of educating your child. The public school system had some pros that I didn't have. For instance, they had teachers that were paid to be my children's educator all day every day. Five days out of seven. Yeah. That was their job to focus on children and their education. I was a mom, I was cleaning, I was cooking, I was chauffeur as well as being hopefully an inspiration to my kids about what it should look like in the home. Yeah, exactly. So I remember thinking, man, yeah, I can't say that this is. The solution for everyone. That said, over the last few years, I have grown to think again that homeschooling is a really preferable option these days, because

Tim Eaton: 8:42

I'm with you. That's how I would say it too. But yeah, carry on.

Savannah Penny: 8:45

Yeah, just The school systems are changing pretty rapidly. They're not so much about not exclusively about education. There's a lot of indoctrination happening. And so for me, with my personal beliefs, I just think if you can get your kids out of the system, do it.

Tim Eaton: 9:00

Yeah. I it's funny because I'm always reluctant to be that direct or something, but more and more one of the most interesting thing that my wife and I find is that people will list off complaint after complaint. And at the end of the conversation they'll say something like, I can't believe you homeschool. That's crazy. And then you go, wait a minute, you just listed off a million things that are so messed up. And the way I describe its, and I hope it doesn't sound arrogant, but it's almost like a falling of the scales from your eyes to be able to see, because you're so ingrained in the culture of a traditional public system. But I think more and more people, with covid and like you're saying with the changes in the system, more and more people are looking for options and If that's one purpose for this forum. It's just to say, Hey, do what you want, but at least know the options that are there. Know this option. Yeah. Cuz people who are experiencing it are having pretty incredible results. And yeah. It's something that should be looked into., I like the way you said that.

Savannah Penny: 9:52

Yes, I have walked, I guess I should say I've held the hands of several friends as they have slowly made that tr transition Yes. From public school into a homeschool life and none of them ever regretted, but a lot of them take a long time to get to that point where they for sure make the leap. And I just was telling a friend the other day really like in my opinion right now, if you could just take your daughter out of school and do nothing, she would be better off.

Tim Eaton: 10:19

I actually agree with that. I do. I like what you're saying. One of the last questions I usually ask in these interviews is what would you tell somebody who's starting? And you've obviously had that experience several times. So maybe first of all dig into that a little bit deeper. Like why is that? Cause I agree with that and not that like what you were saying before, that I'm going, oh, because the world is so evil in the schools, not for those reasons. Yeah. And there might be some reality to that, at least in my opinion, it's like you're spending so much time on things that are not cultivating the kind of child that they wanna become. So maybe back up what you were saying as far as it's just better to take'em out even if you did nothing. And then also what is your typical advice to people who are just starting or thinking about homeschooling?

Savannah Penny: 11:00

Yeah, so first question, I think schools are working from a lowest common denominator rule. Several years ago, almost 20 now. I was tutoring a kid in English, basically his mom wanted me to just be sure he got his homework done. And so I did we had a good relationship. By the end of the year, I had made sure he'd completed all his English homework, essentially. Yeah. And I'd been paid for it, so it was great. But his mom called me at the end of the school year and said did you make sure my son did all of his homework? And I said, yeah, every week. My job, was to make sure he completed his homework. Check the list. Yeah. She said, turns out he didn't hand in a single one of those assignments that you completed with him. And I was like, oh man. I couldn't walk him to school, right? He's in grade seven. And I said what are you gonna do about it? She said I just got off the phone with the school. I asked them if they wouldn't mind please holding him back a year. And they said, we don't do that. Wow. We don't do that. And she said, what do you mean? We don't do that. It's bad for their self-esteem. This is not a system that is designed to educate and to lift. The honors programs that used to exist in schools, they've disappeared. Yeah. Now we are educating to the lowest common denominator. Of course, there are people who need help. Of course Most of us have our weak link school subject for me. That was math. But I don't think we need to bring the whole school system down to that level. So what I tell parents is, you know what? You are the one who loves your kid. Your teachers might think your kid's great. But you love your child. That gives you a huge step up right from day one. Yeah. It does. And the arbitrary nature of our school systems does not train children to succeed in real life. I remember after grade 12 doing something just mundane, maybe it was grocery shopping with my mom, and I realized, wow, this whole world was happening outside while I was in the box of school.

Tim Eaton: 12:54

I know. Totally,

Savannah Penny: 12:55

really arbitrary and not preparing me for the simple skills that I would need for adult life. We do that as a matter of course, day in and day out.

Tim Eaton: 13:03

Yeah. The term I often use as the economy of the home, but I like how you're saying, it's the economy outside the home too, and that's so true. I grew up in Chicago area and I remember that same experience, like you'd be with your mom during a school day cuz you're sick or something else, and you go oh, what the heck? I know stuff goes on.

Savannah Penny: 13:18

I know the weirdest was when you met one of the teachers spouses or their children who don't go to the school. It was like, what? Wait, you have a life outside of us. That was the weirdest to me. That's interesting. A teacher who loves their child with the unconditional love that a parent does you're gonna be so much further ahead. Your child's gonna be so much further ahead. There is really, you can't go wrong. You're not gonna harm your child by keeping them home and you will know that. But there is a lot of harm being done both on the educational level, on the moral and spiritual level. There's a lot of harm being done on the social level to children. There's no harm being done by keeping them at home.

Tim Eaton: 14:00

So I, wrote a dissertation on homeschooling at the University of Alberta. I did my doctorate degree in education, wrote my dissertation on homeschooling. We were preparing for our daughter who would've been in grade nine by the time I completed. So we wanted to do that cuz my focus was on how do youth who are homeschooled prepare academically for post-secondary. Okay. But anyway, in the research there's a lot of stuff that is Oppositional to home education. And one of the arguments is that it fosters either elitism or it provides this environment for parents there's no accountability for parents and how they're treating their children. And I was just, so weirded out by it all. Yeah. I just noticed the other day that do you remember Kurt Cameron from growing pains or whatever that Yeah, I watched it. Oh. I haven't seen that yet. But I just saw that the other day and it's good. And he exposes all that stuff. The idea, all these statements about here in the Alberta education statements, it'll say parents have the primary responsibility for the education of their children. Which nobody needs to be told that, but it's like we almost need permission from somebody else to parent our children. But it is backwards. Like more and more people are thinking of it, the opposite way. And so it's almost interesting to me that we have to empower parents about their own children instead of vice versa. I know, and I don't mean this to be a. Too direct of a statement, but instead of people saying, why in the world did you homeschool? I feel like not as a criticism, but the more fitting question would be, why in the world are you not homeschooling? people should be explaining why they're not, not why they are. And I know that's gonna take some getting used to that might not resonate with everybody, but I actually feel like that and I'm not anti-public or something like that, but,I know the benefits of it. So anyway, I really appreciate what you said there.

Savannah Penny: 15:38

Yeah. And I have a friend who has shifted from calling public schools, which we've been raised, to call them. She calls them government schools. Yeah. And at first I was like, oh, government schools. What do you mean by that? She said exactly what they are. They're government funded education. They're government schools. When you think of it that way, even just calling a public school, a government school, which is exactly what it is, it shifts the way

Tim Eaton: 16:00

it changes the feeling, as you say that, it totally conjures a feeling within me.

Savannah Penny: 16:04

Absolutely. Because really, when you call it a government school, the recognition of the fact that there is someone behind a desk somewhere who decides yes. What your child is going to learn, think of, all these books behind me. We could learn anything. I could teach my children from one of literally thousands of subjects and yet, There is a very specific curriculum being chosen.

Tim Eaton: 16:25

Yeah. Somebody in the government doesn't like what you're choosing to teach. And by the way, I am impressed with that library behind. That's amazing. Actually, I'm in my library as well. Look.

Savannah Penny: 16:33

Awesome. Matching libraries. I love it.

Tim Eaton: 16:36

That's awesome. No, but carry on with that. That's interesting.

Savannah Penny: 16:40

I just think we tend not to think about that very much, but really someone is deciding what the curriculum is for our children, which means they're deciding how our children are going to view the world the lens through which they're going to see history. A lot of people are complaining these days. I hear more and more of it because their child's being assigned to write an essay or to do a project on a specific angle. Yes. And not just write an essay about World War ii. You pick the topic and go, you need to write the essay about who was wrong and who was right. And it better jive with the teacher's perspective, right? And there's more and more of that. That's a lot less enabling of critical thought and a lot less enabling of just a broad range of ideas and much more I would say, even dictatorial when it comes to our thought processes. And that's not good.

Tim Eaton: 17:30

Yeah. If there's any accuracy to what you just said, and I think there is, I think there's lots that's something that people need to consider for sure. For their own children. So how, like if somebody were to ask you, how do you choose, you've got six kids, they're all different individuals. How do you choose. What you're gonna do. And I like what Sarah Mackenzie does read a aloud revival. I don't know if you're into that, but I love her. Yeah. She's great. And she talks about this idea of there are things that a lot of people do that are content-based and then skill-based. So anything content-based you can do together. And then anything that's skill-based you probably should separate so that they can subjectively apply however they're gonna apply it. So how do you do it in your home? If somebody said, how do you choose what you're gonna do? And where do you find stuff? What do you say to'em?

Savannah Penny: 18:13

Yeah, that's a really good question. I I like that differentiating between content and skill. I don't do it as much because I guess not because every homeschooler does it differently, right? Absolutely. Yeah. For us, what has worked is keeping in mind basically the first myth of education in general, and I'm not coming up with this is Oliver and Rachel DeMille, the people who came up with and the first myth that I think a lot of us buy into is that one person is capable of educating another person. Because if I don't wanna be educated, there's nothing you can say or do that's going to educate me, right?

Tim Eaton: 18:45

Yeah. Yeah. I experience that every day. So I teach religious education and I see it daily, yeah, exactly. Kids are into it or they're not. It's up to them.

Savannah Penny: 18:53

Yeah. It's a choice from, from day one. So probably the most important thing we've. Communicated to our kids over the years is that they own their education and that means they really do lead out. They get to pick. What they learn in terms of content and skill building. We do help them a little bit with choosing. We also help them once they've chosen what they're going to learn, we help facilitate To help make it happen for them.

Tim Eaton: 19:18

Yeah. Like what to access and the research of what books to get and stuff like that. Yeah,

Savannah Penny: 19:22

for sure. So what we do every six-ish months or so, it's pretty loose for us. Sometimes it's longer. Sometimes if we're feeling like we need something fresh, we'll do it more frequently. We do a compass. This is a Thomas Jefferson education idea. Where you sit down with each child one-on-one, you design the child design, so I ask questions, but they have a compass literally in front of them. It's a piece of paper. They divide it into four, and there are four categories. One is. Physical, there's spiritual, there's social emotional, and then there is mental or educational, right? And we've done that since our oldest who's 19, since he was like six. Yeah, it was almost playacting at first, but by the time he got to be 13, 14, he really was invested in this compass. So he would fill in each section based on what he felt he wanted to improve upon or to learn. So it was like goal setting 1 0 1, essentially. Yeah. Really. And we would have that available. I'd put it up on the fridge, and then, the homeschool day would start. And if I see one of my kids lounging about, I'll often just say Hey, what's on your compass? What have you been wanting to learn about? Yeah. How does this activity fit into those quadrons? Exactly. So I had a kid recently who decided he wanted to learn about the Wild West, and I was like, great. And the cool thing, he has a big brother who's 18 now, who has all the Louis Lamore books that were ever written probably he loves. Oh, that's awesome. So the cool thing about that is I can check in with them about their education, but I am not owning it. Not at all. And what happens, I think, is you create a very different human being because they're looking at education as something that they can make or break, right? Every step of the way. I will often ask my kids at lunchtime, okay, what'd you learn this morning? Because I'm not in charge of it. They're in charge of it. So at lunchtime, we're sitting around the table, tell me something you learned. You've got little kids who've really just played the morning away most of the time. And they'll say I learned a new song on the piano, or, I learned that I can climb, 15 feet up in that tree, or whatever. But then you've got the older kids who are telling you about World War II because that's the background of the book that they're reading. Or how a guy in Siberia can survive by acclimatizing to the, the cold temperatures because that's what they're reading frequently.

Tim Eaton: 21:37

Continue that thought, but I think you're highlighting too. Another thing that I keep hearing in these interviews is like how much education, and it's usually the mom who's doing the homeschool I think the statistic, at least when I did my research, was like 95%. Yeah. Yeah. Is the mom surprising? But how much education that she is not only being reminded of but gaining because Oh, yeah. Especially if you've got several children doing different things. You're the one gleaning so much from your kids' education. But anyway, I hope you didn't forget where you were in your thought.

Savannah Penny: 22:04

No, it's true. And one of my primary focuses as I was raising my kids was accumulating books. I would wait for the library book sales. We have books all throughout our house. And if we read a book and it's really not up to our standard, we toss it, like it has to earn its way back onto the shelf. But generally I put books on the shelf and what I find is my children know more about almost. Every topic that you can think of simply by reading books. And they're not reading non-fiction books. They're reading fiction books. But, in order to write a book, you have to do your research. You have to know your history. You have to know, the backdrop of your story. And so they'll tell me things about the war in Vietnam. They'll tell me things about the Great Depression. And I'm like, really? Is that a thing? And I'll look. It's happened so many times. Yeah. daily and I realize it's an education that doesn't feel like learning, right? It just feels like living, I'm just reading a book because I love reading a book, but we're discussing it regularly. And those little tidbits of information I'm not so focused on trivia which I felt was part of my education, memorize this date and, the name of this person, but the tidbits do sink down for my kids because it's contextual. They were interested in the story, so their memory was on board while they were reading. So there's not the need for all of the the repetition of facts and details because they're just absorbing it.

Tim Eaton: 23:25

They're into it. I mean the cliche term is the love of learning. And I think it's real. It does become lifelong learning because it's the difference between learning for something and learning how to learn. And I love that. It's awesome. Yeah. Oh man, I've got so many questions that are coming into my mind as you say stuff, but one thing I was thinking is here's what I'm learning. A lot of people stop before the youth years, like junior high school because they're like, man, I don't know what to do. So what gives you assurance that their education is providing what they need? because you and I are in the exact same situation, actually. We have a 19 year old, an 18 year old in. So we should talk later after. Crazy. But what gives you the assurance and the confidence and the peace to keep rocking through the homeschool thing? When, they're gonna become doctors or they're gonna become teachers, or they're gonna do something and so, whatever profession they're pursuing or post-secondary or just life after homeschool, how are you as the mom at peace and confident and assured?

Savannah Penny: 24:21

Oh yes. Such a good question. I love that question because I think what I will generally do is turn the question on its head and say what do they need to know? What are you hoping that they know? What facts will get them successfully through their adult life? Because could we do that? Could we just plant that number of facts, you know, if they know their nine times tables, will they succeed Or do they need to know their 11 times tables to succeed? Like it's very arbitrary when we start thinking, are my kids going to be prepared for real life? I usually think what did I need to be prepared for real life?

Tim Eaton: 24:52

I wanna pause you for a second there, because you know how you have an epiphany. I think it's happening to me, I love what you're saying about turning it on it's head. That's the exact question to ask and that's exactly what parents in and out of schools, should be asking because, like you said, you go. If you were to strip away all your past experience and say, what am I gonna do to help them prepare for their futures? It's true. Do you think you'd come up with what's replicated daily in a schoolroom or whatever? And maybe you would, but it's good to at least do that individually to come up with what you wish Oh, sure. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you, but that was just like, so yeah. Epiphanizeing, if that's a word.

Savannah Penny: 25:28

Yeah, I think so. It is, now you've used it, so it's now indeed. I do think it's definitely one of those things where, at what point, if your child was going through this, the public school system, at what point would you say, oh, they're ready now. Is it the piece of paper that they graduate with? I would say no. I would say actually there are some skills. Even more than skills. There's a mindset that will lead to your child's success in the adult world. And I would argue none of those happen in a classroom. Possibly resilience to some extent. There's some resilience built in the classroom, but I think there are a lot better ways to build resilience personally. Yeah. Amen. Yeah, so I think it, actually over the years for me, has come down to maybe two or three questions that I ask myself, especially on hard days. Cuz when you homeschool you'll have hard days, just like for sure when you send your kids to school, you have hard days, right? Yeah, for sure. On the hard days what are the questions I ask myself? Okay. Does my child love learning? That's number one. Because if they love learning when they're 18, there's nothing that they won't be able to learn. If they are used to going after an education for themselves the sky's the limit. We aren't expected as adults to have learned everything we need to know by the age of 18. In fact, I just started learning at the age of 18. I graduated in 2004 from university with a BA in English literature. And I had gotten married and had a baby in the course of my four years at at school. But it was literally the month after I graduated that I picked up a book and sat with it and felt like I was actually finally getting an education. Wow. There was nobody else's deadline for me to read this book, but it was Warren Peace by Leo Tol. I'd never read that before I picked it up. I enjoyed it through the entire next summer. Like three, four months. Just absorbed the book at my own pace and I was able to learn more from this book because really I wasn't on anybody else's timetable. I wasn't doing an assignment that someone else was requiring of me. I was learning what I wanted to learn. That was such a nice taste of education and I wanted my kids to have that from the very first.

Tim Eaton: 27:39

Does that ever make you think, like what would've been different for you had you been. And, my parents did a good job and whatever, but so my wife and I assume that you're similar, has read aloud to my kids from the day they were born until now. Reading aloud is something that happens daily and then they read on their own as well, obviously. But if you had been just absorbing things for all those years and then I'm just thinking as you say that if you're having that experience at 18, and I had a similar experience. I went away for two years in the Dominican Republic and I feel like I just started discovering, learning and reading on my own. But if you had done that all the way through, what a difference. Potentially that could make.

Savannah Penny: 28:18

I know, for all that I was on the top of my little heap with the scholarships and the awards, I recognize my kids are just light years ahead of me. Much younger ages. They're more mature, they're more socially mature. They can interact with people of all different age groups. Yes. The young ones and the old ones.

Tim Eaton: 28:37

Yeah. We gotta give them together with our kids, man.

Savannah Penny: 28:39

I know. They love learning. And they're not perfect, right? They're quirky. Kids are quirky, but adults are quirky too. I pinpoint that as being the first time I really began my education.

Tim Eaton: 28:52

Sounds like a defining moment for you.

Savannah Penny: 28:53

Yeah, it definitely was. And I've never looked back. I have been tempted a few times when I think of all the hours of mess making that happens in my house because I keep them home. Yes. Six kids times like. Seven hours times how many days? That's a lot of extra mess, and so I'll talk to other friends who drop their kids off to school, not that their lives are any easier. There are different issues, but then their house isn't being made a mess up all day, every day.

Tim Eaton: 29:21

I know. I need to have a segment on one of these podcasts. I'm like incorporating as part of their school day Yes. Is okay, so here's the, here's part of your learning is the economy of the home of cleaning. A hundred percent easier said than done.

Savannah Penny: 29:34

I actually very much that's the first part of our school day is their chores. So chores are very much a part of school. And I think if my kids were going to school, we may not have as much time for chores, but we have as much time as it takes for my kids to get chores done. Amen to that. And the result is, they get into their teens and we get calls from people at church, people in the community, our neighborhood that are saying, please, can your kids come back and help me build my deck? Can they come back and do yard work because these are kids who know how to work? That's pretty fundamental to me of, for success in the adult world. If your kid knows how to work, chances are they're gonna succeed, right? If they love learning, if they know how to work. And number three is are they are they confident? Are they, and really, so as part of our education, we are focusing not on building self-esteem, but on building a sense of who are you like, yeah. Because self-esteem is a wishy-washy sort of concept. And building it is even trickier. But where are your feet underneath you? Do you know what's good in this world? Do you know what's not good in this world? Do you know what's true? Do you know what's not true? And you can do that at home. Parents get to decide that.

Tim Eaton: 30:41

Yeah, you're building people. One of the, one of the questions I was tossing around when I was doing my dissertation was this idea of learning towards becoming, but it was highlighting that a lot of us don't proactively consider our purpose for our kids' education. If all parents everywhere were just to go, okay what do I really care that happens as a result of their education? And, the more I talk to people, they go, I want them to be good people. And then everything else is gravy. They can read well, they can write well, they can, they're excellent at math. They can pursue engineering or medicine, right? That's all good. But if they weren't good people, then absolutely probably wouldn't be that happy or satisfied as a parent.

Savannah Penny: 31:21

And think of the damage that's done in the world. You can look at history, you can look at our moment right now. By people who focus on being experts without focusing on being good. If you focus on being good before you get great at something, you take your goodness into the world and you can make an impact.

Tim Eaton: 31:37

I've heard somebody say, they just become clever devils. Exactly.

Savannah Penny: 31:40

That's exactly it. And so I just think, yeah that's a big problem when you have someone who's a genius, but never worked on the core of just being a decent human being. Yeah. So that's a big deal for us.

Tim Eaton: 31:51

I love how you broke that down. I want to just highlight those again. I know that'll be recorded, but you said love of learning. Yeah. Learn how to work and then hard work. Yeah and basically becoming a good person, a good human.

Savannah Penny: 32:02

Yes. Cause that's the only way you get true confidence if you, what do they say in the scriptures? Virtuous heart.

Tim Eaton: 32:08

Let, confidence wax.

Savannah Penny: 32:09

Wax Strong in the Lord. Yeah. That's awesome. So I do think our confidence comes from being a good person. We, if we have any kind of confidence that comes any other way it's shaky. It's not substantial.

Tim Eaton: 32:21

It's fleeting. It's fleeting for sure. Absolutely. Can you, absolutely. Can you talk for a second about the role of your husband in all this? What does he do and like here and I don't want to lead you at all and I know I don't need to cause I'm sure you have your very solid thoughts on this, but what I've been hearing a lot is just from a lot of people they're saying he's not necessarily that involved in the day-to-day stuff, but just knowing that he supports it philosophically and that he's willing to do things, there might be practical things that he engages in, but more than anything it's just the feeling, the support and but anyway. What would you say, like how, what have you seen and maybe how has that evolved and whatever. Yes.

Savannah Penny: 32:56

I love the question. Be I love the word evolved cuz it really has evolved. Yes. And I mean our family has evolved. When we were first married, I remember sitting down with my husband and he said what do you want? Because I just wanna do what you want to do. And I said, I wanna be the mom. If you can do whatever it takes to allow me to be home and be the mom, that's my dream come true.

Tim Eaton: 33:17

So when did you guys have that conversation?

Savannah Penny: 33:18

That was before our first kid for sure.

Tim Eaton: 33:20

Really? Wow. You guys are like, you guys are, you guys were advanced in your He likes talking communication

Savannah Penny: 33:28

But I knew at that point I had always dreamed about being a mom. And I had, high school teachers that were very disappointed that I didn't pursue, after my scholarships and my degree, they wanted me to go and do something that was more showy.

Tim Eaton: 33:39

Just a mom. Just a mom. Have you ever had that experience with a, I don't know, like a, one of those calls in the day and they're like, oh, so you're, you have to like, put your work on something and they say, oh, so you're just a mom and you're like

Savannah Penny: 33:51

Just a mom. Yeah. And I actually, it was interesting cuz I had a conversation with a close friend who I hadn't seen in a long time the other day. And she started listing things that she'd been doing, and I realized I had done most of the same things in the context of being a wife and mother. Wow. I actually have done a lot of stuff. I've run choirs, I've taught language arts classes. I've organized community events and I do that a lot actually, especially since my youngest was born. And I just have more energy now that I'm,

Tim Eaton: 34:21

and as if you had to justify something beyond, I've raised and educated and loved six children honestly, it's weird that we have to justify it, no, it's not that you feel that you have to, I'm just saying it is weird that's the feeling like, and it is true because more and more. And let people could choose how they want, but more and more it's like women feel like they have to explain what they do or something like that. Anyway

Savannah Penny: 34:43

It's true. I asked a friend a couple years back, she was going to enter the workforce after keeping her kids home for a long time, and I said, how do you go about communicating on a resume that, because you've stayed at home, you're good at everything. Is it truly I'm good at everything.

Tim Eaton: 34:58

Yes, I know, but they chose to stay. No. You're qualified. If I was hiring, if I was hiring, I would hire homeschool moms. Man, I'm not even kidding. I'd be like, no, they do anything.

Savannah Penny: 35:08

I agree with you a hundred percent. I agree with you. So what was the question? I feel like we've, your

Tim Eaton: 35:14

The evolution of your husband's role.

Savannah Penny: 35:17

That's right. The early years where he was building his career and I was the stay at home, he was more a moral support person. Yes. And every once in a while he'd be that person to ask a key question that had me going, oh yeah, why am I doing this? That's awesome. But he was a very safe person because he loved me and he loves, loved our kids. And he just would ask questions like, okay, how is this gonna work? Or, that was a good person to hear those questions from. It wasn't a mother-in-law or an extra neighbor, it was my husband.

Tim Eaton: 35:44

Oh yeah, exactly. So that happened. Not the same coming from the mother-in-law.

Savannah Penny: 35:49

Yeah, I know exactly. And but I should say now, so my husband's a therapist and he's very good at what he does. As my kids have entered the teen years, We've realized I have a skillset that's very specific to younger children. I love teens and I can teach them the life skills I teach them. The cooking and the driving and the banking. And the shopping, but the emotional stuff, to be honest, I'd rather my husband do that and he's good at it. Yeah. So those kinds of conversations, I love having someone to pass that buck to so that I can keep focused on the things that I'm good at. And he feels much more a part of their education because there's nothing in our house that isn't part of our homeschool. There's nothing that, no interaction between two of us between any two of us. Nothing We watch, nothing we read, nothing. We discuss. It's not a part of their experience.

Tim Eaton: 36:34

It's a way of life. It's a way of living. And I actually had this conversation, I think with Eve, your sister and somebody else. I forget, but Oh, it was Heather Burton. Do you, have you met Heather Burton? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I was talking with her last week and the idea was, I just homeschool the term, like I we're like stuck with it now, but it doesn't match, like it's not the right word. It, my best thing to say right now is like some, like family learning or learning towards becoming but really it's a lifestyle, it's family learning? Because people, world school, they unschool, they structured homeschool. There's so many different ways. Every family's unique, but it's a way of life. So I love what you're saying.

Savannah Penny: 37:12

Absolutely. And it's a very specific human being that I, it emerges from a home where you've homeschooled from day one. I know that because now I have a kid out in the world and I'm, the feedback I'm getting. It shouldn't surprise me because we homeschooled from day one. I knew we were giving him something that was unusual. But I'm just, what it's overwhelming. The feedback I'm hearing from people I've never met and they're saying, what did you do with this kid? How did you prepare? Honestly, mothers who are saying, how did you prepare your kid? And it is, it's homeschooling.

Tim Eaton: 37:47

So your oldest is a boy. He's a boy. And what's he doing? If you don't mind, what's he doing?

Savannah Penny: 37:53

Yeah. He's a missionary for our church in California. Newport Beach. Really?

Tim Eaton: 37:57

I have a son that is going to San Diego here in a few months. oh my gosh. We have this parallel life going on.

Savannah Penny: 38:04

We are. Yeah. No wonder my sister thought to, to connect us. That's awesome. Yeah. That's great. He's loving it. But I do, I get these texts from great mothers, like I know they're raising their kids in, in, in a for sure. A Christian home. And, but they're reaching out and saying, what did you do? Cuz your kid is so prepared. And I just think they weren't so hampered by the school system, by all of the subjects that they had to cram in there that they didn't actually care about. That they knew how to live. I taught them the basic skills of life. Like you said, you've said it a few times now, what's the phrase you're using? The economy of the home. Economy of the home. I love that. Yeah, I do too. I started teaching religious classes to teenagers, the seminary, early morning seminary to kids. When my oldest got into grade nine, I was called to be the scripture study teacher. Yeah. Early morning to teenagers, right? Yeah. Grades nine to 12. And I loved these kids. We know, we knew them very well. I knew their families. They were great kids. But what I found, my child was the only one homeschooled out of About eight or nine kids. Yeah. And what I found was that there was a pressure happening on these children who were going to school, and this was totally outside of the social pressure. It was a pressure to care about things that they didn't naturally care about. So I was shocked at the, at how low the retention level was because these classes weren't mandatory. I wasn't giving them an actual grade at the end of the year. So it took a lower step, even though they cared a lot about what we were learning, they it took a lower place on their hierarchy of, of attention. Because they were going off to school and they had due dates and they had deadlines, and they had exams. And I was just startled by how low the retention of the really important things was. Because their brains were so, overstimulated constantly by things that really didn't matter that much.

Tim Eaton: 39:57

The culture is not set up to cultivate that. I think you're right, and people listening, could be like, I could see, I could see some people like squirming with that, but it's just true. It's just true. Like the, it's not set up to have them love learning and plus there's like reputations at school and there's all these things and youth are youth no matter what, but oh, so many levels. But yeah. I see what you're saying. Yeah. And you saw that pretty clearly good kids. And they're just a, they're a product of the system. We're all a product of our system yeah.

Savannah Penny: 40:25

And great families, this was just, their parents were supporting them. They came from good families, but even those who didn't get caught up in social things that were problematic, just the demands on their brains. And I kept thinking, what of these tests is going to push you towards a happy life or a successful life? Is there any information that's going to give that to you? Then why is it causing so much anxiety? Why is it causing you to focus away from the things that really matter to you? What would happen? What would happen theoretically? If I took all of these teenagers and I said, Hey, for one year, you get to follow your own passion. So you kid number, four, you're the one who loves skateboarding more than anything else or motorcycling or whatever it is. Let's give you a whole year and tell you're free to study skateboarding for a whole year.

Tim Eaton: 41:13

Can you imagine? So I've taught youth and young adults for 20 years. And that very, and I actually live, so I live out in the country which is weird to say because the local town is 3,500 people. So I live out in the country and in the two towns that are out here in the country, like there's lots of kids that are hands-on, farm stuff, mechanic stuff. Yeah. And you get'em into a traditional classroom and it's just like brutal. It's brutal for you. I know. And I get it. And I know, and that it served my personality. That's how I was cultivated as a kid. But these kids, it's just, and then you see them doing something with their hands and you go, yeah. Oh, why are we doing this to this kid? And you know what? They leave school thinking, I'm dumb, and I'm going, there's no way. It's so weird that we do that disservice over and over again. There's gotta be a better way. Can I ask you a question as you're saying that, like what do you what's available? One thing I keep thinking about is single moms or. Or cuz it seems like, obviously mom and a dad is the ideal situation, I guess for homeschooling. But if you had somebody that was really wanted to do that, they wanted to homeschool and loved the principles of it and wanted to try it, what didn't really what's going on? I actually went to an an Alberta parent meeting this past week in Lethbridge, close to where I live. And tons of parents there that are expressing these things that they don't like that's going on in the schools, but yet a lot of'em are single parents. Is there a way for single parents to homeschool? Is there a way for other Oh yeah. Other situations besides just the mom and dad?

Savannah Penny: 42:44

Absolutely. And I only know that because I've seen it, we've lived now in four provinces in Canada and we have gotten to know lots of communities of homeschoolers. There are I know some very, I know a single mother who is also the, because she's a single mother. She's the sole breadwinner. She runs a business. Yes. And she's homeschooled her children since day one. You need to I think a very good idea is to facilitate a community. It helps if you've got, your mom nearby or an aunt or uncle, especially when they're under age 12. I it's different in different provinces. In Ontario, we could leave the kids at home at as early as 10, but kids, you can outsource so much of your homeschooling and still be the one who's. Who's choosing what comes in and what doesn't.

Tim Eaton: 43:26

You outsource them. The majority of everywhere in the world outsources it to the school, so why would it?

Savannah Penny: 43:31

Yeah, exactly. I teach literature classes to homeschoolers online, and a lot of those parents are single and they have said, Hey, you know what, I'm gonna look around until I have some, somebody who can teach language arts, who, someone who can teach math. I may be good at this, but I'm not so good at this. I'm gonna outsource that. Yes, we, there's no shortage now. So as long as your child is being supervised at the age where they're required to be supervised, whether it's. 10, or depending on your province or state, it probably changes a little bit. But as long as they're being supervised, it keep being kept alive, essentially. Depending on your method, you could do, you could homeschool them because essentially they are the owners of their education. The very best thing. I know so many people who are pulling their kids out of school and saying, what do I need? What resources do I need to know of what curriculum? And I say, go get a library card. A library card is what you need. Do you have a pair of runners to go outside with? Do you have a library card? You're good to go. Go get your library card. Bring home as many books as you can. I filtered the books because there's some garbage out there now. Amen. Bring home. Yeah. As many books as you can. There's your education. In fact, Einstein is credited with saying this. I've read it several times now. You've probably seen it too. But if you want your child to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. And if you want them to be more intelligent, Read them more fairy tales. So fill your house with fairy tales and there you go. You're off to the races.

Tim Eaton: 44:56

I've had this thought for a long time, I think I've said it on a couple of these things, but just the idea, if I were to write, if I were to write a book right now, I think it would have to do with something like, until your kids hit at least 12. I am and I and honestly, I feel actually more comfortable even through the youth years, but if you literally just exposed them to the economy of the home, which we've been saying and read to them, if you did nothing else, I'm not, I'm talking even if you didn't do all the field trips and you didn't do everything else that we do as homeschoolers, but if you seriously just read to them, had them reading, and then let them go outside, and I honestly think that would be sufficient. Which is weird, isn't it? Because there are so many discussions and like funding questions and all these things in the schools, and I'm not ripping on it. I'm grateful for people who care. But I could just save them a lot of a time and be like, you know what, like, why don't we just scrap this and then figure out a way to help families that don't have an ideal setting, but to transfer these principles of home education. Mm-hmm. Or what I would rather call family learning or whatever, to all these situations. So I'm glad to hear you say that and I, cuz that's something I want to explore and really empower more single parents and, alternative situations that if they have these ideals of wanting to teach their own children and have, learn with them that they can do that.

Savannah Penny: 46:13

I really absolutely. I actually also have another friend, and I guess this is another example of outsourcing, but I have a friend who homeschools her child. And over the last couple of years, especially with Covid, she had a number of people in her community who wanted to pull their kids out of school. And she literally homeschools now like a little posse of six kids. They're not all her kids, but her values are in line with those of the parents and at least they're not. There's no harm being done. So I just think pull them from, if there's, and there's so many types of harm, right? I have one kid who's one friend whose daughter's being bullied. Pull them out, see if it does them any harm. What I did hear a lot of was mothers especially telling me about their high school aged kids during Covid when nobody was doing anything, who, found themselves again. And by that I just mean found their confidence, especially teenage girls, right? Yeah. And the mothers were saying, really, it, it's been school doing this to them the whole time. I didn't know my daughter's confident. I see my daughter again after, for the first time in, in a few years. And I'm like yeah, let's give that a go.

Tim Eaton: 47:13

How do you respond to somebody? How do you respond to somebody who says Yeah. But if you're taking'em out when they're bullied and they're not exposed to albeit negative in a lot of ways, but they're not exposed to those things. How do they develop the ability and the capacity to function in this world? Because the most of the world functions in a public setting. So how are you equipping your kids, because you get that a lot. I've had that conversation with a million of people. That's how do you find yourself responding to that? Oh, if you take your kid out, then they don't learn to stand up to the person or they, or, there's lots of questions and they're valid concerns. So how do you address Absolutely.

Savannah Penny: 47:45

I just think a kid who is able to be in a safe environment longer. Is not going to all of a sudden not know how to interact. In fact, the longer you can keep someone in a safe environment, the better they'll do when they get into the world and things go wrong. I really agree with that. Yeah. They have this big like a protective shell of their fa of their family, of their home. My kids are sometimes quirky, but they're so confident there's and they have, they, they do interact with a lot of other kids home. Yeah. The homeschool community in most parts of Canada now and the states, you can find a pretty robust homeschool community. Yeah. You can. Yes. Yeah. So they're interacting and when kids get together and they have hours of play, there's drama. That's just part of life. There's drama. They practice these things, but guess what, they come back home to a safe place to process that they're not put back in there every single day. The majority of their hours are where they're safe.

Tim Eaton: 48:42

I have a friend who uses this analogy. I don't know if, analogies aren't meant to work in every single aspect, but basically says you don't buy a new car. Take it home. Chuck rocks it, it ding it because it's gonna get, eventually it's gonna get some dents, and so I don't know if that totally fits in every way, but it does resonate in that way that you're saying. The longer that you can keep them in a safe environment they develop the skills, the strength, the confidence, the the feelings of love in that environment of safety. I also listened to something recently. I want to see what you think about this, that I've talked a lot about curriculum with people and Are you also this idea that it's not curriculum that matters so much as it is the environment of learning? Absolutely. Do you have opinions about that?

Savannah Penny: 49:24

Oh, absolutely. Because even the best curriculum, you can pay thousands of dollars for a curriculum, but it can be used the wrong way. Because it can be used to force learning on someone else, which is not a good way to learn, no matter who you are. So I think curriculum can be used as a really helpful tool, but it can also do damage. When the curriculum becomes more important than the goal of loving to learn and preserving that natural love of learning, then it can be problematic.

Tim Eaton: 49:50

And it ties into what you said earlier about work your way back, like work, work backwards. If you're trying to produce, what are you trying to accomplish with the education of your child? If it's facts and things, maybe curriculum is the top concern. But if it's not, I. This is crazy because I have I feel like I could talk to you for hours and you gotta meet Sarah because we would love to hang out, but awesome. Maybe a couple more, at least for this and maybe we could do another one at some point, but yeah, for sure. Cause I'm looking at the time and I, it feels like we've been talking for 10 minutes, but I know. So can you talk a little bit about one thing I always like to highlight is like people's expertise or their passions. You have experience with literature, you teach literature. What do you wanna say about that and how does it have to do with a homeschooling environment and whatever? Whatever you wanna say.

Savannah Penny: 50:32

Yeah. Okay. So I love that question because really at the heart of my role as the mom, I don't call myself the teacher. I don't call myself the educator. I don't even call myself the facilitator, what I have done,

Tim Eaton: 50:46

you have an ED degree, I'm just kidding. No, exactly. How many times have you heard that question?

Savannah Penny: 50:51

What I have grown to think is the very best role for a parent to play, especially the one who's staying home with the kids in the homeschool is is the example. So I lead out by focusing on my education and the things I love. What do I love? I love literature. So I get things going in the community. I love being involved. I love seeing other people fall in love with literature. I love music. I get things going in the community. I teach here in my home. I teach my own kids. And because it's my own passion, my kids watch me do that and then they're eager to do it. Yes. So I do, I have two of my, two oldest. Kids both had the opportunity to teach. One taught piano, one taught guitar awesome. They've had a lot of opportunities, but that's because they see me doing things now interestingly, I all my kids I've made all my kids give piano a try at some point, because that's my main instrument. And I noticed that if I'm not at the piano playing for enjoyment on a regular basis, Nobody's playing it on a regular basis, it starts to just sit by itself a lot more. Yep. If I find my way into the piano at least once a week or twice a week, and just sit there and enjoy myself more and more, I see my kids heading in that direction, some of them have chosen other instruments, but they're reminded. Of what their passions are by seeing me passionate about something. So

Tim Eaton: 52:09

I think the principle that you're highlighting there that I've, that I keep hearing in, which is awesome, is the principle of modeling. And like you said, you you said it, you said example and and that can happen from the parent. And you have a, basically we, I always say we have two batches of kids and you have a similar situation. Our older so my wife and I aren't like at least not like we both have had music in our lives, but not to like our kids have and they don't see us necessarily modeling it, but our younger kids see the older kids. So in our family, it's just it's not a question and it's not military or something like that. I know, but it's there's not a question if they're going to practice. And people often ask Sarah, they'll say, so like, how, where, when do they have time? And it's we homeschool. And I don't know how like when people are doing a full. Public traditional type life and then music or anything else. That's tough, cuz you can really spend time. And so anyway, I love the principle of modeling that you're highlighting there.

Savannah Penny: 53:04

Yeah, cuz you're right, it does, it trickles down. If you put your effort into focusing, the TJ Ed principle, they call it you, not them, right? Yes. So if I'm focused on my education then my kids are going to see that they're gonna see me reading books. They're gonna see me writing in my journal. They're going to see me playing at the piano. We're out in the garden. They're gonna see me doing the things that I love and they're gonna copy it. But the cool thing is our nine year old now, he's got four older siblings and he is exceptionally good at a lot of stuff. And it's because he watches like his older brother, oldest brother, loves anything to do with religion and scripture. And then the next brother is really into photography and videography. The sister's who's six, almost 16 now. She's a phenomenal performer. She's a singer and a guitarist. Wow. And and then he's got a brother. My, my fourth child is really into fiction and writing. He's gonna be an author someday. He's already getting started and runs his own little story writing club and stuff. But the nine year old sees that. And he wants to take some of everything. So the result is he's a kid who does a lot of stuff. He's good at photography, he's good at singing. He's, he loves talking about religion. He's nine years old. But it's because he sees that and he wants it. He sees the passion and he wants it. And so he starts by, at first, by a, adopting other people's passions.

Tim Eaton: 54:26

It's interesting. Yes. It's interesting that your role as a parent, it changes with that child compared to did your first couple because they're doing so much of that modeling and teaching. So what's your breakdown? Is it four boys and two girls, or is it Yeah. Wow. Four boys, two girls. We have three and three, but yeah. I was gonna ask you something with that because yeah so what in the different stages cuz like you said, you have the same thing, like this split from eight to 19, in the what have you seen is like really what's been I have a few things I remind me to come back to. I wanna ask you about literature and your favorite books. And at least wanna give you a chance to say that but that's a hard question. So much things, so many things occur to me as you say things, but yeah. What have you found challenging in the different stages? Maybe especially the stage from like primary years to the youth years of homeschooling? Like when did you find yourself really uncomfortable in the shifting and transitioning? Do you remember that? Or?

Savannah Penny: 55:17

I don't know that I would pinpoint a transition per se, but I do remember realizing things had gotten easier at some point. I don't know that I remembered feeling it getting easier. All of a sudden I was looking and I was going, this got a lot simpler at some point. And I think it co corresponded to my children's ages to be honest. And really the systems that we got working in our house, because I think your homeschool is really only as good as the systems you put in place to keep on top of the things that just need to happen. So as my children got old enough to do things like do their own laundry make a meal so each of my children have a night of the week where they make the meal when they could Yeah. When, even more so when my older two got to be driving age and they could drive people to them. Yes. Yeah. That was good. But it did, it started to really simplify and I went, wow. Okay. So it was a lot of effort in the front end, and not necessarily with education, but more with just. Just life, right? So how do we keep the house in a, in decent repair? How do we keep it from just becoming a disaster? Putting systems into place over the years has really enabled it to run like a really, a much more well oiled machine than it used to. It takes a little bit of practice, right?

Tim Eaton: 56:27

Yeah. What about navigating friends as they got older?

Savannah Penny: 56:31

I'm sure you've talked about this on your podcast before, but for sure that's like the number one question right? When you first start telling people Yeah. Socialization and, yeah. What about the social? It so happens that I'm a social person and my husband's a social person, so my kids are social apples fall from trees. Exactly. So my kids are really social. When we move to a new area, it hasn't we've been here three years, but every time we move to a new area, I like to get to know people. So I will, I'll set aside Sunday evenings and invite families over just to get to know them. And so we do have a lot of social opportunities both in the homeschool community, in our church community, and in our literal like neighborhood community. And then my kids also will go out to work and they'll have co-workers and stuff like that. Yeah. I think navigating friends has been about what you would expect, especially with teenagers. They care a lot about it. I would say the one thing that we have managed to avoid is the utter lack of confidence that I sometimes see in teenagers who've been battered around by whatever systems they're in, right? My kids have managed to stay confident through the. Ups and downs and the vicissitudes of teenage adolescent life.

Tim Eaton: 57:37

That's the right word, vicissitudes.

Savannah Penny: 57:39

Yeah. It happens and it's nice to have a therapist or a husband, but I think any loving parent, especially when you're, when your interactions with your kids are so consistent, like the vast majority of the time we're together as a family. When we go out and socialize, it's almost always as a family, we move and

Tim Eaton: 57:57

family, friends then. So it's like a family friend thing.

Savannah Penny: 58:00

Yep. Family, friends. If my kids pick up a friend here or there on a rugby team or in a class we will invite the whole family over first. Generally. They don't always, feel like that's cool but generally we try and be the center. Bring your friends here. Friends like it cuz we don't throw on screens very much. There aren't a lot of video games. We've had a lot of space out back, so

Tim Eaton: 58:20

No. You're building relationships. Have you had any kids that have wanted to go to school?

Savannah Penny: 58:25

Never. And I, but I have dealt with a lot of friends who've had kids go to Yes. Want to go to school. And the first piece of advice I usually offer is watch watch the propaganda when you go to the library. Don't be taking books home about how fun it is to ride the school bus to school, or how nice such and such a teacher is. Exactly. And it's just, if you're gonna feed your kids that, and that's fine, but then not allow them to participate in that. That's gonna be hard on your kids. They're going to develop a desire to be somewhere they're not, so

Tim Eaton: 58:57

Have your kids ever been, have they ever taken a course in a school or played sports in the local schools or anything like that?

Savannah Penny: 59:04

No, we've never been in a place that really was open to that. Gotcha. But I did run a choir out of a school an elementary school. So I brought my kids along and they participated in that choir and they just thought. Actually the one comment from my oldest was, wow, there's a lot of time wasted here, which I thought was funny.

Tim Eaton: 59:23

Oh, that's that I asked you about, like how the motivations have evolved. For me, that has been one of the most clear benefits of home education or family learning, or whatever you wanna call it, because there's just, it's, and it's not just time wasted, it's time. It's like both of it, it's like time wasted and then time optimization in a homeschool setting. Yeah. I, amen to that.

Savannah Penny: 59:46

I know. So we I've gone into schools to help people with choirs or music programs, and what I'm surprised at is like I, we have a five minute Carol Sing, for instance, and it takes 35 to 40 minutes to get all the classes filed in and sitting in their rows and then the same amount of time. Totally. And I think, wow, that's five minutes of Carol singing for, an hour of moving kids.

Tim Eaton: 1:00:12

And I experienced that today. I experienced that today because the kids that I teach come over from the adjacent high school and it, I experience that daily. I'm like, I have 65 minutes. And how much of that is totally productive? It's tough, man. My, my wife always says we, yeah, we used to live in Edmonton. We had a thing at the science center. We'd go often the kids and my kids are all over the place exploring whatever. And Sarra would always watch, sadly, And again, this isn't demeaning schools, it's just the reality of this system the way it is. But like kids would be getting in line for a long time to go into something and my kids are just like, and they, you could just see the kids look at'em like, what? Why do these kids get to do this? I know. And they just go wherever they want and you go, I know. No, there's gotta be a better way. Come on.

Savannah Penny: 1:00:57

We always have a good chuckle. Generally we stay at home generally in the mornings to do kind of home schooly stuff, right? Where everybody's, you got your chores, you've got whatever your projects you guys are working on. We meet together at lunch and then if we're having an outing, it happens after lunch. But generally we're coming back from, I dunno, from a field trip or from the beach or from the the river or wherever we like to go hiking or whatever we, or even grocery shopping. We're coming back and frequently we will end up behind a school bus and the comment is always, They're just getting home now, like that's incredible. They woke up and got on their school bus before we even woke up in the morning, and they're just getting home now. My kids can't even fathom.

Tim Eaton: 1:01:38

No, they Cannot relate to that at all. I know. Oh, so where are you? Where do you live?

Savannah Penny: 1:01:43

So we're in New Brunswick, new Brunwick, right on the coast. We're about a half hour from the Atlantic? Yeah. Oh. And we're like, you we're out in the boonies, like not even in a small town. We're way out.

Tim Eaton: 1:01:52

Just I I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm prolonging this. I just have so many things. One, one very direct simple question is, do you guys like Gordon Neufeld? Yes. Okay. I was just wondering what your husband thought of that. And yeah. I wonder I wasn't, I was pretty confident that you would say that, but I just, I, it's really good.

Savannah Penny: 1:02:08

Oh yeah. I see that parenting book, the first one I point them to and my husband would by Gordon Newfeld. It's just absolutely brilliant. It blows every other parenting book out of the water in my book.

Tim Eaton: 1:02:21

Cool. I like to hear it. I like to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Maybe a couple more and then we'll yeah, sure. One thing I'll just add to what we were just talking about. One thing that we've noticed, so we've moved from Edmonton to Southern Alberta and we were excited to come back cuz it's a smaller community and it's it's a. Like there, there's more opportunities to get involved in things and the, here in Alberta you can't most principals and stuff like that don't even know this. But if you have an adjacent school that doesn't have a team that offers something, then you can play for the school's team. And most people don't even know that. But that's how it works. And I don't know if that's true in other provinces but it's or states. I know in Texas and Oklahoma and stuff like that, they actually have homeschool leagues and they're like, good. But anyway I have to say like when we were first here, we were so excited cuz they got to do that. But it and it still is awesome that they can, and our kids have played for school teams which is pretty pioneering for around here cuz people just haven't had homeschool kids do that. But one thing we're noticing though, that, so the challenge that it's introduced to us, It's like what you were saying about getting the school bus book at the library. Yeah. Because what you're doing is they hear all the time and where we live, it's a very I don't know how to say it, but a very homogeneous place. Like lots of people have the same faith. Oh yeah. And so everything happens at the school. Yeah. And so our kids are trying to navigate both of those worlds and we're finding that really, Challenging and so that's tricky to do. Yeah. Any advice for us? Oh yeah. No pressure,

Savannah Penny: 1:03:50

right? No, we don't have that option, so that would be really tricky if we did we here, you would have to really get an in with the principal. And I have, I've heard that people haven't been successful with that, so we really haven't tried. What we've done instead is start our own programs. Yeah, like this next year. I always wanted my kids to be in a musical. I didn't really want them performing on Sundays. We don't tend to do stuff like that on Sundays. So it couldn't really be the community because those were always on Sundays. So this upcoming year, five of five of us mothers who have a little bit of a. Performing arts background are putting together a homeschool musical. Awesome. With just luck. We're doing newsies and that should be fun. But we've got enough. I would just say if that's an issue, get your homeschool community together, right? Let your kids find their favorite kids amongst their, the homeschool community. It's gonna be easier for them. If they do, their schedules will match a little bit better. Chances are their personalities will match a little bit better. I would just say, yeah. Get your, get your focus back in the homeschool community. Build those things, build the teams, build the field trips, build the clubs, whatever it is. The choirs do that in your homeschool community. If you can's just people wanna be where they're socially successful. Especially as teenagers. Yeah. They will go where they're having the most social success. So if that can be in their homeschool community, that's good.

Tim Eaton: 1:05:07

That's well said. Our kids' friends are typically not homeschooled. Yeah. And they're awesome. They're awesome kids. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm just saying there is a reality to that. And, it's not a negative thing one way or the other as far as a critique on a public school kid or a homeschool kid. It's more just the reality of you just see there is a like-mindedness. It doesn't mean that you're not inclusive to others. It's just that that allows you to function and live in a way that you're preparing your kids for the future you want for them and what is best. And so anyway, I don't know. I it's a grappling, I don't think there's a clear answer, but it's definitely a grapple for us.

Savannah Penny: 1:05:43

My older kids play rugby. And what they found and this was maybe a bit of a different scenario, but they play rugby in league rugby, community rugby, where they're learning from the age of 11 how to tackle properly, how to do everything properly. And then they'll watch their good friends, who are in high school. They'll go to a day of high school rugby and they're like, this is barbaric. They're like, it's amazing. They're not getting hurt. They don't know what they're doing out there. They're just clobbering each other, right? And I'm like, yeah, that's true. So if you do have an option for the sports, they love to have Yeah. A non-school league. I don't know it probably works differently there. Yeah.

Tim Eaton: 1:06:16

It depends on the community, right? Yeah. You're in a city. So that's the thing. Like I said, we came, we're so excited because you could do it, it wasn't on the Sabbath and all that kind of stuff. And then we're like, ah, we wanna go back to this city because it's just more people and there's more offerings and more arts and there's more things that you can be involved in and not feel like you're missing out on everything because it only happens in one place. Did you grow up playing sports as well? Like your sister? Yes. Yeah. Did you know Steve Nash too?

Savannah Penny: 1:06:42

I did. I was a good bit younger than him. She was his buddy and I was there. I was the little tag along. Yeah.

Tim Eaton: 1:06:47

So crazy. I know. That's not totally germane to our discussion, but interesting. Anyway. We gotta do this again, but I just wanted to ask, two more questions. One, talk about a few books. What books do you love? what are you really passionate about? And in that, like for either young children or youth, what do they need to be reading?

Savannah Penny: 1:07:05

That's such a hard question. It gets harder the more into books you get. I could pinpoint some of my favorites and I'm always scanning my students to say what do you love? And what have you not loved as much? One book that our family has really loved, summer of the Monkeys, Wilson Rawls, he wrote where The Red Fern Grows. But Summer of the Monkeys is a lot less well known a book, but maybe the more beautiful of the two

Tim Eaton: 1:07:27

I that there, and I'm thinking right now, do I know that name? Because I know my wife and kids will know, but, okay. Summer of the Monkeys.

Savannah Penny: 1:07:34

Oh, so good. Summer of the Monkeys. You really can't go wrong with that book. Another book that we have just really again and again with my kids is The Hiding Place by Corey 10. Boom. Amen. Yeah, phenomenal book. My older kids have all been sharing around Screw Tape Letters by CS Lewis. It's one of my personal favorites, and it takes a more mature mind to, to discuss those ideas. The younger kids. Oh my goodness so I run a battle of the books actually a few years ago. Oh, cool. I'm just gonna take a little side do it. Yeah, go ahead. A few years ago, we were in Ontario, and I saw literally a poster in the library that said, battle of the Books, get together a team and then come and read, this list of 20 books. And I was like, this is awesome. We love to read. And my kids and one other family, joined together as a team and they started reading through the book list. And I thought, these are trashy books. Like one of the first ones was zombie apocalypse stuff, and I called the librarian, I said, Who chose this book list. And she said, oh, it's government funded, so we had to do, One that was written in the last year, one written by a Canadian author, and she said, we have our quota, so sometimes the choices aren't that great. Oh. So I just said, okay, pull us out. And within 15 minutes I had a list of 20 books that I thought I'm gonna run my own battle of the books. That was maybe seven or eight years ago. And I've run one every year since, with the exception of the first year of Covid. And I love it. Now it's only a dozen books. We have six months to read a dozen books. And this year we have nine teams of kids throughout New Brunswick. That's amazing. Who are amazing. All reading these classics. Yeah. I call it the Battle of the Books Classics Edition. And they spend from March till the end of August reading these books. We have a Zoom meeting every month to to just talk about it. I don't make any money from it, it's just cause I want my kids to be reading every books. Yeah, for sure. There are more. Motivated to do it when there are huge prize baskets at the end of the Yes. They always really compete hard on that one, so that's cool. Yeah. I pick my favorites. So things like just David by Eleanor Porter. It's like the boy version of Pollyanna. Okay. Also by Eleanor Porter. We love little men, little women. Those are absolute favorites. Little Britches. Yeah. Little Britches. So good. That whole series anne of Green Gables, you can't go wrong with those. The classic, you just can't go wrong. There's a reason why they've lasted this long.

Tim Eaton: 1:09:54

Carry on Mr. Bowditch. I don't know if you like that one.

Savannah Penny: 1:09:56

Yeah, that's a great one. My kids love that. That's in my level two class. And the kids just love that one. That's awesome. The true stories, if you can find biographical stories written towards, a preteen audience, those are almost always a hit.

Tim Eaton: 1:10:10

We're very Charlotte Mason esc in our home, and we love the living books those all qualified. I was just thinking as you were saying all that if I was like a governor or a president or a Prime Minister, I would make it mandatory that librarians had to be homeschool moms. Could you imagine that? Like I know there would be. Talk about improving the education of your country, man.

Savannah Penny: 1:10:30

I know. I've told my husband if I ever get to come back in another form, I'm gonna be a librarian next time.

Tim Eaton: 1:10:36

That's Sarra. She loves it. She has so many ideas for the local library. Do you have a Yoto? Do you know what a Yoto is? No. You should look up Yoto. Okay. Yodas are pretty awesome, man. It's definitely revolutionized a couple of things in our home. Okay. Basically Sarra was struggling because to get audio stuff, it was navigating the phones and all this stuff and you had to mess with all that involves and so Sarra researched it and found these Yotos. They're unbelievable. They're so cool. Our kids love them. So anyway, and tons of her friends have gotten them as well. But anyway, it's awesome.

Savannah Penny: 1:11:04

I think my cousin might have mentioned something about that. A few months. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. I'm gonna check that out.

Tim Eaton: 1:11:09

Yeah, we should probably wrap it up before we do and I think we're gonna have to talk again cuz I'm not totally satisfied with ending the conversation now, is there some way people can get ahold of you if they wanted to? One thing that I hear on podcasts is, how do they get ahold of you? Either Facebook, Instagram, or an email or something where if people were like, man, so much of what Savannah was saying resonates.

Savannah Penny: 1:11:28

For sure. So I have my business, which is also my email. It's called Classics Alowed. So classics alowed is my website and alowed is A L O W E D, classics alowed.org. Also, that's my email classics alowed gmail.com. So you can message me either way. You can message me through the website or by, email. I love talking homeschool with people.

Tim Eaton: 1:11:50

Thank you so much and I really hope that we can do that again thanks for taking time. For sure. And I know that was probably longer than you expected, but that was really enjoyable. So thank you very much. And I'm positive that sure, me too. People are benefiting from hearing from you and I can tell that, whatever you're doing in your home sounds amazing. So thank you very much.

Savannah Penny: 1:12:08

Thank you so much. We'll talk again.

Tim Eaton: 1:12:15

That wraps up another edition of this golden hour podcast. If you haven't done so already, I would totally appreciate it. If you would take a minute and give us a review in Apple podcasts or Spotify, it helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you much. Please consider sharing this show with friends and family members that you think would get something out of it. And thank you for listening and for your support. I'm your host, Tim Eaton. Until next time, remember to cherish this golden hour with your children and family.