53. Julie Bogart and Brave Writer

In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Julie Bogart from Cincinnati, Ohio. Julie is a homeschool mother of five, grandmother of three, author, speaker, host of the Brave Writer podcast, and business owner and founder of Brave Writer. She is passionate about writing and providing resources to homeschool families and others, including excellent online courses. Julie was introduced to homeschool by her future husband’s friend, and specifically loved the idea of tailoring her children’s education to each individual. We delve into the nuances of her journey in homeschooling, her beliefs about fostering critical thinking in children, her lifelong curiosity, and her vision of the future of homeschooling. Julie also shares a wealth of practical advice for making your homeschool experience more joyful and impactful.

Connect with Julie
bravewriter.com
@juliebravewriter 

Books
Better Late Than Early
A Fever in the Heartland

Resources
Konos

This Golden Hour

Transcript

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Julie Bogart 0:00

just this last week, my granddaughter was here and I had the binoculars out. And I had the bird book out. She's three years old. She's up on a stepstool. She's looking through, I see a red bird. We open the book, we find the red birds, we make the connection. To me, that's what homeschooling is so good at.

Timmy Eaton 0:20

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 spend time with Julie Bogart from Cincinnati, Ohio. Julie is a homeschool mother of five, grandmother of three, author, speaker, host of the Brave Writer podcast, and business owner and founder of Brave Writer. She is passionate about writing and providing resources to homeschool families and others, including excellent online courses. Julie was introduced to homeschool by her future husband's friend and specifically loved the idea of tailoring her children's education to each individual. We delve into the nuances of her journey in homeschooling, her beliefs about fostering critical thinking in children, her lifelong curiosity, And her vision of the future of homeschooling. Julie also shares a wealth of practical advice for making your homeschool experience more joyful and impactful. Welcome back to this golden hour podcast today. We have a very special guest Julie Bogart from the brave writer and all that entails. Julie if you're not new to homeschooling, you already know, Julie, if you are new to homeschooling then you need to know her. And she is a homeschool mother of five, a writer, an author, a speaker, a podcast host, a business owner and founder, and she's done so much. And so I'm going to. Just stop at that. And then throughout our conversation, you will see why you need to get to know Julie Bogart. But Julie, thank you for being here. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Can you just give your own bio? I know I just talked a few things, but can you just give a brief bio of yourself and let people get a feel for you.

Julie Bogart 2:48

Yeah, that would be great. I grew up in Southern California in the 60s and 70s, not too far from Malibu. Very crunchy granola background. My mother was into health food before everybody else. And yeah, I've been in a cult, I've been in religion, I've been, I'm a UCLA grad. I've done all kinds of things. I've lived abroad multiple times. I've spoken more than one language, multiple languages. I've studied French, Spanish, Arabic, Berber. So I have a lot of experiences in my life have traveled a lot. I now live in Cincinnati, Ohio. And at the time when we moved, I was married and my husband was looking for a job. And when he told me Ohio, I was like. John, I said I live anywhere in the world. I never said the Midwest, right? So that was a little bit of my Chicago. Hey, so my parents grew up in Chicago and I went there all the time to see grandparents and I loved Chicago, but I think I was, I don't know. I just didn't really know what it would be like to live here. And here's what I'll say. 25 years in, I love Cincinnati. I love the Midwest. I love Ohio. And it's been a fantastic place to raise kids, but. Let me just say this. My mother is a professional author. I grew up with a mom who wrote 72 books in her career. My father's a lawyer. I grew up having to argue my cases with good support. And I think by the time I was an adult, writing was a well established practice in my own life. Chronic journaler, looked for every opportunity to get published that I could. I wrote for magazines and newspapers and newsletters. I became a ghostwriter and an editor of news publications. Nothing big, nothing fancy. I mean, When I look back, I'm like, very small career, but I absolutely loved what I was doing. Around the same time, I became exposed to home educators and homeschooling families. In fact, I was told about homeschool before I was even married and the idea that you could custom design learning for a child was completely enchanting to me. This would have been 1984. And I really thought. I had such a good public school upbringing that the only way in the current era I would be able to duplicate it would be to bring my kids home. That's how weird my background is. My junior high life was in Malibu Canyon with these ex hippies who had all been in the Peace Corps and we did the most wonderful experiences for learning. And by the time the nineties came around, all of that was gone from school. So when I read about homeschooling, I was like that's how I'll be able to do it. So I joined up and I started in 91 and I just kept having babies. And I made all my friends move to my neighborhood. There were five homeschooling families on our cul de sac at one point. And we just did a lot together. And I fell in love with this whole form of education. So that's really the genesis of my story. While I was home educating. People knew I was a writer, professional writer, and I had homeschool friends ask me for help. And that's the genesis of Brave Writer. I started to see that the way a professional approaches writing is nothing like how they teach it in school. And the school way of writing was creating untold damage in children. And professional writing strategies actually released the writer within our kids.

Timmy Eaton 6:16

What would be like a specific example of that, like of the releasing it?

Julie Bogart 6:21

Yes. Traditional education focuses on writing as a set of skills to master, like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and formats. And they expect you to take all these thoughts that live in your imagination and in your mind and funnel them down through an arm and bring them to be accurately. So, We get graded on a misspelling, we get graded if we forgot a comma, we get graded if we don't use a capital letter. These are marks against us. And we're expected to put all those thoughts in a container, like a report, or a paragraph, or a description. And if you don't follow those articulated guidelines. You are going to be marked down, no matter how beautiful or brilliant the content is. So what ends up happening is, kids learn to dumb down their content to meet the criteria so they don't get marked down. And the more that they dumb down their content, the less they feel connected to what they're writing. The less they feel connected, the less they want to write. So when a 7th grader tells me, I hate writing. I know they've never had the pleasurable experience of being read. Professional writers write for readers, they don't write for grades. And when they go into their professional writing workshops, the whole emphasis is on how to capture the attention of a reader. And they provide you with the experience of being read. They read your sentences and say, wow, that was surprising, I love the way you brought me through this, crisis in the story. I wonder if you added dialogue, if that would drive that home even more, but that's not really how it looks in school. In school, it's don't use passive voice. You misspelled accommodate. You missed a comma. I thought overall you met the criteria, but you forgot these things. And so it's more like you're being measured against standards, not. Allowing the beauty of what you have to express to even make an impression on the teacher now. Occasionally a teacher will notice someone who has an innate knack for writing and say really kind things, but our kids who don't yet have that knack also. Deserve to be read and valued for what they offer, and that's what Brave Riders all about.

Timmy Eaton 8:37

Well, And as you say that, I think of, I just thought of so many examples of that principle applied in other arenas. So for example, like I had a high school basketball coach who, when you made a mistake, he was quick to take you out. And I was thinking it's a similar kind of principle of this idea. And so maybe the question to ask with that, and then I want to come back. I don't want to forget things. You said a few things there. That I want to come back to, but I'm like when you what was I saying? I was saying that the,

Julie Bogart 9:02

you were talking about your basketball coach pulling you out. Yeah. Or a mistake.

Timmy Eaton 9:06

Yeah. So there's, so I guess the question, or I think of people that like they have this idea of starting a business, but then they get totally in their heads about what about this and this, and they start doing those things without tapping into, like you said, just the what's inside you. And because you feel like you have to conform to some kind of pre set ideas. You're very reluctant to unleash yourself or to let yourself out because you're trying to stay within some certain boundaries. So what is the line between keeping somebody like, the kite analogy, it's like you soar because there is a string attached. If the kite has no attachment, then it just goes crazy. And I know there's no like set answer for this, but what is the line between letting a kid find himself and really take off in as a basketball player or a kid as a writer? Or somebody who wants to start a business. What's the line between there are some things to, some principles to stick to so that you can unleash what's inside, but then where does it become too much that it actually squelches what's inside?

Julie Bogart 10:06

Such a great question. It's funny. I was just writing about this yesterday and I use, I'm a huge sports fan. Like I follow every sport. I have all my favorite teams. I know all the players played fantasy football for years. So I hold on

Timmy Eaton 10:18

real quick though. So who's a, what are a couple of favorite teams? Cause that, Oh

Julie Bogart 10:22

the Cincinnati Bengals, Joe Burrow, of course I have the Jersey, the whole thing. I followed LeBron James since he was 13. So I adore him. I grew up with LA Kings hockey. We had season tickets. So I was during the whole era in the seventies. Yeah, but I follow everything. I grew up playing tennis and I was going to give you this example. So when I was a kid and I first went to my First tennis clinic. I didn't know how to swing a racket. I didn't know how to serve. Didn't know how to keep score. But the tennis coach knew that if kids were ever going to want to learn how to do a two handed backhand with follow through, they had to actually think tennis was fun. So the way we started is he gave us a ton of balls and he just said, Take your racket and however you can get that ball over the net. So we were like hitting it under our legs and hitting it overhead. Yeah, you couldn't go wrong when it bounced. No, and it was thrilling every time the ball went over and we're like running laps around the court taking turns, right? And eventually, you start to get frustrated because what you're doing isn't actually working. But the satisfaction when it does get over the net is so compelling that now you're interested. So now he's turn your body sideways. Maybe bend your knees a little bit. Oh, see, now it's really going over the net. But what we tend to do with writing is we say this, Hey, five year old fluent speaker. who has a huge vocabulary and complex thoughts. You're not allowed to show those until you can spell perfectly, handwrite neatly, and punctuate accurately. We don't let them understand what the game of writing is. The game of writing is entertaining a reader. It is not learning how to be a referee for writing. So imagine If your coach is just a referee, the only thing they're interested in is the rules and telling you what you're doing wrong, and they never give you the actual tools to excel at what the game is about, the thing that's fun to do, which is playing, connecting, using your body and winning. So I think parents and teachers tend to adopt a referee role. When they're teaching writing, and they're really interested, and they think teachers actually believe that they know writing well because they're expert referees.

Timmy Eaton 12:35

And they get excited to correct you. It's like the librarian that loves to like, tell you to be quiet.

Julie Bogart 12:40

No, completely. But here's what's crazy. Referees do not have jerseys that we wear. Referees are not in the Hall of Fame. Referees simply ensure that the game that's being played is played fairly. And accuracy in writing is literally the least interesting part of writing. Right now it's being done by spelling grammar check. It's done by voice to text. AI is about to take over. We should not put so much emphasis on the mechanics in the early stages of development. So here's to answer your question. When, though, do we require them to care? And of course, that is a telling question, because we still secretly believe that stuff matters, and I really don't think it does. But that's a radical thing to say. So here's what I say. Here's what I say. We teach the mechanics of writing using someone else's writing. We never use a child's original writing to teach those things. So we start with copywork and dictation in my program. And we will take a book like The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White, find a passage, have the child copy it, have them go back and double check to make sure they copied it accurately. True story, this morning I was trying to copy a passage out of one of my devotional inspirational readings into my journal. And I screwed it up three times, I'm 62 years old, professional writer, kept missing a word, misspelled something, reordered things, left out a punctuation mark, kept ripping it out of my, and I was like, we really expect way too much of children, but we start with copywork where they start to get in that swing of accurately transcribing. Then we build to a dictation practice through some incremental steps that we teach in Brave Rider. So that now they're listening to the words and they are writing them as accurately as they can, punctuating as well as they can. But they don't have to simultaneously think original thoughts. So they can give full attention to that experience, but it feels like they're thinking an original thought because the thought is being supplied. It's not just a worksheet where all the problems have the same comma structure. This is intelligible language. That sounds like how they talk. That is what we want for writing. And over time, as they gain skill, they borrow those skills into their original writing. Here's my favorite hilarity. A child turns in a paper, the teacher gives it back and corrects the misspellings. What have we learned? We've learned that the teacher knows how to spell those words. That's correct. Because if the child knew how to spell that word, they would have. So what is the point of the correction? As a home educator, what you can do that's so much better than teachers is you can go write down that word in a list in your own notebook. Yes. And you can go design copy work and dictation that will now teach them the spelling

Timmy Eaton 15:43

of that word. That's exactly what my wife does. Yeah. There

Julie Bogart 15:46

you go. And that will do more to grow their spelling skills than all the teacher red marks on a paper the child never looks at again.

Timmy Eaton 15:54

And the cost of that, the cost of killing the, that's what does lead to kids going, Oh, I'm not a good writer. And it has nothing to do with writing actually. So one, one, Oh, again, I got to unpack a few things there. So one thing I get from that is that. It's been interesting to me to listen to educational discussions at high levels. And my conclusion, a lot of times is that we are complexifying, if that's a word, we are making things way more complicated than they need to be. And you just illustrated that with just simple ideas of writing and just keep the fire going. You talk about the igniting a lot. One example you gave in the Brave Learner, was you said maybe the better way to approach a math curriculum, for example, is to let them go through it, look at pictures and find out what they're interested in. And then if, if they're on page 126 in this math book, then they got to go, Oh, I'm interested in that. Now I got to go back and find out what, to build on those things. And but we we go the opposite way. We don't do anything to ignite their learning and their interest. And so your writing example was perfect. And then what you said about AI, that was really insightful because. If a robot can do these things, then how does that distinguish us from them? And so why don't we focus on the thing that is in inside us as humans, or as, depending on your faith belief as children of God or whatever people believe. Why don't we, why don't we focus on that and then, and expand and cultivate that more than

Julie Bogart 17:21

robotics. I am a huge fan of this AI development. I was an early adopter with the internet. I have the same enthusiasm and excitement about it. Here's the thing that I realized. I attend these weekly meetings at University of Cincinnati, and there's 135 people that show up every month, and we just talk. And it's ping, ping. My brain just is exploding with the possibilities. The thing that is very clear to me, is that AI is actually helping us value our humanity at a level we haven't for the last several decades. That's right. We're suddenly aware that the thoughts I have cannot be thought by AI. The imagination I have cannot be created by AI. Even if AI can be quote unquote imaginative, whatever that might mean, it can't ever have mine. It can never have mine. No, it can never have my thoughts. It can never have my analyses. So what's happening is we're actually starting to recognize almost what happened in the industrial revolution, right? There was a time when it was artisans who made the nails, who made all of the tools who did the craftsmanship. Will we lose some of that craftsmanship when we go to machine built things? Yes. But the craftsman. They become elevated, celebrated in a different way. And what we're doing is we're expanding our appreciation for the mind, because the mind is not robotic. It is actually unpredictable, so alive, capable of so much, and it really gets squelched by the mechanistic system of traditional education, which by the way, was birthed for the sake of the factory

Timmy Eaton 19:03

and industry, right? Yeah.

Julie Bogart 19:05

That's over. That's a century ago.

Timmy Eaton 19:08

I appreciate you saying that because even until this moment, I hadn't thought of it necessarily that way. And it's almost like we should be grateful because what it does is it compels us To be the creative people that we are and to innovate instead of relegating what we are to mechanistic skills or a skillset. And so I love what some in a recent podcast interview, somebody said skillsets expire. And so we have to learn principles of learning and who we are as

Julie Bogart 19:37

creators. A hundred percent. I'm reading a book right now about the origins of the KKK called The Fever in the Heartland and one of the ways that they expanded their influence in the United States in the early 1920s is they created these bands of people who looked for thieves and one of the comments in the book really cracked me up. It said It seemed like an anachronistic way to expand when cars were being rolled out by the thousands, like they were lost in a time period that was completely gone or dying. And people will say to me things like I really don't AI, it's going to take away jobs. I was like, yes, like lamplighters. Saddle makers, we have expired jobs consistently throughout history. But every time there's an innovation, we're also creating an incredible expanse of new jobs and new ways of viewing the world. So when I think about education, and it really does go to the heart of our discussion here, Homeschooling for me is a rebuke against the foundations of traditional education, and it is acting as a public critique. Are we withdrawing from the school system and taking the funding and creating a hollowing out of schools? Unfortunately, yes. That is happening in many districts. I am a huge proponent of public school. Not everyone can homeschool. There are communities that rely on robust schools. I vote for every tax levy that supports my schools. But that does not mean that I'm going to put my kids in the school. It doesn't mean I'm going to do that because these are the only children I have. And how is the revolution going to come if nobody is willing to say Not this way, not on my watch. So for me, homeschooling became participating in what I hope is truly a reformation of education.

Timmy Eaton 21:35

I can't wait to go back and hear all that you just said, because that was awesome. And it made me think, I wish I could recall the exact words you just said but what came to me was this idea of, we have to be more instead of scarcity minded, we need to be abundant minded, growth mindset, not fixed. Which are common kind of trendy words these days, but it does fit because otherwise so what I mean by that is. Some people might be going if we allow technology to, to advance, then they're gonna take the jobs we have. And like your viewpoint was, and which I agree with is that why don't we let, why don't we celebrate what's happening with technology? Because what it does, it takes those things that we, that isn't unique to us and allows us to expand and improve and better our humanity so that we can. Contribute more. And so we shouldn't be, we shouldn't be scarce to do. Oh, no, this, a robot's going to take my job. We should be thinking outside the box and remember who we are as individuals and as humans that we can expand. And so I like that focus on growth instead of fixed. If I were to go back to your you said you got interested in homeschooling, but what was like the, what was like the first exposure? What was it that, Oh my God, remember that?

Julie Bogart 22:44

Oh yeah, totally. And it's a great, it's a great story. So back in the eighties, I was. Dating a man, the man who became my husband and we were about to get engaged and we were planning to live in North Africa. My life is very different now than it used to be, but I was a missionary at the time. And so one of the members of that team was a good friend of my husband's. And before I was engaged, he wanted to vet me. So he sat me down, I was 22 years old and he said, Hey, Julie, are you going to homeschool your kids? And I said, Home. What home? What? And he said, homeschool. I said, I don't know what that is. And of course, no one did know what that was in the eighties. That was a very rare thing that people did. And he goes, Oh it's the way that we are going to protect to preserve the next generation from this, communist evolving government. Like it was a very political rant that he gave at that point, which did not interest me. But then. He all of a sudden pivoted and he said, Gretchen and I are raising our three kids and we get to tailor make their education. So here are some of the things we get to do with them. And he started describing a life I could imagine. I wasn't even married yet, let alone having children, but it reminded me of how much I loved school when I was growing up, what he described. And so by the end of this little like recitation, he says, so what do you think? Would you homeschool your kids? I said, yeah, I think maybe I would. And then he turned to John and he said, Hey, she's all right. And weirdly I did get engaged to him and my husband's sister home educated her kids. So I had someone going ahead of me. Like she was already doing that. Yeah, but I didn't know it because it was illegal in California, so she was like hiding, Yes. Yeah. So crazy. But then I found out, yeah, and then I got to hang around all these families while I lived in Morocco and they were all homeschooling. And by the time we moved back to the states, I was completely bought in. I'm a crunchy granola girl. I home birth, die breastfed. Homeschooling was a very easy sell for me. So that

Timmy Eaton 24:46

is interesting how a lot of those things go together, which is interesting because it's like, these are very natural people that are thinking through things are doing those things. What were it early on? Who were like your mentors that you went to? know I've read about Dottie.

Julie Bogart 24:59

Is that Dottie was, yes. Dottie is, my favorite person to talk about. And we're still very close friends to this day. She has a background in early education and is an artist. And one of the most gifted, creating the hygge, cozy atmosphere people I've ever met in my entire life. Like all I want to do is hang out at her house. So what she did for me is she gave me a vision of what it felt like to have Cozy learning, learning that felt like an invitation, not like something you insisted on. That's not to say that during our years together, she and I didn't go through various crises. I remember her older daughter, Brooke was really struggling with spelling at one point, and her daughter was like 11 years old. And so Dottie came to me, her kids were older than mine, and she knew I was a freelance writer. And she's I'm worried, what should I do differently? Can I take a look at her writing? She brings it to me, I look back at Dottie and I said, she's a fantastic speller. It's just that she's using French phonics to spell English words. She had been in a French school in Morocco for multiple years. And so when she came back to the States and was trying to do English, she was using her French phonics. It's that kind of thing though, where You have to help each other, and you don't know what you don't know, and I spoke French, so I was able to see it, Dottie did not, so then, we're like, oh, we just gotta work on English phonics, and it was those kinds of conversations that I look back on, and I think we're so rich. We experimented together, we tried things like, Setting up a schedule and then we watched that fall apart in a spectacular way, right? If one of us had an idea like one day we were studying I guess it would have been the pony express and I realized I read about that Yeah, I didn't understand what that was. So we just got everyone in the neighborhood to do a pony express To me that was like the halcyon era. It was born before the internet. I used two things that were really key in, in my development at the time, and I don't even know if either of them are still around, Family Fun Magazine, I subscribed to it. And that became like the core of my curriculum, whatever was in that magazine, we did that month. That's awesome. I used the book lists from Sunlight because Sunlight was founded actually by one of my missionary team members. So I know all about it. Yeah I was in her living room when she got the idea and I started with sunlight I used konos, which was really popular back in the day Just what is that? I don't even know if it still exists, but here's what was great about Konos. It was this belief at the time that you should have a kinesthetic relationship to every subject. And she tended to tie the subjects to character qualities, which was a very early homeschooling Christian way to think, but it was wonderful. I remember the first chapter was on listening. So we did symphonies, we made cookie sheet models of the eardrum. You know what I mean? Like she had all this kinesthetic stuff around listening that got us into our bodies. And I really think that's the source of Brave Learner thinking for reading and writing. I listened, I read a lot of Raymond and Dorothy Moore, better late than early. They were hugely influential. I used. E. D. Hirsch's books, what every second grader should know, what every third grader should know. Those are pretty whitewashed. I wouldn't recommend them now, but at the time I didn't know any better. I also used a bunch of curriculum that I regret, so I'm not going to give those people rest. But also I did a lot without curriculum. I relied on the library a ton for all of my like science, history. We would just go there and Pick a topic and we'd go into the nonfiction stacks and come home with 13 books and just do that. Just yeah, and then the internet started and right before that I got interested in Charlotte Mason and that really became the core of my practice from probably 96 through about 2004 and I really love everything about Charlotte Mason education that was a really powerful time for me.

Timmy Eaton 29:12

That, that resonates because that's really my wife because if somebody said, Hey, what are the curricula that your wife really likes or that you, your family does, we wouldn't really go to any, to be honest but we would say resources picking and pulling from all over the place, but if, but as far as an influence, I would say the, probably the main influence in our homeschooling, as far as a philosophy and what we do, it does come from Charlotte Mason. And so it really is. And I'm finding that more and more, there are some. That really connect with the curriculum. And, but the majority I find are taking principles from places all over the place. And one thing that we have never really done much of is co op. And I hear people today, especially talking a ton about co ops and I see the value of community, the principle of community in that. But we just, we never have gotten into them. you know, in some ways it's awesome because you're connecting so many like minded families. On the other hand, it becomes a kind of a thing unto itself that almost can be inhibiting unless somebody really enjoys that. And so to each his or her own but, anyway, so that's, we, my wife, I always call it Sarah schooling.

Julie Bogart 30:12

What's that? Oh, is

Timmy Eaton 30:13

that your wife? That's just my wife. And I just saw her schooling because our family is unique from yours and the next person and she just adapts it to our family

Julie Bogart 30:19

and our children. See, I love that. I had a customer say that they weren't unschoolers or Charlotte Mason schoolers or classical educators. They were us schoolers. And I put that in the brave learner because I loved it so much, but I was going to say about co ops. I've done multiple styles. I had one that was just four other families and that was just like an amazing once a month party. And then that way we could just. Divide up who did the party and we all came to it and it would be the medieval feast or learning how to build electrical circuits. They were so random.

Timmy Eaton 30:49

Or that Pony Express day, right? That was a, that could be defined as a

Julie Bogart 30:52

mini co op. As a party. That's right. Exactly. But then I did join a co op with about a hundred families here in Cincinnati and. And it was well run and what it provided was classes in subjects that weren't as comfortable for me, like biology, where they dissected things or algebra too, right? So I think staying flexible and being open, but also knowing who you are. My daughter in law and attending a little home school co op right now that is basically a forest school. Their oldest daughter isn't even four years old yet. She turns four next week, but they've been going and I went and visited, they invited me to come and because it's local. I'm like, yeah, I'd love to hang out with you guys. And it was amazing. Like they do these outdoor craft projects and experiments. And then basically the kids run feral while the parents just sit and have coffee near a bonfire. I'm like, this is my favorite co op I've ever been to. Good so really Co op can be rigid and faith based and however. They can be problematic. They can be wonderful. I think just know yourself. Know your family. Give yourself permission to go, to stay, to leave, to start from scratch, to do it for a season. You don't have to do everything forever. I

Timmy Eaton 32:05

love everything you just said and just the principle that stood out is exactly what you said about flexibility and knowing yourself, right? Yes. And to thine own self be true. Now, just real quick, isn't it you got me interested in the the new stage of grandma homeschooling. And how many grandkids do you have? And do your kids homeschool? Tell us a little bit about that.

Julie Bogart 32:23

That's a great question. So I have three grandkids. My oldest is only turning four next week. And then I have two grandsons that are each within a couple months of each other, almost two years old. And that's two different kids. My oldest two kids are the ones who have grandkids for me. What I am noticing, I don't know if they'll homeschool or not. But what I notice is just how incredibly intentional they are around learning. And my daughter in law in particular, she's married to the most unschooled child of my family, and I joke all the time that he is going to be a terrible school parent if they put the kids in school, he will never think they have to do homework, pull them out for a play day. No, attendance does not matter, but the funny thing is. His wife was a high performing student. She graduated high school at 16, went to college early. Like she's, so it's going to be interesting to see what I have said to all my kids about everything is. You do you. I did me. I did the things that seemed amazing to me, and I'm going to be the most enthusiastic public school grandma if that's what it is, or I'll help you teach writing if I if you homeschool and I'd do that. Anyway, I would do it Anyway, I guess that's who you are. It's right So whatever my kids do I'm a big fan of and then we all go on the learning journey together to me the big problem with discussion around education actually today is the way we hive off Into these hierarchies instead of seeing everything as a learning opportunity and really. You can learn in any environment. Do some lend themselves to more optimal circumstances around a certain subject area? Yes. Some families, I talk to them every day, moms who are suddenly divorcing and their husbands won't let them keep homeschooling. The last thing I want a person like that to hear from me when they're listening to this call, Is well, you're picking the inferior way. Your Children can't have a great education. The truth is you can go into that with your homeschool mom brain and enrich everything they get at school. You can be enthusiastic. You can go on the adventure with your kids. You can laugh at the Incongruities of what's happening there versus what you used to do and you can go on that journey and even find the sparkling gems in the middle of it because some really amazing things happen at school another person who's not you gives your child feedback and for many kids that ends up being a really vital and valuable experience so please I'm glad I had the chance to say that because I do not bash schools. And

Timmy Eaton 34:56

I really appreciate that personally because I definitely and I need to hear that because I have a tendency to get on that. And so I, and it reminds me that what we're talking about, and I say this often in these episodes is that we're talking about principles of education and life. You know, Homeschooling is a misnomer. I don't care about the term that much, it's more about. Principles of it. And if I'm being honest, it would be a bummer for me to send my kids to school. And if my grant, if I'm being totally honest right now, but I like what you're encouraging me to do, to be open and employ those principles, regardless of what format people find themselves or what option they choose. And so that's good for me to hear. Cause I do, I, if you listen to my episodes, you'd be like, oh yeah, this guy is. He's not making people feel comfortable if they have to choose an alternative to homeschooling and that's not helpful. That's not encouraging. So I really I honestly appreciate that. So when you look back to your homeschooling, your own kids what would you say? And I know this is hard to think of sometimes. What was the hardest part for you?

Julie Bogart 35:54

Oh, gosh, probably having five levels. When you have five kids, every year the oldest kid is doing something you haven't done before. And yet you still have to do these other four kids. And you thought that because you know how to teach reading to the first one, you could easily do it now for the second one. Here we go. All five had completely different journeys to learn to read. All five had completely different journeys about what it meant to care. To just care, and then when you're teaching the older ones, the younger ones are squirrelly and climbing on the table and leaving a trail of crumbs. And then the, you leave the older ones alone to work with the younger ones and they wander off and start, watching TV or playing a game on a computer. And so I think that feeling of, Wanting a system is really natural, but home doesn't lend itself to systems. So becoming comfortable with this kind of undulation is really the trick of homeschool. And I always say, as many things as you can do as a group, the better. When you're trying to do five grades of math. That might be the only one where I feel like maybe you do have to do one kid at a time. Yes. I got to a point where I was alternating days. We do the two older math on one day and then the three younger on the next day and they just did math every other day for a while because I couldn't do five kids in a day. It just wasn't possible. But history, science, listening to her read aloud. Watching Pride and Prejudice on TV. I didn't care how old they were. I wanted everybody in on those things. You can dissect an owl pellet with your, 5th grade, 3rd grade, and 1st grade, and the toddler is gonna be on the table. They are gonna be a part of it. So just starting to realize that I wanted family learning. Not, and you grade level

Timmy Eaton 37:41

learning. Amen. And I think you use a term in, in, in the brave learner called house schooling. Yeah. And I, And I love that chapter and I love that whole concept. I always use the term and I can see that there's some congruency there, but I always use the, this term and I don't know where I got it from, but I, I think I. Made it up or something. I don't know, but somebody said it, but I just use the economy of the home because I, because I think it's like what, like you're saying, when I just had this vision of your toddler next to this owl pellet and dissecting it and it is like learning is happening. I would even say in the womb. And so that exposure is just constant. And so I love that idea of everybody. And we call it my wife calls it together time. So like the kids, every day we've had two graduate. We've got one who just turned 17 today and we've got six kids. And so four left at home and, you know, until they leave home and even when they come home, there's going to be together time and there's going to be being read aloud to. And so it's just, it just happens always,

Julie Bogart 38:38

it's so interesting. You say that. So we just had the winter break and all five of my kids came home. Originally they were coming for four days. Then they start texting each other the next thing. I know they're all coming for two weeks Moving in with their grandkids, right? They're all coming and I was so touched by that We have this practice that I started I am divorced So after my divorce, I ended up starting a practice with solstice so we could start some traditions that were just ours And they are still committed to this practice. So anyway, I think it's more like homeschool reunion time or a homeschool show and tell time. Because every year that we've done solstice, the one rule is that we all make handmade gifts for each other. And so what ends up happening is you've got kids making like collage art or writing something like one year, one of my kids wrote a rap that included every person in the family and he performed it. I've had kids take photos and make collages. I've had kids copy. Their favorite passages from the novels they read that year and hand them out to everyone. I have a son who wrote poems to describe everybody in the family. And they're very like wordy because our family is very wordy. This year it expanded, one of them did a wine tasting. Someone else did a hot sauce tasting. Somebody else did a collage of all the grandkids. And that's what I'm realizing. And my kids are obsessed with each other. They're in their 30s and late 20s and they talk to each other all day. On their phones. So cool. One lives in California. One lives in Colorado. One lives in Thailand and the other two are in Ohio. Kentucky and Ohio and they are just obsessed with each other. And one of the benefits of homeschool is that they really form a bond and they know how to share learning. Two of my kids. This do you want a tangent? I have a tangent. Go. Okay. Y'all love this. So I, some of my kids did go to high school. They went to either part time enrollment or full time. And three of my kids actually took algebra two and pre calculus in high school. Two of my kids, one hated going to public, so he finished at home. Another one did just two years, and he squeaked by. Neither of those boys took PreCalculus. So the three who did got A's. The two who didn't are in internet fields. One of them is a programmer, the other one's an IT specialist. So they are working on Calculus together. In their adulthood and the three who took it don't need it. Yeah, and I think if that isn't a metaphor for what homeschooling actually is, these kids didn't want it at the time it was offered and when they needed it, they went and got it themselves. And I think that's what our goal is, right? That they feel confident. My son is an IT specialist. He went to St. John's College, which is a great books program. He has no degree in computers. This is all self taught. The two kids who are the least schooly have the highest paying jobs in the family. It's interesting to me. That is, that

Timmy Eaton 41:42

is. And I love you talk about the fourth R being relationships. And that, amen to that. Because man, and that is I don't know if you can use the word, the dividends of choosing this option can be those relationships and not that can't happen in other settings, but like that, that it is it's just, it just affords, I think the biggest element there is time that you have that time to be together. That's it. And so

Julie Bogart 42:04

what else? And shared memory. And shared memory when you go off to school, if you remember your own life, I remember mine, my brother and sister weren't even always in the same school as me because of my age difference. So that's a huge chunk of your life. That you're spending with other people, but when you're at home, and you're homeschooling, no one else has those memories except your siblings. And so there is this feeling of if we're gonna, go back to the good old days, the people I want to talk to about it are my siblings. And also, I do think that shared learning they really do help each other. And they all believe they can learn anything. It's. Really incredible to me. No,

Timmy Eaton 42:41

that's a great point. Like when I think of I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and I remember going to lunch fourth hour, which was way early at our school, friend, high school, and going with a few friends, my brother and a few friends, and we would go to this McDonald's and they were throwing away their breakfast sandwiches. And so we would always glean, glean from that. I love that. And you share that stories with your friends and stuff like that, but. My kids are having those stories together and they have their friends too, that they have, those memories with, but not even close to as many, like my oldest two right now are who are out of the house. One's in Phoenix and one's in San Diego. They, they have those stories together way more than I had with my eight siblings. And so anyway, it's I think what you said is perfect. What would you say? And you've talked about this already. We've talked about the enriching aspects, but what were your favorite things to do or learn with your kids? Do you remember? I don't feel like I've asked that enough in these episodes. What are the things that you remember being like, man, I love doing this with a particular child or maybe with all of them. What comes

Julie Bogart 43:39

to mind? For sure, poetry tea time is like at the top of the list for me, because that practice. Still lives in our family. It's this idea that you make tea, you have something nice to eat, and then you read lovely words together. And it was the reset that we needed anytime things went haywire. My kids loved setting the table, lighting the candles, running their fingers through the flame, making their own little centerpieces. Picking the poems on. I feel like it just really enriched their vocabularies and their creativity and writing and just even their pleasure in reading. So poetry tea time was like forever. Our favorite thing. And do you just make that

Timmy Eaton 44:19

up?

Julie Bogart 44:19

Was that your Yeah. Yeah, it was. It started though, I will give credit to the inspiration. I was on a Charlotte Mason list and a mom talked about how she was teaching geography terms to her kids and they weren't interested. So she decided to make tea and have cookies with geography and they loved it. And I thought, Oh, that's interesting. I drink tea every day. My kids love tea times. What do I want them to learn? That I'm afraid they won't want to learn and I identified poetry as the thing and so to test it out I actually just did it with one child and we started actually with Leon Garfield Shakespeare stories because my daughter had shown some interest in Shakespeare and it went so incredibly well That the next week I had all five kids and we decided to do poetry and it never stopped and it just became Like a core practice. The other thing that I look back on with a lot of fondness is I have a theater background And so I was constantly trying to find ways to embody what we were learning. So we did a lot of improv. We acted out punctuation marks whenever I wanted them to really learn something. I tried to think how can they use their bodies? Not just what can we read about it? That's how we ended up with a pony express or a gold rush. I loved throwing parties. We never called them. I don't know what people call, they might call it a co op day or whatever when they're doing like an immersive project, but my kids wanted parties, so we just called them parties and then we did the thing. Yeah, we're doing math, it's a party. It's a math party exactly, the gold rush party, the medieval feast exactly. And I think if you start tapping in to the way your kids. Just want to explode with energy, right? We watched birds and we participated in the Cornell lab of ornithology bird count every year. Not all five kids were as into it as one of them was, but just this last week, my granddaughter was here and I had the binoculars out. And I had the bird book out. She's three years old. She's up on a stepstool. She's looking through, I see a red bird. We open the book, we find the red birds, we make the connection. To me, that's what homeschooling is so good at.

Timmy Eaton 46:32

And I'm, you made me think well, I love a lot of those things. One principle from that is like parents should employ their interests. Like you're interested in poetry and tea. And so you combine both of those. And because if you're not having a rock in time, then your kids won't either. And then the other thing is I like that you field tested it with one kid. That was a cool idea. And then also just this idea of, and I want to get to it for sure. I want you to talk about enchantment because I love that choice of the word. And I want you to really define that and help us understand that. But didn't you have an experience with Dottie's family where You went over and they had a costume bucket or something like that. And cause that just made me think so much of our kids when they were little, my wife had those and she had these little stations all over the place. And I remember as a, this kind of points to the role or the, what a homeschooling father or spouse needs to be aware of is don't don't rain on the parade. Cause I'd be like, why are all these stacks of books in the way? And stuff like that. And my wife's going. Just be quiet. Like you're getting in the way of what I'm trying to do here. And I'm like let's talk about it. So I don't, so I don't kill it, and, but cause if you are constantly going, what's up with this mess and what's up with that, that just totally kills the flame. And so you have to be aware of that, but. So anyway we'll let's just talk about it now. Like in, in the brave learner, that's one of the things that really stood out to me was this concept of enchantment and it resonates so clearly with me. And I really love your, the way you broke it down, surprise, mystery, risk, adventure, and then, and you go on to other, and I like how you break it down to four bite size. Concepts, but talk about enchantment. And then I have a couple of specific questions about those forces of enchantment. So go ahead. Awesome.

Julie Bogart 48:05

Yeah. So back when live streaming video was brand new, I think Periscope was the name of the app that I used. I hopped on and decided to talk about what I thought created. The learning experience, not how to organize your day, not how to schedule your subjects, not how to test for grade level, but what actually achieves this learning that the child values. Not that you can check off your list, but how do we know a child has learned math? It's when they start using math for their own purposes, not when they finish the workbook. Yes. So what makes that happen? That was the question I had. How do I know that it's happening? And I just started. Like looking back at the things that catalyzed the most involvement of my kids and I realized it's when we were surprised. It's when something felt a little mysterious and it required a little investigation. It's when my kids took risks. And the risks either failed or took off or, bombed or became explosively um, successful. And the final was adventure. And so I wrote them down and then I just started remembering like activities that went with those. So like when I think about surprise, one of the things that I think we tend to do is we teach things as though they're not. little tiny miracles at all times. Like for instance, punctuation, that has got to be the least effectively taught part of writing in the history of writing because fluent adult readers who are used to punctuation assume kids grab it by osmosis and a few rules. And that is not how it works. This is a wildly interesting system of curves, dots, and lines, and it varies language to language. Yes. And each writer marshals these little dots, curves, and lines in unique ways, and they are used to create emotion. In the reader like they are meant to help you actually have the right intonation when you're reading and so what I tried to do whenever I was teaching something that was already dead for me and wrote is I'd ask myself what's surprising about this. What could be mysterious about this? Where is the mystery at the heart of this? And I got in a habit of not teaching something until I had answered that question for myself and then designed a way to make that happen. So surprise and mystery work really well with young children because the world is still new and they are surprised and everything feels mysterious and to not turn it off that tap, you know when they Rest curiosity and curiosity, by the way, is always inconvenient, messy and annoying. Whenever a child is like hitting their brother over the head to get a turn on the computer, that's not a character moment. That's a curiosity moment. They are dying to get at the machine, but we're like, that's not curiosity. That is a discipline problem. I'm not saying they should hit their sibling. No, I see what you're saying. But if you start with the energy that created the conflict, you will get so much further. And be like, wow, you're dying to get on that computer. Tell me what you're going to do when you get there. You can actually move them away from their brother and engage them in the fantasy of how they're going to beat Mario Kart. Yeah,

Timmy Eaton 51:25

Let me give you an example. We get frustrated with our two who are the oldest at home right now. We get frustrated because before, they're, so they play for the, they play for the high school. Sports teams. Nice. And they're not in school all day. So what happens is they start prepping and start thinking about going to practice or to a game like way before my daughter will start doing her hair and makeup way before. And that's just, it's just so annoying to my wife and I. But like it's if we could seriously shift our paradigm to what you're saying that would be so monumental for her because It's just annoying to us. We're like, what do you why you that's so much time to get ready for this dumb basketball practice, But you're right. What if we actually saw that as a moment of curiosity and said, what is it about that? It makes you so curious. What is it about that? It makes you want to do this. And anyway,

Julie Bogart 52:14

and in fact, what she is expressing is just a very high level of commitment. She's also, by having her on a high school team where she is not a student, the amount, so she's high school. So the young kids are mystery and adventure, but by high school, it's, surprise and mystery. It's risk by high school. It's risk and adventure. The level of risk these kids, we've asked them to take to walk into a space that's competitive, cliquish, and often alien. And then expect them to just fit right in. She's over there studying every girl on that floor and she's Oh, that's how they do their hair. Oh, they do wear makeup. I better make sure I look like I fit into this team. I don't want them to think I'm a dumb homeschool kid, right? Like they're learning a kind of skill set that has nothing to do with basketball. And this is their chance to do it. When my daughter did a class a day at our Lakota freshman school for high school, she came home and the very first thing she did was dissect the dynamics in the class. Who was in, who was out, how the teacher talked, which kids were cool, which kids weren't. She's studying to be a therapist right now. And I'm like there it is. She's been interested in these human dynamic exchanges for as long as I can remember in school. Had nothing to do with the subjects that had to do with that. So we also have to be open to the idea that our kids are expressing interest and learning about things we didn't even have in Mind when we got them involved in whatever we got them involved

Timmy Eaton 53:47

in that's so good It makes me think and I do want to come back because I have a particular question about risk But do you did you have any of your five that were like different from you that it made it difficult to even spend time with them I mean, I don't want to say it that way But did you have any that were like wow, this is like different world a different way of thinking Totally your husband's genetics something like that I

Julie Bogart 54:07

think, let me put it this way, I think all five of my kids aren't like me. I don't think any of them are like me. So it felt like a study in human nature every time I got a new one. And they are, they continue to not be like me. But what I tried to. Always keep in mind is that they were fascinating. So if something comes up that seems like I can't believe you think that my goal was to find out why I had that perspective, not why they had theirs. Why do I have the perspective that this isn't the right way to think? My book raising critical thinkers is really all about self examination. In critical thinking, because most of us are so enamored of our own thoughts, we disqualify whatever doesn't align, but I was always taking the other perspective, which is, if that doesn't resonate with me, there's something to know about that. That I haven't yet understood. And what led you to

Timmy Eaton 55:10

do that? What led you to have that presence of mind to do that?

Julie Bogart 55:14

I don't know. It's a habit I've had for a long time. My dad's a lawyer. I don't know if that was part of it. But I've, I was a history major. I think because of my Christian background, I was very invested in doctrine and theology. I think I've been exposed. to diverse viewpoints that are competing with each other in very contested high

Timmy Eaton 55:35

stakes environments. Yeah, that's your Malibu, crunchy, hippie.

Julie Bogart 55:38

Compared with my evangelical, traditional, right? And so I was constantly being told here's the authoritative take. And then I'm like, but is it? And then why am I reacting to it the way I am, and why do they think the way they think? So that's been a part of my way of thinking. So having five kids and homeschooling and reading and going to grad school, all of those things made me, I'm not saying I, I didn't make some gross errors. Obviously the oldest child you experiment on the most, I remember thinking that he didn't do very much writing. And just last week I was going through my basement, in the last month, cleaning it out. And I found his writing. And I was like, Oh my God, he did so much writing. This poor child who found writing really hard did so much writing. I so overcompensated, so there's those, and he was dedicated to telling me. What didn't work for him and I've written some about that in my book like I learned a lot on that first child

Timmy Eaton 56:37

Yes, no for sure. No, that's really clarifying and I appreciate it What didn't when I think of what you described I just think man Julie Bogart what an enriching life that's awesome. And so and you keep going like what keeps you like, what is it? What is it that keeps you because you're not slowing down. It doesn't seem no like when I look at your website I'm like that is that's a lot of stuff. And so What is it? What's interesting you right now? What is it that's driving you right now? And what are you looking forward to?

Julie Bogart 57:03

Oh, gosh, what a nice question. So I have a book coming out in May. I don't know. When is this airing? I should ask you that. When does this air? Probably

Timmy Eaton 57:12

in about a month, I'd say.

Julie Bogart 57:14

Perfect. Okay, then I'm going to tell what the book is because I'm announcing it in two weeks. So I have a workbook actually, Julie, the anti workbook queen got asked by her publisher to write a workbook for raising critical thinkers. Yeah, but it's called becoming a critical thinker. And basically it's just filled with all these really awesome practices that kids can use to investigate their own thinking. So I'm very excited about it and I am. So this is like you're,

Timmy Eaton 57:40

you're announcing it right now. I am

Julie Bogart 57:41

announcing it right now. I feel privileged. You are honored. You're the first person I'm telling. So that'll come out in May. And then I am actually finishing another book that is due at the end of February that I'm not announcing yet, and that'll come out in a year. So those are fun. But I think We started the conversation, which with what is pumping me up right now, and it's exploring this artificial intelligence kind of wave that's happening both in business and education. Yeah, I've noticed that on your website,

Timmy Eaton 58:11

the,

Julie Bogart 58:11

you're talking about it. I'm super interested in it because I think it's the next wave and I want to catch it. I don't want to. Have it overcome me. And I think there's so much potential there. I know I'm older, at some point I'll just say okay, that's enough. I can't learn any more technology, but there is something really I'll end with this. It's a funny thing. I don't talk about this on podcast ever but when I was in college it was 1979 to 1983 so like ages ago you probably weren't even born and I had this one class with a professor. It was called, I think it was called Geography 5, which had nothing to do with the content. And the class itself had us examine two theories. One was called Limits to Growth, and the other was called Technological Optimism. The Limits to Growth model basically says, We're a finite set, the world has a limited number of resources, human beings keep multiplying, at some point we have to be conservationists, we have to avoid global warming, back then they had a different name for it, the ozone layer, whatever, but very similar. And it was all about protecting endangered species, being careful, like very sort of guilt inducing style, rhetoric, like how do we control people so they don't ruin things, was the vibe. Which has never worked for me because I don't think shaming people produces very good outcomes. Amen. So then the next guy that I read was a guy named Herman Kahn and you can look him up, I'm sure he's dead now, but he was a technological optimist. And the book of his that I read I wish I could find it now because he was looking at the future and of course our future is even different than how he described it. But back then they were worried about population explosion and agriculture and all these things. But here's the one line from that book that I remember that has never left me. As a technological optimist, he asserts, The problems technology creates, technology will solve. So his thinking is that even if things got like uninhabitable, we would create technologies that address the lack of inhabitability. Now obviously if we nuke the brains out of the globe and we extinguish our lives and we no longer live. That's certainly always a possibility, so I'm not talking about being reckless, but that's really stayed with me because if I look at the history of technology, that's exactly what we've done. And so I think for me, I am fundamentally an optimist around technology and I find it exciting and I want to participate and I want to be a thought shaper, like a person who actually says things. That influence what we do with technology, not just a victim of the tide as it rolls out and takes over.

Timmy Eaton 1:01:03

Very well said. And again, this is so good for me personally to hear because I need to be more optimistic and so I really appreciate that and I, I even wrote it down as we were talking, like before I said if AI can do it good, because then it reveals to us how we can. Improve. And that those things that we were doing may be obsolete or not really, maybe they were keeping us down and not letting us be unleashed. Now I want to be mindful of your time. I want to be how much, how many minutes you have, because

Julie Bogart 1:01:29

I'm not going anywhere, so

Timmy Eaton 1:01:30

I just had a few more questions if you're open to that, but go ahead and comment. I am.

Julie Bogart 1:01:34

I was just going to comment on what you said. One of my sons, and I really loved this. He said, Julie, all of the work that we do, we pretend is real, but wouldn't it be interesting if we were liberated from that work and we could actually do the things that we love and are good at and that would improve actually the experience of living. And that's the way I try to think about this. Who said that to you? My son. One of my sons. Don't

Timmy Eaton 1:02:00

you love hearing that kind of insight from your own

Julie Bogart 1:02:03

Oh my gosh, of course. And so, you know, of course, he's one of those kids who's like politically thinking about what does that mean for income and all of those things. So we could go down that rabbit hole. But the import of that comment Was interesting to me and it revealed a flaw in my own thinking about what it means to be a human being is a human being only worthwhile if they're a cog in a machine if they're advancing industry. My mother recently moved to Ohio. She had a stroke back in April and I brought her to live near to me. She used to be in California. She's 85 years old. She's recovered fully from her stroke, but she does need some assistance. And here's what her days are like. People make her food. They wash her linens. They clean her apartment. And all she has to do is go to noodle ball, which is balloon or pool noodles where you hit a balloon and they play it like pickleball. We bowling. She leads a writing clinic. She does this coloring club where they sit at a table and they color. They have happy hour. They have times when they listen to music, people come in and sing. And when she first came, I thought, Oh my gosh, is this what the future is? This seems horrible. She reads books. She watches movies. And then it suddenly hit me. Why is that inferior to like the work I do? Because actually she's leading this very pleasant, peaceful life with people she likes, and there's a ton of rest in it. And I suddenly realized everything we do in our lives is just filling 24 hours. It's all equal. Yeah. It's all equal. So we have been, enrolled in the capitalist dream that you're only as good as your work, but that's not actually. What it's all about. And for those who do have a spiritual orientation, we know that's true. We know there's a deeper, richer soul that lives inside of us.

Timmy Eaton 1:04:00

Yeah. Oh, that's so awesome. And I love that, I love that was sparked from something that your son, taught or, shared completely cool. That's great. Oh man, I get, we probably just have to do a round two in the future, but I, a couple more, if that's cool. One, one thing that I was thinking about are. Common threads of homeschool moms that I've noticed and you just like exude so many of those is like the idea of curiosity and love being with your kids and just being open to ideas. And I believe that all moms can do it. But what would you say are like who is homeschooling harder for? As far as if there's a mom or a dad considering homeschooling, not to say this in a way to discourage them or to pigeonhole somebody, you know, or put them in a box, but just to be able to help them open up their minds to maybe what it takes, what would you say, what do you observe in homeschool families that you're like, man this would be helpful counsel to new homeschool families who are thinking about it, but like you get what I'm saying. Okay. What would you say? I do.

Julie Bogart 1:04:56

So anyone with a work history in the school system has the hardest time first because they come with an image in their mind of what it looks like to lead a classroom and have cooperative students and homeschool isn't about cooperation. So if you are bent on having cooperative students follow a plan you create, homeschooling is hard. Mostly kids disabuse you of that very quickly. So then the next question is, can you ride with that change? Can you de

Timmy Eaton 1:05:28

school yourself or be de schooled, that's it.

Julie Bogart 1:05:31

Yeah! That should be on an Instagram. You should post that. That's really good. I'm going to put that on something. That's a good quotable. I like that, Tim. That's a very good quotable. But yeah, so I think people who are very married To getting their self esteem and ego needs met by repairing an education and having their children joyfully receive it, that's hard for them. If you can go into this, that it's a learning adventure for everyone, including you, and that there are going to be moments where it feels like nobody's learning anything, and it's been really chaotic. And I don't know how to measure this. If you can include that if you can create space to include that over time, there will be enough intentional learning happening that those things recede in importance. But during the first few years when you see that popping up or when it feels like the schedule never quite. Get set that can be really disoriented for a new homeschooler or for a person who's very type a about scheduling now I'm not saying you can't have a list. I joke about this all the time. There's the type a checklist I recommend the type B The type a checklist is like three pages of math four pages of reading two pages of phonics Then we have lunch then we come back and do history it's very like task driven. So if you need to shift that energy, go ahead and have a list. I know that you live by the list, but change what's on it. Smiled at my child, two kids seem to enjoy playing together. We read aloud until we were bored, had lunch at any time of the day. Just change the list

Timmy Eaton 1:07:07

And celebrate those things. I like it. You talk about celebration and I like that, celebrate those things that, that that you'll be holding, right? You'll be holding exactly. Oh, that's so good. That's so good. Thank you very much. I personally, again, I'm being personally taught by all of this. How, a couple more and then I'll, and then I'll let you go, because we've covered so much of it organically, but how could I get Julie Bogart to listen to my interviews? Meaning, and I don't mean literally, but what would interest you genuinely? If you were to tap into a podcast like this, what would make you be like, Oh, I like listening to that. So selfishly I am asking that but really what would interest you? Cause, and the reason I want to ask you that is because I see how rich your background and that, like you said, you're a thought leader in this area. What would be like, man, that is the stuff I want to hear discussed or, like for example, and I don't mean to say so much, but I interviewed, have you heard of Nadine Laufer? No. So she's a homeschool student. She's in her senior year and she has, she's running this awesome podcast. She just she's connected with Jay Weil and many others, but she is good. Like she's really good at it. So I had her on. And I teach that's what's interesting about me is I teach religious education and it's adjacent to a public institution anyway. So I see what's interesting about me is I see one side all day long and then I know what I know about homeschooling but with her, I just, I thought, man, to, to have kids like that, who are, it would be so interesting for me to listen to. And I could just choose to interview, but anyway, for you. What would get you into it?

Julie Bogart 1:08:36

I think back to when I was actually in the trenches. I was often looking for practical help. So I wanted an actual strategy for teaching history, right? What are some ideas that I haven't thought of? What are some new ways of approaching math that I'm still not So I liked practical tips. Ideas. Yeah, actual things I could do. I think sometimes I think sometimes homeschooling spaces back in the early days of the internet were like cheerleading spaces. We were all like rah for homeschool and that's necessary, but if you only do that, eventually it just becomes stale. It's yeah, but we're all, we're preaching to the converted. So having some innovators. Come in and talk about things that are like off the radar. So for me, when I was doing research for my second book, Raising Critical Thinkers, I start looking at education reformers like Paulo Freire and bell hooks, because I wanted new voices. In my brain, Renata and Jeffrey Cain, who do the brain based learning. I started, I've cited them. Arthur Costa. I bought his whole book. I have this huge book. It's sitting like right down here. That is all these academic peer reviewed articles about the way the brain. Actually learns and a lot of it's classroom based, but I felt like I had already read all the homeschool people. I needed new sources of insight new ways to translate my experience into both meaning practice and even validation. That's not just Yep. Yep. We all agree, but the brain research that backs up what we're doing so I can go forward with confidence. So I think those are the things I was really looking for when I was a home educator. That's a

Timmy Eaton 1:10:11

great that's a great response. The, again I'm always trying to hone in on the principles and I think that's what it is. It's principles that are transcendent because you're going, I've read this and Yes, it's validating. But there is like we as homeschool people have no corner on learning and education, and that's exactly what we're trying to perpetuate is this idea of there are transcendent principles. How can we learn from everywhere? To to, to employ these things in our families, in our own lives. So that's really good. Oh man. I was just wondering, like I just had like specific questions about your website and then after that, I'll just ask you a couple and then I'll give you the last word and then we'll wrap up, but on Bravewriter. com, did you have any kids working with you in the business? I was just wondering about that,

Julie Bogart 1:10:55

no, in fact, I was adamant against it. That's one of the quirky things about me. I went to a bunch of conferences in the 90s. And yeah, it made me cringe to see Children working in the booths. And the reason is I really value the agency of Children, and I never wanted their reputations to validate my work. Charlotte Mason born person. Yeah, I didn't want them to feel like they had to perform that homeschooling was working. Or even that writing was working. They get to have their own experience. So if they hated homeschool or if they thought the way I was teaching writing sucked they should be able to have that experience in our family and not have it cause problems in the business. So that was part of it. I also didn't really like this idea that you Employ your children and then hold them accountable for work when you're already trying to be a home educator and a mother that seemed like another unnecessary requirement and I'm a low requirement person. And so if my customer service really matters to me, would I be comfortable trusting that to a child and then being mad at that child if they couldn't live up to it? Firing your kid is pretty horrible. So that was all the stuff that I saw happening out there. And honestly, I think that was right. I have spoken with some of these homeschool business leaders from those eras, whose kids have really come back at them for this sort of traveling homeschool show thing that went from conference to conference. So I didn't want that, so I didn't do that. I did hire someone very quickly, though, and I hired someone who had been in one of my classes. So I launched in January of 2000, and by March I hired my first person. And she had been in my first class. She was just part time, but I wanted to duplicate myself quickly. So she was a teacher, and she worked for me for probably five or six years. And so I did have I don't know how. I had a business vision. My brother was in marketing. And so he gave me some people to read. I read the E Myth like right away. Yeah. And I think that's why I knew to duplicate myself right away. I did have help from my husband at the time. He was The brave guy who got on and figured out how to build a website before there was push button websites. We're like FTPing the pages to the website, like it was when was this?

Timmy Eaton 1:13:13

When did you start? When did you actually start the business? I don't even know.

Julie Bogart 1:13:16

2000 January 2000. Yeah, it's gonna be it's we're in our 25th year. Yeah. And I started I like

Timmy Eaton 1:13:22

what you're saying. It's not like you're like studying business all the time. You just were a curious learner and it was like, I'm going to do this.

Julie Bogart 1:13:28

Okay, here's the funny little secret about me. I have never worked. For a business. I did McDonald's in high school or whatever, but I've never worked as a career person. So I've never been on a job interview, never worked in a company, didn't know anything about business. So I am completely self taught. And it's been quite a ride and I have hired business coaches. I'm a part of the National Association of Women's Business Owners now. So that's been really helpful to me. Yeah I'm, I love to learn.

Timmy Eaton 1:13:58

I was going to say that's pretty much what you need to say is I love to learn. That's awesome. Congratulations on that. Anyone can

Julie Bogart 1:14:02

do it. So that's it. You can do it too.

Timmy Eaton 1:14:04

No, I appreciate it. And again, I need that encouragement. Who, and you've got lots of courses. Who teaches all your courses?

Julie Bogart 1:14:10

So now, gosh, we have a huge staff, we've got 35 or 40 teachers, and they get trained by my staff that is the full time staff. So I've got directors of classes, a director of publications, and then they have the people under them who do the writing and the teaching. We have our meetings. Yeah. But it wasn't always organized that way. And I hit a wall in 2011 or 12 where I was like, the business is growing so fast, but I don't know what I'm doing. It was a very flat structure. Everybody reported to me. And so I had to start duplicating myself at a director level, not just at a teaching level. And that was. Yeah. And I still remember I had a staff member who was like, so do we ever meet? I was like, what do you mean meetings? Do you ever meet? We're all remote. I didn't, why would we need meetings? We all know what to do. And they're like, maybe just for the fun of a meeting, like just to get to know the people. We can hang out

Timmy Eaton 1:15:06

if you want.

Julie Bogart 1:15:07

Yeah. So yeah, I've had to learn a lot.

Timmy Eaton 1:15:11

That is that's like really inspiring just to imagine that. One more question about the course and the final question and then we're done. Okay. Bye. What's the most popular course or product?

Julie Bogart 1:15:18

Yeah, so okay, so the way Brave Writer functions is we have self directed curriculum that you can buy and of course It's very Julie style. So it's very immersive practical actionable. You're always using your body in the writing experience In our online classes, we have everything from Brave Writer 101, which is our foundational course We enroll the parent with the child and the coaching happens For both of them, so that we are actually training parents to know how to coach writing, not just giving their kids writing instruction and then the Eric is with all the habits that ruin it. So that's our core class. But then we've got everything from like movie discussion clubs to writing graphic novels. No, there's

Timmy Eaton 1:16:02

tons. I was,

Julie Bogart 1:16:03

I was essay classes. Yes. And honestly, you can't go wrong. They're all amazing. We train our teachers very extensively. Here was another thing that I think was I don't know, maybe a good innovation on my part. I did not like that there's such a thing called rate your professor. My ex husband was a professor, and all these evaluations, I was like, why aren't all the professors equally good at teaching? This is absurd to me. You have a higher learning institution where people are paying money. Train your professors so that they're all the same. So that's what I did. I trained my teachers. We hold them accountable. We control for excellence. So yeah, our classes are great.

Timmy Eaton 1:16:44

Oh, so good. So good. Thank you so much. So my final question, and then I want to give you the final word is just what's the future of homeschooling? I have so I'm in Alberta, Canada now, and it's actually minus 30 something right now and schools are canceled. That's why I'm just sitting here at home. And it's awesome. But it is so cold with the windshield. It's freezing cold. So anyway which is weird because we've had the most mild winter ever. But yes. But what is the future of homeschooling? I'm seeing like crazy growth here in the U S it's like exponential. So what's the future of it? Cause I feel like I'm getting in the game of the podcasting world with it and stuff at a good time. There's people like you and others who have been rocking for a long time. So what's the future.

Julie Bogart 1:17:27

Regulation. It's going to be a big fight. Oh please don't tell me that. No, it's going to be a big fight. No, it absolutely, that's what's coming. At least in the United States. And part of it is fueled by the fact that homeschooling has grown. I remember I had a midwife for my third birth. And she met, had this tiny little office and it was tucked away in the barrio in LA, very a very obscure neighborhood. And I asked her about it. I was like, why don't you move more into Orange County? That's where we all are. What are you doing here? And she said, I need to be as far away from a hospital as possible. I need them to not notice that I exist. This is the problem. Everybody now knows we exist. There are so many of us COVID elevated the awareness of what homeschooling is, what its failings are. There is to be fair and active group of homeschool alumni who deservedly. Are complaining about the educations they got that I consider it educations that failed them and they are calling for regulation. And then we have the other extreme on the political end of the continuum where we have people asking to ban books and restrict in libraries. None of that is good for education if we want homeschooling to actually continue to thrive. We actually have to protect the rights of all forms of education. We cannot be limiting. We cannot treat ours as special and hived off. I do think there is some room for accountability, but I do not want it to become school controlled. We see this in California and I think it is. So failing the homeschoolers who use charter schools. And I say that as a Californian who was in a charter school at one point or an independent study program. So yeah, you ask the future, it's a fight over regulation. Oh, I'm glad

Timmy Eaton 1:19:18

you said that. It's sobering to hear it, but it's true and it's real. And I think one word that I just associate with our whole interview and just you is is freedom. Is freedom in space. Yes. And so I don't know that you talk about it. I would love to hear you talk more about it. Freedom because you obviously in, in body what it's all about. I'll give you the final word and then tell everybody where we can find your stuff, please. That's

Julie Bogart 1:19:40

great. Gosh, you say the word freedom, literally the core practice of BraveWriter is free writing, right? I do believe in agency. I do believe in the freedom for people to be able to explore the limits of who they are and not have to feel like they are being constrained by an authority that does not know or understand them. And the truth is parents need to have that level of curiosity about their children. You do not know who your child will be. You do not know them as well as you think you do. You do not understand their motivations and drives, even if you think you do. And so if we start from a foundation of curiosity with our children and expand that, even to our would be critics, we will actually create so much more space for a variety of solutions to our most pressing problems. So that's how I think.

Timmy Eaton 1:20:29

Perfectly stated. Thank you so much. Where's the best way to find you and your

Julie Bogart 1:20:33

work? Brave writer. com is the website. My Instagram is Julie brave writer. I've been pretty active on threads. Actually. That's my new fascination. And if you need help with curriculum choices, use help at brave writer. com. And my truly tremendous staff will give you personalized attention. Yes,

Timmy Eaton 1:20:52

indeed. And and I just endorse all of that. I, such a great writer. I didn't know, again, I've known your name for a long time, but I haven't really been on your Instagram kind of thing. But I didn't realize you were, I would, you're spunky. I just didn't know that so much about that. But so anyway, thank you for who you are and thank you for taking time with me. I really appreciate you being here with

Julie Bogart 1:21:10

us. It's a fantastic interview. I enjoyed every minute. Thank you.

Timmy Eaton 1:21:16

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.