This Golden Hour

71. Carol Worthy and Adaptable Learning

• Timothy Eaton

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In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Carol Worthy, a homeschooling mother of seven from California. Carol shares her unique journey and experiences from homeschooling her children, emphasizing the values of individualized learning and adaptability. She recounts her upbringing in a learning-centric family, her exposure to homeschooling through church friends, and her advocacy for flexible, need-based education models like home-based charter schools. Carol also discusses the importance of fostering curiosity and problem-solving skills in children and highlights how these principles have helped her own children thrive in various entrepreneurial pursuits.

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Carol Worthy:

Teaching and learning is an ongoing process. If we can be good examples for our children. Of continually teaching and learning and applying we can lead them and to find out what they can become. We don't need to make those decisions for them. They need to make it themselves. And the more we let them do in that area, you'll be surprised what they'll come out with my kids are not anything I would have planned.

Tim Eaton:

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 Carol Worthy, a homeschooling mother of seven from California. Carol shares her unique journey and experiences from homeschooling her children, emphasizing the values of individualized learning and adaptability. She recounts her upbringing in a learning centric family, her exposure to homeschooling through church friends and her advocacy for flexible need based education models like home based charter schools. Carol also discusses the importance of fostering curiosity and problem solving skills in children and highlights how these principles have helped her own children thrive in various entrepreneurial pursuits. Welcome back to this golden hour podcast. We're excited today to have with us Carol Worthy from California. Thank you Carol for joining us

Carol Worthy:

Thank you for having me.

Tim Eaton:

So appreciate your time Carol is a homeschooling mother of seven with a variety of Circumstances that she experienced throughout her homeschooling life and you're not originally from California. Is that right?

Carol Worthy:

I was born in Columbus, Georgia, raised in Phoenix city, Alabama, but went to school in a little teeny town called Smith station. Cause there was a train station there.

Tim Eaton:

Oh, no way. Awesome. Very cool. Give us a little bit more of a bio. Just tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into some questions about home education.

Carol Worthy:

Okay. And yeah, it's funny. I not only mentioned Auburn because I love my school, but, While I was there, my dad had told me, my dad was a educator. He had been, he actually served on our state's textbook committee. And when I was 10, I was introduced to looking at various textbooks and giving my dad, which ones I thought was right. Believe it or not, I, at that time, preferred. Harcourt Brace over Silver Burdett. I thought that was a weird thing, but I did. Yeah. So books and learning was all, all through my home growing up. We had shelves is like the size of the public library line with books. The bottom shelf was ones that were more for the kids so we could reach them. And my mom did a newspaper article from our home because she And that day, that was odd. People didn't do that. But the man that asked her to work for the paper, she said, I'll do it on the condition. You let me bring my articles because I'm not going to go to the office. I'm going to play with my kids and it's okay. I spent a lot of time when she was typing, I would sit down beside her and read stories about faraway places and things. Even though she wouldn't technically call herself a homeschool mother, her example, she read. When I was going to sleep, she was reading when I woke up, she was reading and my dad was always busy doing something with our community, making it better for the whole world. So we're very active and a lot of things to do. And so just learning how to solve problems was a big deal to us. And we're 1 of those communities where, if there's an issue, we don't run from it. We run to it to see how it can help.

Tim Eaton:

And I

Carol Worthy:

think that was mostly our family motive for learning stuff. It's okay. How can I help? I don't know that. So that's great. Yeah. It gives you a lot to do.

Tim Eaton:

Oh, that's amazing. And I like how you said, I like how you said she wouldn't have considered or labeled herself a homeschool mother, one thing that we say often on this podcast is that homeschooling is a misnomer in a lot of ways. And it's really a way of life and a way of living. The principles of homeschooling seemed like it was alive and well in your growing up years. Yeah.

Carol Worthy:

Yeah, it definitely was. One example for her, how she got put into this situation. My oldest brother and sister are very close in age, so they were in kindergarten together. My mother's left handed. My brother and sister are left handed. And my mom happened to forget their snack and went over to the kindergarten, which is the self sustaining cute little building for kindergarten. It was adorable. But she said when she walked in, she noticed that my brother and sister had their left hand tied behind them. Laughter.

Tim Eaton:

No,

Carol Worthy:

it's not really happy. Even though my dad worked for the school system, she said, I No, this isn't going to work. And I don't want to argue, so I'll just do this year because kindergarten wasn't required, and so my right handed sister went to kindergarten, which was number three. And I was number four, I was left handed. So I didn't go to kindergarten. So that's why I spent my time at my mom's knee reading and learning from everything else. So

Tim Eaton:

when was that? What year was that?

Carol Worthy:

That was 1959 and 60.

Tim Eaton:

Wow. So that she would have been a definite pioneer in, in that decision, that type of decision. That's great.

Carol Worthy:

She was very creative and wanted her children to be treated well. That's all she just wanted us to be treated well. And she wasn't a very let's say she didn't like to fight battles. If she could find a way for a win, when she would find it and everybody was cool with that. On the Auburn thing, so that fast forward going to school whenever My own, even though my schooling was technically outta K 12, high school school my dad reset my mind about what education was. I remember at fourth grade, I came home and I normally made excellent grades, always. And I had made a wonderful report card. It was awesome. And then. My mother always gushed about all of the things we, we did, my dad's very practical and he said this looks good. Can you tell me what you learned? He had me there. I just sat there dude, I made it all A's. You're supposed to say, Woohoo. You made all A's. So that reset my 10 year old brain to, okay, this is about learning things. And that changed. Everything from just memorizing, throwing it onto paper to actually wanting to engage in, and what can I do with this? Why do I know this? And on our picnic tables out back, he made from cement, he wrote oh, two, two sayings about knowledge and the other was love God and serve a fellow man. But, He thought whatever, you should be able to do something with it.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Carol Worthy:

Brings you back to Auburn because that's part of their creed is that. Knowledge should be something that you can apply, something that you can do something with. So when I was up there I asked my dad as a freshman, I said, so what should I major in? He says, something you don't know a lot about. And I thought, okay, so I did. And it was being thrown into a world of things I didn't know a lot about. I did take some, I took the courses for teacher education that wasn't planning to be a teacher, but I didn't know much about it. So I thought I'd do that. And they took us on a field trip. This is in 1972, on a field trip to a private school where most of the professors sent their children. And it was it was housed in this two story white building. Not a real fancy home, but definitely a pretty home On a piece of land that had some rolling hills. It was really pretty. And so our class went through and we were allowed to ask anything we wanted and just explore. What are you doing? Why are you doing this to the students and to the teachers? They didn't care. The house was not gutted and then made to be a school. If kids were studying in the living room, it looked like a living room. The only rooms they didn't have were bedrooms and those were all like little lounges and stuff. One of the students said, we're working on a play. I said, you are, what's it about? And they told me, and he says, we're fixing to shoot one of the scenes. This is in 72. And so they took me outside and I got to watch them shoot a scene of this movie that they just did. We're making up and I thought to myself, this is where you can learn anything. I love it.

Tim Eaton:

Yes.

Carol Worthy:

Yeah. And then that had to be tucked away in my head for many years. I never saw anything like it. Never heard anything. So then when I had my own children, it was back there. It was like this is a great idea.

Tim Eaton:

I love hearing that you had like kind of pivotal experiences that you, like you said, you stored away and I loved your use of the term reset, as a 10 year old, through the example of your mom reading and doing all those things, then your dad saying, what, what are you actually learning from this, that reset your brain at a young age and conditioned you. To be in a state that you were ready to at least do something that wasn't always conventional.

Carol Worthy:

Exactly. And my mother and dad took my dad was a coach. Cause back then you were, you taught economics and you coached everything, my mom's major was health, physical education and recreation.

Tim Eaton:

She

Carol Worthy:

didn't get far into it because she started having kids. And so she had to go home, but she's kept learning. She kept studying those books. It was amazing. But also being healthy was real important to us. And so they would use that analogy with the brain. It's you need to exercise. Even if you're doing something at school, you don't see any real use for it. You're using your brain. So just go for it. Learn what you can fast forward to the year 2000. I'm now in San Diego. And I have my seven children and I've gone back to school. I had an unfortunate divorce and a remarriage. It wasn't unfortunate. It was wonderful. And my second husband said, go back and get your credential if you want. Wow, that's cool. My kids are all older. They're in school. I'll do that. So what I studied this time, when I went back to get the master's, I didn't study something I knew nothing about. I went and I wanted to know more about something I knew quite a bit about. I wanted, so I'm basically, it was oh my gosh, what'd we call it? Oh, it was used to call it curriculum instruction and now they call it something different, but it was basically studying metacognition, teaching children as students, teaching those students to think about thinking. Think about the

Tim Eaton:

way they think. Yeah,

Carol Worthy:

exactly. And so when you get that as your your foundation for learning, It opens up an entire new world. There is no thing that you can't work with to forward your desired goal of increasing your child's ability to learn and apply what they're learning. I just, it was amazing how. Things just followed one thing at a time. And now I'm jumping decades. The best part was when I realized at the sort of my younger children, the last two were technically never homeschooled. But we did so much more together for purpose than I would have if I hadn't homeschooled. And I got a phone call about the same time I started my master's degree from a local school district that was It's since it's the year 2000. That's when charter schools really got started going well in California. And this particular school superintendent wanted to do a homeschool based charter school. Now, at the time, I didn't know how rare that was to have a school superintendent want to do that. He did. And I said, sure, I'll be happy to. I told him, I said, I have a regular teaching credential, but I don't have my advanced degree yet. He says, don't worry about it. You've got the experience. That's what we want. And so I jumped in and ended up helping to start three different charter schools and personally enrolled probably 1200 kids into homeschooling. But one of the things that I really emphasized Cause I like, and the way you mentioned, I'm not a fan of the term homeschool sometimes because it narrows what homeschool is,

Tim Eaton:

especially in people's minds or the stereotypes attached to it. But yes,

Carol Worthy:

exactly. It's boy, we're so not that stereotype. However, if I, if you can go back to individualized learning, that's what I'm all for, individualized learning. And there was a time when my oldest son said, mom. I think I'd like to go to the high school next year. Now, if I were dedicated homeschool mom, I would have spent my time trying to explain to him why that's not a good idea, but my focus was on individualized learning and I, we had the conversation. Tell me more. Why is it you want to do this? And frankly, it boiled down to he wanted to play on the basketball team. Okay. He did. He went back. He got to start on the basketball team, which proved to himself that he was as good as he thought he was at basketball. And so I was all ready for him to graduate from that school. And he says, No, I just wanted that one year. I'm good.

Tim Eaton:

Wow.

Carol Worthy:

How in that same child. I said you're gonna have to do a really good. Senior year, because this will be solid for us to give you a diploma for me to do that. I have to be honest with you. You're going to have to really meet the goals. So I would leave packets of this and that and the other ideas and things for them to do. I came down, his had not even been touched. I thought he's done something different. So one day after day went by, I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to have a meeting. This isn't working. And I said, what are you doing for the school time? He said. I'm taking a class from MIT. They don't give me credit, but I'm, I can access all of the lectures and the test and all the information I need.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. And I just

Carol Worthy:

said, I said, go ahead. You do that.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. That's that you, yeah, you can audit a class. That's awesome.

Carol Worthy:

And he had looked all that up on his own and I thought, yeah, go ahead.

Tim Eaton:

So one you mentioned the idea of a home based like home based charter schools. How does that work for what's that and then I want to come back to your, just how you started with homeschooling and how you knew about it and then how you decided to do that but let's go to Tell me about the home based charter schools and it's interesting you say that because last night I was at the gym late and just because we had a busy night and one of the guys there was talking about something similar to that I was talking to at the gym and I hadn't heard of it in that sense before. But what is a home based charter school?

Carol Worthy:

Okay, so the charter schools here, you have, you are a public school. You're using public funds to create the program and the charter. Allows you to have your own school board. So that's the link. You have to have a school board. It can be elected by the parents or however you stipulate in your legal documents. You're going to do it. Once you've got that done. It's so funny because it's like I had no idea my little stories from when I was young meant so much when I'm older until right now.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Carol Worthy:

The first thing I had to do, we were together, I was talking with a woman that had been asked to come out of fourth grade, regular teaching, to direct this program, because she was already teaching at the district, and she says, I don't know what I'm doing. I said, you'll do fine, don't worry about it, we'll do fine.

Tim Eaton:

And this is in San Diego? This is in the San Diego area? Yeah. Yeah.

Carol Worthy:

And When we got together to talk about the curriculum, how do we do curriculum? Because they were all upset at that time, San Diego had just become very standards based and teachers were like freaking out. We all have to do the same thing. It was very confusing to them. That is absolutely the best thing that could have ever happened. You have a list of, if you do these things, you meet our requirements. And if you'll just look at what you're asked to do, you're going to meet those requirements. Just do you will. Let me show you. And so what we were able to do, but since we, we voted and chose to use the state standards that are required as our master curriculum. When they came by to check to see if our curriculum match the standards, it was like, oh, boy, ours are the standards. That's the curriculum that we're focusing. And our parents are free to choose. The curriculum that they would like to use as long as they let us help them. match those curriculums to the state standard. And it took a while for us to talk to the parents. I have to do it one on one. That's a lot of one on one.

Tim Eaton:

It's so unique family to family.

Carol Worthy:

And then as you show them that show me what you would do if you didn't have us in your life, what would you be doing? And I'm going to say that all meet standard. Everything you just did meets the standard. She said, really? And then I even for, especially for those that have a religious background, I go if you look at fifth grade, no, it's sixth grade standards in social study. You're actually asked to teach the Beatitudes and the parables of Jesus Christ. Now you have also asked to teach some Buddhist stories and some Hindu stories too, Hey, and in fifth grade, when you're doing world hit American history, You're asked to cover the Great Awakening. Come on, how much better can this get? A lot of them just had no idea what the standards were because they weren't available. And thank goodness to the computer, you could give parents the links to those standards and they could look at them. So what I ended up doing is I just took the standards, I gridded them out, and so I literally took them from this, from the website, made a, I can explain it, Excel sheet and nine ways to check them. So that every month you met and we're working your way down there. Cause we did have parents that would say, we made jello that's math. I'm going, yeah, only once, not every day.

Tim Eaton:

No, but I do the principle of what you're doing, what you did as far as. Take what the standards are fine. Here are the standards. It makes me think of the, like when I was younger, when I was a leader in scouts and they had these particulars, or, I saw them as yeah, fine. They gave suggestions of what you could specifically do. But if a young boy or a young man who did something totally different from the actual requirement, but it fulfilled the same physical activity, then we can adjust that. So my question is, cause I love that. I love that. What like that principle of flexibility and kind of seeing how it fits and fulfills the standard or the requirement, but how, but then who would oversee. You to make sure that you know what I'm saying? Cause we have a similar thing. We don't call it a home based charter, but it's basically what they call around here in alternate school and they have what's called school authorities where homeschool kids have to register in Alberta. But then it can be parent directed, or it can be teacher directed. And so you can do what they say, Alberta programs of study anyway, sounds boring, but the idea is there's requirements, but you can you can flex it to have what you are doing match those standards, but then my question for you was. Carol, like how did, when somebody audited you, or if somebody came in, who was coming in to say, no, that doesn't work or that works. You know what I mean? Cause

Carol Worthy:

yeah, we were basically the state via the county boards. And so that's one of the reasons I mentioned my grid sheet that we had. And there were specific things we had to do with their doable.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Carol Worthy:

Every family. Had to be under the oversight. Let's just say of credential teacher and that's again. We're one on one. See, that sounds oh, no, until you meet that credential teacher who's sitting there going. Yeah, I'm a credential teacher homeschool. My kids. I'm happy to help you. What would you like to do? That's the thing. And then that teacher, her credential pretty much rest on the report. So each for elementary kids, we did it monthly. For high school children, we did it weekly but so they would come in once a month for the younger and bring their work now, I loved it better backwards than they really couldn't allow it that way. I'm like, you bring me your work, I'll tell you what you did. But that's, that wasn't great.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah,

Carol Worthy:

what I did was in the first meeting when the parent has chosen the curriculum, that they're going to use in the way they want to. Are they going? No, I have my own. I want to do that. Fine. Whatever. We have to write it down. The student will be using this curriculum and I learned this next statement from my youngest daughter from her 3rd grade teacher who was regular public school, but he was retired Navy and I saw on his shelf. Some math textbooks that normally I only saw in homeschool homes. It was very interesting. The Saxon math.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Carol Worthy:

And I didn't see those in the public school and I asked him about it. So I'm surprised you are allowed to use that. He says I'm not used, allowed to use it for my, my base curriculum, but I am allowed to use it as a supplemental and I just always use my supplemental,

Tim Eaton:

that's really cool.

Carol Worthy:

Yeah.

Tim Eaton:

I like when people take it and think for themselves that way. But I like what you're, I like, I just what you're conveying there. Just the idea of bring me what you got and then we'll see how it fits these standards that we have to check off. But let's rewind a little bit. You had these pivotal moments from a very learning based family. It sounds like growing up with your mother and father and siblings. And then what was your first exposure to homeschool? Like how did you first get introduced? Who were the first homeschoolers you met? And then how did you come to the decision? I'm going to do this.

Carol Worthy:

We're friends from church. I had a group of ladies. One day we were after our church meeting for children and we were standing together with five of us. And we were looking at our watch going, why don't these parents come and pick up their kids? We have got to go home. I'm starving. And then we looked around and we looked around. We thought, oh, they're ours. A whole group of dollars. And then one of them was homeschooling her kids. And I said that tell me about that. And so the more she told me, I thought, oh, that sounds good, but oh, just too much. I don't know if I can do that. But

Tim Eaton:

But it wasn't a turn off to you. You weren't like, that's weird. Or that's

Carol Worthy:

No, it wasn't. Cause her children were brilliant. And one had written a book and they were just happy. And it was like, this is pretty cool.

Tim Eaton:

So you had this experience, you saw this family and you got interested and then, but you felt oh man, I don't know if I can do this.

Carol Worthy:

And the other thing is, since I had finished my credential at Auburn, I thought I can do this, but I like the socialization, not the becoming part of the social construct of government of that, but. The ability to talk and know people that you don't know and get to know them and work in a group and learn that some people aren't as nice as you hope and you have to learn to cope and live with them that kind of stuff at the time we were managing apartments 48 units and so my kids were getting a lot of that anyway

Tim Eaton:

yes

Carol Worthy:

When did I say no they're not doing this Oh yes. Yeah it was just an incident with a teacher that was a little unkind. Just let me just say that with one of my children, it was out of the ordinary. And I thought, we'll just do this. We'll finish at home and we'll come back. I did have one son who now is doing fine. Wife, family, they live in the Northeast. And but he had some learning issues and some Personality traits that were really difficult to put into four walls for eight hours a day. And the more he struggled, the more I thought this is just not working. And so it ended up for him, actually, he was the one that I did the least homeschooling with because he was going to be kicked out of school. And There was a teacher there that says, I'll have him in my class and he's fine for me. And so that was the second grade, third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade, no problems whatsoever. He worked best in that setting, a school setting with a kind teacher. Yeah. She was strict teacher. She was more strict than I would have chosen. If I were choosing for myself she did that. And so he went from not even wanting to be there. To going for those rest of years is fine. He just loved it. He loved it. It was a smaller campus. Just because of the location, it happened to be a small school. And the staff had a lot of continuity. They had been there a long time. They had worked together a long time. The children knew if Mrs. So and so said it, it was the same going to be for your teacher. You might as well obey her because it's all the same. And it was just, it was really an amazing thing. There was one teacher that for fourth grade, if he got upset, it was hard to get him to finish anything. And but at the school he worked well. So I always told her, if you ever need to do anything, call me and I'll be happy to help. But I went from having to be up there every day at the other school, literally every day, to not at all at the new school. And I asked the teacher, what is the difference? She says, I don't know. And so later as an adult, I asked him, could you give me some feedback about why it, Did not work at home. It did not work at that other school, but it did work. And what I thought was the strictest classroom setting I could ever find. Better. He said nobody was walking around touching things and nobody stood and watched me while I did my work. And I just I liked the way it was. That's he's still one of those that learns best online. He is great with what that situation is. And he loves it.

Tim Eaton:

It seems to fit what you said, like what, your priority or of individualized self directed learning type things. So then of your seven kids, who was homeschooled and how many did you homeschool at a time? And take us through the chronology of that or because that would have been in the eighties that you were homeschooling eighties nineties.

Carol Worthy:

Yeah. Yeah. So I stopped homeschooling in the year. What was the year of my divorce? Because frankly, I was court ordered not to homeschool my children. And that was just, I thought, okay, fine. And because the younger two weren't in homeschool. This isn't, and it was from my ex, not from the state. It was, it's a long story. However I had four out at one time. I forgot about this. I'm glad you checked that little memory. No, that's good. That original group of ladies that were teaching their kids. We, this was actually late 80s, before the charter school movement, we were wanting to start a homeschool using the current at that time law, which was the alternative education program. And we thought this should fit the alternative program. We realize that's used for other reasons, but this should fit that criteria. So we went to the school board and explained, showed them that our kids weren't welcome to and why we wanted to at least get the textbooks from the school. Could we have the textbooks, right? And there's nothing we don't want anything to do with it. Sorry. You can't do it. And then as that argument went on, we ended up wanting could you hire 1 teacher to work with these children?

Tim Eaton:

Yeah,

Carol Worthy:

when we do this or that. Nope, can't do it. Okay. Technology was getting to be part of the needs for the schools. And when I quit, when you relax and quit, you really have to put argument out of it. You can't get the creative ideas you need when you're in an angry mode. And so as we just chilled about it. It was in May at the end of the year, we used to go to every school board meeting. We're like clockwork. But the 1 for the last meeting, my mind just popped open this idea that's had me go back to more of my dad's thinking that my mom's creative thinking. He was more of the business guy and I stopped it at the time. The daily attendance money that the school's got for the students was 2, 500. That shows you how long ago it was, but it was 2, 500 dollars per student and our kids weren't in the school district. And when we looked at how many of us there were, and there wasn't that many, probably a half a dozen, probably more like a dozen. We had among us about 100 children. The next school board, I said, I know you've heard from us all year and you're sick of hearing us talk about homeschool homeschool. But I'm just gonna end with this. Your district gets 2, 500 per student to find a program to teach them. We have 100 students between us, and you're missing a quarter of a million dollars of money. You could get from the school for this school district. They hired a teacher in August, the following August. She had a, a modular room, and it had computers. It was like, it's the first they had ever had in the district.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah, it's cutting edge. They

Carol Worthy:

boarded the tutors. And so while we weren't there, the other kids could use our computers. We didn't care. And and that teacher they hired straight out of college there, she stayed with them 40 years.

Tim Eaton:

No way.

Carol Worthy:

It was fantastic program. Yeah. But it was nice to get going. But once you get going again, when you're trying to stay based on the kid, your program just changes a lot.

Tim Eaton:

But that sounded like what today people kind of use, use the term co op. You guys had this, like original co op that just got things moving in the district. Yeah,

Carol Worthy:

that we moved into the district. One of the programs that we asked for and they were happy to give from then on, when we would ask for a program is, could you find us an art? and a drama teacher. We want art and drama. We can't do those as well ourselves. And so they started a little art and drama program, which means some teacher somewhere that had that on her credential said, sure, I'd love to do that. Step forward. Taught performing arts for us.

Tim Eaton:

So

Carol Worthy:

that was cool. So that is, some things are easier to do than others, depending on your situation.

Tim Eaton:

But that was a, that was at a time when like homeschooling, there weren't that many and it was harder. People looked at you so weird today it's, moving into the mainstream. You've got such amazing growth, especially in the United States, but throughout the world here in Canada it's booming as well. Not as much as the States, but it is. What do you make of it? What, when you think of like your experience from then till now and in your observations, what do you come up with as far as the reasons for the growth?

Carol Worthy:

That's a nice segue into one of the concerns I have is while doing the program where people would be in our program and they would come for various reasons. I found the homeschoolers that were most successful were the ones who were homeschooling because they were trying to do what was best for their child, period. If it was for any other reason, generally it wasn't as successful. I remember our little kindergarten student, his mother was a psychologist. She had him when she was about 40. And so here she was 45 with this child. And she said, I don't know what to do with him. She, I won't say the doctor's name, but it's a famous doctor that has a program where you let kids pretty much raise themselves pretty feral. And she said, I've tried that and it's not working. So I said come on, let me talk and see what we've got. So when he came in my room, my office. He walked up to the desk and stood on top of my desk and said, Hi, I'm William. I have no rules. And I took him by the shoulders, picked him up off my desk and stood him next to it and said, Hi, good to meet you, William. My name is Miss Donahue and I do have rules.

Tim Eaton:

And

Carol Worthy:

so his mom was back. Yes.

Tim Eaton:

And

Carol Worthy:

so for him, especially kindergarten, our program was more about the socialization skills. About being a healthy, happy part of a society, I had another mother who brought two children in and it was clearly a unusual situation. The conversation was about highly ignited political things and just whatever. And I thought. I can't turn you away from the program. So if that's what you want to do, so she tried for a little bit, but it wasn't really what she wanted because she just wanted no roots. And I believe you couldn't do that.

Tim Eaton:

Right.

Carol Worthy:

Coolest things. I think homeschool parents need to learn looking back. Is if you want to homeschool homeschool, but don't feel like you need to demonize a public classroom

Tim Eaton:

to

Carol Worthy:

do it. I asked us usually my little spill. I would give when I was, giving the pros and the cons of our program. We're just think about the fact that. Heaven forbid, but there may be an occasion come up where you are, you cannot go to school and your children are in a regular classroom program. You don't want to have painted it. Like it's going to be this horrible thing that they cannot handle. You want your children to be able to handle the situations that come up in life. And so I look at them both as very awesome programs. If they suit meeting the needs of this family and the students, Oh, dang, you're making me think of things. Yeah, no, carry on. I remember why I started homeschooling now. I had forgotten. Yeah,

Tim Eaton:

Say it.

Carol Worthy:

When we moved to San Diego from cold Salt Lake, my husband was working a swing shift, 11 to 8 in the morning, something like that. He did that for years because it was fine. He made more money and with the holiday pay he got, it made more than I could have made. Working full time all year. We love the setup. We did it. But as we had children, that schedule would have meant they would never see their dad ever because they would leave for school while he was asleep. And before he came before they came home from school, he would have left for work. And we looked at it and thought. We love this schedule. It's been, it's just been a great schedule for us. Let's just give this shot. So that's what it was. And I wanted the kids to be able to at least see their dad. Yeah.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. That's common today too. Like when you have a spouse that has shift work or something else, it just offers that ability, that flexible schedule. And then you can customize it to your family.

Carol Worthy:

Yeah. And that's a schedule that's hard to beat because he worked down by the Ocean. So when he got off work at three, we would usually head down to the ocean and spend from three to six or seven at the ocean, we'd cook a what do you call a foil dinner or whatever we were going to cook down and come back. And it was just a really hard thing to say, we're just going to stop doing all this so we, that was the start. And then as the one that needed more went in for his programming then soon we had them all to see who would benefit and who didn't and it I remember one of my sons, my third son, he wasn't homeschooling and in third grade said, mom, I want to do it. I said, okay. So he came out for third and fourth and he was, he's really, he has his own business down here in San Diego and does great. But at the time, he did not want to memorize the multiplication tables. And I didn't know it at the time, but that's why he wanted to go back to the regular program because I kept harping on multiplication tables. So it turns out he goes back in for fifth grade. And the first thing out of that teacher's mouth was there are many students last year that didn't remember to learn their multiplication table. He had the benefit of three years in our That theater program I told you we were doing with the

Tim Eaton:

other

Carol Worthy:

and ended up majoring in theater down here in San Diego, University of San Diego, University of California at San Diego, different

Tim Eaton:

schools,

Carol Worthy:

but and has made a great life using that in his. He DJ ing my bits, my, my mitzvahs, weddings and all these kind of things. He's just life is a stage for this man and he has fun helping other people have fun.

Tim Eaton:

And you mentioned that before we started the interview about just how your kids have all kind of Take in whatever principles they gleaned from that homeschooling experience or just your family way and have led to be entrepreneurial, pursuits for almost all of them. But comment on just, how, their pursuit of entrepreneurship and how they're, being raised the way they were raised led to those types of careers.

Carol Worthy:

One is they are risk takers in the good way. And brave. And I have one says you can always make more money, mom. Don't worry about it. Just get, we'll do something different, whatever it is, and just have that attitude that life is full of opportunities and there are ways to get something done. If it's what you need to get done. This studio sitting here for my number seven child of Beverly is that same way she could have been very happy staying at another studio. Just working for somebody else. And she said, you know what, let me do my own. Boom. She's doing it. And that's something else. My daughter. The other daughter does it. She's a grief counselor.

Tim Eaton:

And that

Carol Worthy:

came out of her own loss. And she. It's now remarried. Her husband passed away 28 years old and say she's now spending her, she has two children, but she also spends a lot of time in her business of counseling, grief stricken people, and it's been a very beneficial. Another one became a pretty gnarly YouTuber long before I knew what YouTube was.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah.

Carol Worthy:

I told him, that's nice, just let me know how you're doing now and then, but I can't watch. And the oldest one, the one I told you was taking the classes online. He, when he learned you could take the certifications for advancement in the computer industry. without courses. You can just take that, study it on your own and then take the test. So

Tim Eaton:

yeah,

Carol Worthy:

he has his way up through, Azure and all these other things up and can pretty much command whatever salary he wants, wherever he wants to go. I think that's everybody. Oh, there's one that's in a rock band and he's touring Canada now because his band, one of the things they do is they're the official band for the band from Canada that we all

Tim Eaton:

really, what's the name

Carol Worthy:

that they call the band. When they're doing that show, it's called Chest Fever and they just came, they're coming home next week, but yeah, they were just all up through there. They love him. Wow.

Tim Eaton:

What does he do?

Carol Worthy:

He plays bass, no, yeah, he plays bass and syncs.

Tim Eaton:

Really? No way. what do you attribute that to? I'm saying all of their pursuits do you just think that it was as a mother, you didn't place limitations on them? What is it you attribute that? Or is that just genetic? What is it that led to that type of in an uninhibited?

Carol Worthy:

Yeah, and I think that even living uninhibited is probably genes, too. I think we're all from whatever genes wandering people, which is fun. My mother was a in her high school, she was the first girl to play drums in the marching band. She was also the first beauty queen in the town too. So it was like, she plays, she does all that.

Tim Eaton:

And,

Carol Worthy:

My dad was an amazing coach, but he was also a great thinker. And he served in so many different local issues. He really wanted to build a town. Like we have a lot of water growing up. We were in rivers and stuff. And he said, he knew that we needed to learn to swim. So rather than him taking us out and teaching us to swim, he started a citywide swim program. That's just how he rolls. And I think that's it. That cause all of them, all of my sons were in a band when they were growing up, but that one. Loved it the most and stapled it. The other is just, they moved on. Think it's, some of it is there's just so much variety in what life experiences happen to you. I think it's more their individual reactions to life. All had hard things to do. It's a hard stuff comes in your life, which maybe that's another piece that I don't know that I can advise homeschool moms, but. If I could, I would say

Tim Eaton:

do

Carol Worthy:

focus on letting your children learn how to solve their problems with you as a guide. Don't be fixing everything that comes along in front of them. You can do great harm telling children, oh that's okay. I'll take care of it. Oh, I'll do it. I'll do it. No, it's, we folded a lot of laundry. What my son said, mom, that game we used to play about the socks, where we all. Saw how many we could put together in 10 seconds and see if we could beat that record wasn't fun But they loved watching me do it because I had fun You had so much fun with it. We all just played along with you

Tim Eaton:

And that advice is good, like that advice is good for all families, right? Just to have, if you in order for your kids, they've done studies on kids that grew up with a consistent chore and the difference that made, In going into university and be able to succeed on your own and yeah, that, that's good advice to all. Did you have any other, did you have any if you were talking to a new homeschool mom who was overwhelmed and she's man, I don't know if I can do this. What would you tell her? What advice would you give her?

Carol Worthy:

I would first ask her to tell me about the day. I did have one homeschool program because her son was in sixth grade reading at a third grade level. He was in a regular school program, and we've tried since third grade to get his reading level up, and it's not happening now. If this is a homeschool mother with the same problem I usually look for pretty much a brain based reason. And I asked them, so I just talked to the kid. I asked the mother, what's he interested in for reading is different. I don't know why I'm telling you this, but reading is so different. But I asked her, what is he interested in? And she said, he likes nothing but motocross. I said, so how many books about motocross does he have? She's none. I said, do you get motocross magazine? She says, no, it's got pictures I don't like. And they advertise stuff. I don't like, I said, Pete, I gave her a black Sharpie and I said get him a motocross magazine subscription, mark out whatever you don't want him to read and let's talk. In six months He was at grade level and went back into the school program, which is what he wanted to do So they were homeschooling only to fix the problem.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah,

Carol Worthy:

it still works, you know if you can find that problem, but One day I want to just talk to you about your training because I really am interested in your phd but if you can find What a child literally is interested in at that moment, and tie as much of his learning that you can to that interest. You have to do very little pushing. They're looking for it. They're asking questions and questions is a big deal for me. If your children aren't asking questions, then there's something amiss because kids are curious and you need to not be running around answering the questions, but helping them find answers to their

Tim Eaton:

questions. Foster that curiosity. Don't kill it. And I love, I'm reading a book right now called Cracking the Learning Code. And it is like you said, very brain based. It's a, it's very like the science of the brain is all through it. Okay. And one of the things that he emphasizes throughout the entire book I'm about halfway through, but is that very idea that this isn't about likelihoods. This is about like science and research that when you study something that is meaningful to you. That's what you end up remembering. And so you learn things that are meaningful to you and it keeps using that word what's meaningful to you. Exactly. And if right now motocross is meaningful to that kid, then that is what will cause the learning to take place and enhance, whether it's reading or something else.

Carol Worthy:

And it, because it doesn't take long for a bright, intelligent human. To say, wait, if I'm learning this so I can do better in fourth grade and I'm learning fourth grade, so I can do better than fifth grade by the time we get to ninth grade, you realize, I don't need to get back and stop. I don't have to do this, but if you're learning because it changes your life, you're learning because you can have the knowledge you need to solve your problems and to help people. You can do something. Make it

Tim Eaton:

make the world better. That's a great way to say it. I this has been enjoyable. I can't believe how fast these interviews go, but I just want to give you the last word, but this has been a Carol worthy, everybody. And so grateful that the reason just so that people know that the reason I even met Carol was that she met my son who is spending some time in San Diego. And so he was so impressed with her. And so I, and I think it came up in your conversation that just the homeschool thing, because he went through homeschool his whole life. And Anyway so grateful that you took the time, but I'll give you the last word and then we'll shut this down for now.

Carol Worthy:

Okay. Teaching and learning is an ongoing process. If we can be good examples for our children. Of continually teaching and learning and applying we can lead them and to find out what they can become. We don't need to make those decisions for them. They need to make it themselves. And the more we let them do in that area, you'll be surprised what they'll come out with my kids are not anything I would have planned.

Tim Eaton:

And you're probably glad for that.

Carol Worthy:

Oh yeah.

Tim Eaton:

Yeah. For real. Those are words of wisdom. Thank you so much. And thank you for taking time and thank you to your daughter for allowing you to do that in her studio. Oh, good. Appreciate your time. And we will talk again. Thank you so much. Hope thank you. Good to see you. 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 on 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.