This Golden Hour

106. Micro-school Homeschooling with Jill Baumann

• Timothy Eaton

Share episode

In today’s episode, we get to spend time with Jill Baumann from Texas. Jill is a pioneering homeschool mother, micro school co-founder, and creator of innovative resources for independent teen learners. When her children were young, Jill sought out alternative education options. Eventually, she built a thriving micro school that served her own children well and many other students. Check out self-directedsuccess.com for resources, support, and learn more about her programs. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in alternative education, micro schooling, or empowering teens to take charge of their learning journey.


Connect with Jill

Scholar’s Quest for Independent Success

 

Books and Resources

Free Range Learning

The Self-Directed Learning Handbook 

Center for Living Ethics

Inspired Learning Academy 

Chief Architect

Vela


This Golden Hour

Jill Baumann:

especially at the beginning, there are no shoulds. There's nothing you should do. There's nothing you have to do. And., It's mostly about just enjoying the time and being with them when they're young and when they get older, then you may have to consider other things to add in. And more structure, but you can still keep it fun and connected and personalized to what they're doing.

Timmy Eaton:

Hi. I am 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. New 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 Jill Balman from Texas. Jill is a pioneering homeschool mother, micro school co-founder. And creator of innovative resources for independent teen learners. When her children were young, Jill sought out alternative education options. Eventually, she built a thriving micro school that served her own children well and many other students, and she still runs that today. Check out self-directed success.com for resources, support, and learn more about her programs. This episode is a must listen for anyone interested in alternative education, micro schooling, or empowering teens to take charge of their learning journey. Welcome back to this Golden Hour podcast. We're so excited to have with us, Jill Bauman from Allen, Texas. Jill, thank you for being with us.

Jill Baumann:

Thank you. It's an honor to be here.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes, indeed. Jill is a homeschool mother of two from Allen, Texas. She co-founded a micro school that we're gonna talk about here within our interview. She is the creator of the Scholars Quest for Independent Success and online gamified homeschool training program. Also the founder of Self-Directed Success. And that's the website as well. Self-directed success.com. So make sure that everybody checks that out and really focused on empowering teen learners. And I'm excited to ask you a little bit about homeschool GPT. So we're gonna talk about that too if you're okay.

Jill Baumann:

No, yeah, of course. But

Timmy Eaton:

add anything else you want to add to that bio and then we'll get going.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah, I guess the only thing I would add is that my main driver is just in general is just bringing out the best in our young people and the best in kids and helping them be their best selves. And so everything I do is centered around that.

Timmy Eaton:

Excellent. That's a, that's definitely a good purpose. I, I've I've taught youth from 14 to 18 and then from 18 to 30 for the last 20 some years. And you seem to be really honing in on the youth niche like teens. Why that group?

Jill Baumann:

Not sure exactly because I never thought I would be dealing with teens but it just fell into that. It was basically that when I was looking for solutions in that middle school, high school range, there wasn't anything available in our area. So I decided being the entrepreneurial minded one that I am decided to build one. And so that's how I got focused on the teens was just because it is more challenging and there aren't as many resources.

Timmy Eaton:

I'm finding that to be very common, that a lot of people out of out of their own need produce something that fulfills a need for others. And so that's a good pattern that I'm noticing in a lot of the people I interview. Why don't you tell us what was your first exposure to homeschool? How'd you hear about it? What'd you think about it at that time? And then how'd you decide to actually jump into it?

Jill Baumann:

So my I guess impetus for looking for other solutions, educational solutions was simply based on the fact that where my daughter was slated to go for elementary school was in a not so great part of town, and I just could not see myself sending her there. So I started looking for other educational options. I looked at private schools looked at anything that was available and nothing was a good fit. And there wasn't that much actually. Available. So I stumbled across homeschooling. I didn't know anyone that was doing it. So I just started researching and learning about it and just making it up as I went. And that's how we started. We used basically an eclectic approach. My favorite book was free Range Learning by Laura grace Weldon. And so I really liked the idea of just following their interests and whatever they naturally gravitated to, to go into that more deeply and allow them to follow their curiosities.

Timmy Eaton:

So when was this? What year are we talking? Because this was when your daughter was approaching kindergarten or,

Jill Baumann:

yeah, so she's 21 now, so that was like 17 years ago.

Timmy Eaton:

Wow. That's exactly when we started actually. My, my daughter, my, our oldest daughter is 21. And so where were you researching? Like how did you initiate that?

Jill Baumann:

Some of it was, I think I was just doing online research even then. And just finding whatever I could. I found a lot of books that I read. Yeah. And just found which ones clicked for me. Yeah I never fell into something that was very structured. I liked going with what we felt like that day and kind of making it more natural.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes.

Jill Baumann:

And have a more natural flow to it.

Timmy Eaton:

And what did your husband think and what was his view?

Jill Baumann:

He was supportive of it. He thought it was great. I don't know how, initially he wasn't so great about me giving up my salary, so that was an adjustment to make. But, he's always said how much money we spent on education and he counts the missed salary over the missed income over the years and

Timmy Eaton:

was like, I never thought

Jill Baumann:

of it like that.

Timmy Eaton:

That does highlight the real sacrifice that it is. Even in a financial way, like you're talking about, I'm always interested to know about like how families respond because you said you didn't really know any homeschool families. I'm assuming you guys didn't come from any kind of homeschool background, so how did your parents and siblings and friends, how did people respond to that decision?

Jill Baumann:

I'm sure they thought we were weird and really going off the beaten path and didn't really think that it was going to be the best in long term. But I didn't get much pushback or anyone giving me a hard time. But there, there was just like this, that's strange. Yeah. Kind of reaction.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah, no I can relate to that for sure. Did. And then did you guys quickly integrate into kind of homeschool communities I find that families are just all over the place. I'm far as that. There's some that never really tried to do that. We've had lots of friends at homeschool, but not really as, the first time we did a co-op was last year and, and my wife ran that co-op. And so what was your experience as far as connecting with other homeschool families?

Jill Baumann:

We, we didn't ever do co-ops. We did do this homeschool meetup where they like mostly met at park once a week or twice a week actually. And we would go, so it was like every Tuesday and Friday and we would go to park days and they would just play and meet up with other homeschool families and they would organize Easter egg hunts and just different events like that. It wasn't a consistent group of people, even though it was the same group. People would come and go. And so my kids never really got consistent friendships. Never knew who was gonna be there. And we met a few homeschooling families that we did, meet up with outside of that. And that did help. But I never found a rhythm to that kind of. Arrangement,

Timmy Eaton:

yeah. No, I understand that. I was wondering about like what's the age difference between your two children?

Jill Baumann:

Two years.

Timmy Eaton:

Okay. I, what I found is that, there's people that homeschool with one kid at up to 10 kids. And so like, when you have two children, how does that dynamic change in your view of if you had more children? Like what was their experience and I'm not even sure how long, I think you said you homeschooled for about six years or so.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. So what was that dynamic like with two kids?

Jill Baumann:

I think it was great. They were close enough in age that you could teach the same things. And it wasn't something where you really had to differentiate. And we went everywhere to all over the place museums and did all kinds of things that, that we had the freedom to do. But when my daughter was about 10 and my son was eight around that timeframe, things started to get harder and they started to compete for my attention for who was doing better. And it just, to me seemed to devolve. And so I started looking. I was like, if I could just get them one-on-one and not have both of them together Things would be better. So I ran across a, non-traditional school is actually a nature based school called Living Ethics, and I decided to put them in alternate days, so I was able to, put them in part-time. One would go one day and I'd homeschool the other one at home. That did work, that did help. But at the end of the year, I felt like what they got from that school experience was so much richer than what I was. Able to provide. I feel like if you have a lot of passion and you're interested in a lot of things, you can bring that passion to the kids and you can teach them all kinds of stuff. Yeah. But I struggled to maintain that passion and interest in so many different, like across the board there were things that I was definitely interested in, passionate about, but like other things I just wasn't interested in. And I couldn't like summon consistent, interest in No, it's hard. It's really hard. Yeah. So I thought, and especially my daughter, she did so much better when she was outta the house and going somewhere and had someone, and it was a more social for her, it's like being somewhere and oh, I'm going to do this, and

Timmy Eaton:

Right. It

Jill Baumann:

just really fit for her. But the school only went to sixth grade and that was her sixth grade year. And so we finished her sixth grade year and I approached the director the owner of the school, and I said, any chance you would consider doing seventh grade? Just one more year? Because I can't find anything that would give her this sense of community. They didn't do grades. It was all heart to heart, like very much kindness and compassion from the teachers. And so I was like, I can't find anything like this, and so would you do seventh grade? And she just told me if you lead it. And wow.

Timmy Eaton:

Wow.

Jill Baumann:

And so that's how I got started really on doing a more of a school related thing. And so I did that for that next year when my daughter was in seventh grade and I discovered that seventh grade needs something different. So the things that worked K through six or even K through five, don't work the same after seventh grade. Yeah. And so I started doing a lot of research'cause I wanted them to have more self-efficacy, so like some more resilience, more challenge. And so I did a lot of research on self-directed learning. I found a self-directed learning handbook. I don't, it's a niche book. I don't know, it's not very well known by Maurice Gibbons, but it was challenging adolescence to excel and I really clicked with that methodology. And so that's what I decided to adopt. And then I recruited a friend that was also at the Living Ethics School, another parent, and asked her to basically co-found and helped me out and let me bounce ideas off of her.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah.

Jill Baumann:

And so the following year, so in 2017, we started Inspired Learning Academy. So that was our school that we started. And it was based on that self-directed learning model.

Timmy Eaton:

And you did it through this, you called it a non-traditional school, and it was called what ethics? It was

Jill Baumann:

living ethics.

Timmy Eaton:

Living ethics. And like what was the student body like, how many kids were,

Jill Baumann:

so it was preschool through sixth grade and there was like about 10 students per multi-age classroom. Wow. So overall about 50 students. Overall, and it was on like three acres of land and very outdoor.

Timmy Eaton:

So would it be considered a private school or

Jill Baumann:

That's this the thing with micro schools and in Texas, even homeschooling is considered private school, so there's no real distinction. Gotcha. To me, a private school and just the way I think of it is a more traditional school that does the same thing Yes. As a public school, but with a d. Spent. Usually.

Timmy Eaton:

And was what you were doing considered micro schooling or was it still in the realm of that non-traditional like nature?

Jill Baumann:

I guess I started from the beginning calling it a micro school and I called it with I don't know if it was right off the bat, but I called it a school for homeschooling, which doesn't really make sense. That's how I felt. It was like bringing homeschool like mentality and care philosophy, philosophies to a school more structured, everyday kind of environment.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. That is micro schooling. And were there other kids that like went into seventh grade with your daughter?

Jill Baumann:

Yeah, so we decided to start that next year and basically our starting class was six students. And they were three of them were my co-founder and my children. And the other three were others that had gone to Living Ethic School that joined us. And the owner of the Living ETH school was kind enough to let us take over this shed on the property. So he has this 10 by 20 little shed that we made into a one room schoolhouse, and we used that for our first year. Wow.

Timmy Eaton:

That's cool. How was that during the winter months? I guess you were in Texas, but

Jill Baumann:

Yeah. I have one picture of us all. And full coats in the corner trying to get warm because our little tiny heater was not working that day.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes. And then what about subject matter? Or even questions like funding. Like how did it work when you're like, how don't know what the accountability is for a school of that nature in Texas? Yeah, so we, I know it's more, I know it's different state to state, but

Jill Baumann:

Yeah, ours is tuition based. So we o operated under tuition. That's how our funding was. Although we did form as a nonprofit and went through that whole process. And as far as, we just called ourselves an umbrella school for homeschooling, so we just fell under the same rules for homeschooling and our state, which is, very Texas, a very homeschool friendly state. So yeah, open to no recording,

Timmy Eaton:

open to school choice. That's great. And then was it only for that year at the,

Jill Baumann:

no. So we just did it and been doing it ever since. But we were there for, at the Living Ethics campus, if you wanna call it that. For two years, a little over two years, two and a half years. And then the the owner of the Living Ethics School retired and she sold the property. And of course we. We're not in a financial position to buy that property, so we had to find a new home. And we looked everywhere and finally were able to rent a space from a church. And we were there two weeks when COVID hit. But when COVID hit, we stopped going in person Friday, but we were back at school on Monday online. We didn't skip a beat. We had our whole communication system. We used Slack already, so everything was just very smooth. And so we were able to continue online for the rest of that year.

Timmy Eaton:

That's impressive. But now that daughter is 21, and I assume your son is about 19. So then maybe take us through what was the rest of their experience?

Jill Baumann:

As we went through inspired Learning Academy and they went through there. They both graduated from Inspired Learning Academy. My daughter was the first graduate. There's, she had a graduating class of two. And my son was the only one when he graduated, but my daughter was the first graduate from our program, but from the time she was 14, she was interested in architecture. And so she taught herself like Chief Architect, which is a program for designing houses. And she was just always like into that. So now she's going into her fourth year of architecture at University of Arkansas. And that was just like she decided early on she knew her path. And so the thing about our micro schools were able to really personalize that education. So if you know what you wanna do and where you wanna go, we can just manipulate and bring in people and, we brought in an architect to teach an architecture class. It is and there's enthusiasm because once one person is interested in it, then yes, that enthusiasm has other people get interested in it. Just different things like that we were able to do some very unique experiences based on, it's all based on what our student. Body is interested. So in our micro school, they pitch or request classes, anything that they're interested and we do our best to accommodate that. And then we'll also have we call them facilitators, pitch classes they think, that kids would be interested in. And so you have it going both ways. And then everyone votes on the ones that have the most interest, then we try to make sure that happens. And we put it on the schedule, but everything is opt in. And the micro school that we have, it's like even math, english, science, we offer them, but we always tell the kids

Timmy Eaton:

everything's an option.

Jill Baumann:

Everything's an option because that's cool. It's so much easier to teach. When they've opted in.

Timmy Eaton:

That's so good. And it's, yeah, that's so true. As you say that just resonates with me. In, in the school system, it's always about core subjects, and we even use that terminology in all education circles. But I like the idea of no, it's all options because who can determine what are the core interests of all these different beings and minds and brains. And what did your son, what did he do or what did he, what were his interests? And then like how many kids were we talking about were in the micro school when your kids graduated or during that time?

Jill Baumann:

Yeah. So by the time my kids. Graduated. We had 17. Overall, and that's sixth through 12th grade? Actually at that time it was seventh through 12th and we since then added sixth grade. And were most

Timmy Eaton:

of them like family friends or people that you guys just knew by association? Or how many of those would be like, oh, I heard about you and can my kid do this?

Jill Baumann:

It's, yeah, it's, I heard about most of them actually came from public school. We have some that came from homeschooling, but a lot came from public school and most of the stories that, were just anxiety, bullying school refusal. They just were not thriving.

Timmy Eaton:

So it was the non desirables of the public system that kind of drove them. Drove them to an alternative.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah.

Jill Baumann:

So that's where most, a lot of our students come from. And we have mentor meetings once a week, so each student is assigned a mentor. And I think that's so important because each student has a connection that they build over time with at least one adult in the school. And that's through that mentorship that we can work through, what's working, what's not working for you socially, academically which classes are working for you, which aren't, and you just building relationships.

Timmy Eaton:

And don't forget to come back to about your son, but I'm, yeah. I'm more questions are triggering as you say this, because it's fascinating because not everybody comes from a state or a province that, that allows this, right? Like you said, under the umbrella schooling, home homeschooling, micro schooling other types of education can function. And there's not really much reporting, right? It's not right in Texas. The question I'm wondering is in its tuition based, right? And so were they relying on you and how many people were with you? You, and. How many? It

Jill Baumann:

was originally, for the first many years, it was just me and my co-founder. But now we have three other and you

Timmy Eaton:

call them facilitators? And so will you and your co-founder and facilitators, will you all take on the main role as far as researching? For example, student comes in, they're 15 years old, and she says I'm interested in mechanical engineering, and then do do you equip her and empower her to know how to research what kind of resources there are? Or do you guys take on that main role of saying, Hey, I just found this awesome course that might be of interest to you, or tell us how that might go down?

Jill Baumann:

I think it's both. Because the mentor that's assigned to that person would be like, what are you interested in? How can we advance that? What courses can we put you in? Or what skills do we need to work on to get you where you wanna go? At the same time the kids design their own schedule. So after they opt into whatever classes they want, the open spots on their schedule are for independent study or anything else that they want. And their job at the beginning of the semester is to fill in those holds. And, we give them links and researches and resources and like a questionnaire to help them figure out what am I interested in, is one of the questions and what would I like to learn? And the other one is, what is my future self need me to learn?

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah, that's

Jill Baumann:

good. And so you have that balance skills. Yes. And that's how we, so they may research, a lot of our kids do research and find classes that they're interested in on their own. So it's, it is a mix of the two.

Timmy Eaton:

And so you're renting out a church or whatever, like you said. And so what I'm just a, again this is so fascinating to me. I like this because I've talked to several people about micro schooling, but never, not somebody who actually started it. So I like that you have had this where do your you go into a school, there's computers, where do your resources come from? And, if you've got about 17 kids, at least when your kids are going through, if there's 17 kids, that's much different from a regular classroom and and so maybe paint the picture of what it looks like if I'm a student and I come in, let's say as a freshman or a sophomore. What does the day actually look like? From what time to what time? And what's the movement of the day?

Jill Baumann:

Okay. Yeah, sure. It will start at the arrival time is nine o'clock and we go to 3 45, but at nine o'clock you'll come in and then there's time to just socialize for, it's about seven minutes, but it also allows people to be late without, the Yeah. That strict bell, if you don't make it by the bell, there's so much stress. So it's, the design is to be flexible and to allow, and if they're going to be a late, they're expected to post on the slack Yeah. Platform. We're running late or whatever. But anyway, at, so at 9 0 7 we have a standup meeting. So we ring a chime and everyone knows to gather and we do a standup meeting where we just go over announcements.

Timmy Eaton:

And Is this all in one room?

Jill Baumann:

Mm-hmm.

Timmy Eaton:

Okay.

Jill Baumann:

And then, so we do that and we go through announcements, and then we break into two groups. One is a middle school group and one's a high school group. And we call those little circles Cogo, which it's like co coming and going'cause we do it at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day.

Timmy Eaton:

Cool.

Jill Baumann:

But it also means huddle in Latin. So the very first year we did it the kids came up with this name, Cogo. So they start in the circle and this is a time for, the main thing is to set intentions for the day. And so they go through and we go around and there's different things that we do. We could do a word of the day, we do a daily theme, like it's Wednesday wisdom Wednesday. So we read a wisdom quote, things like that. But the main thing is to set your intention for the day.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah.

Jill Baumann:

And then, it could be anything like to get through this math lesson or it could be

Timmy Eaton:

finish an essay

Jill Baumann:

or, and, or it could be to be kind today or, and as facilitators we model that. So we say for ourselves what our intention is today. Awesome. Or my intention is to be patient, it's both academic and personal development. So both sides of that. Yes. And then we do, at the end of Cogo, we do one minute of exercise to get the Yes, indeed. I've always wanted to do more than that, but I get such pushback. I haven't been able to do it yet, but the kids choose the exercise. Whoever's running the Cogo will choose the exercise that we do, and we'll do that. And then they start their first class. And from 9 15 to 10 15 and then 10 15 to 1115, they have their second class and then they have a half hour snack break where they can go outside. Just visit whatever they wanna do.

Timmy Eaton:

And are they doing different classes, I assume yeah, depending on the kids' interest of them, yeah. There might be kids that have a similar interest, but

Jill Baumann:

so most of it's core classes. And then also if they're not in the class that's being offered, which might be an elective that they're not interested in, they would be in the independent study room, doing their independent class.

Timmy Eaton:

Gotcha.

Jill Baumann:

And

Timmy Eaton:

and facilitators kind of roam.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah. That's how that kind of flows. And then, then we, everyone has math at the same time, unless they opted out. We have had a couple kids do their own math curriculum. Yeah. That didn't wanna do. What we do and ours is still just a facilitator floating to help wherever they are, because they're all on different lessons, doing their different, learning at a different pace. It's not traditionally taught, but they use video lessons or whatever. And then the facilitator is there too. Check in on them, see how they're doing. See how things are going. And most of the kids actually, even though we have lunch after math, most of the kids eat lunch during math. I don't know if it's a comfort thing. Yeah. They like to eat during math so then when it's lunchtime, they don't have to eat, they can just go do what they wanna do. Yeah. So then they have an hour 45 minutes for lunch. And then we have two more class periods after that. And the last class period two days of the week is gym. And we have an open gym. They have a gymnasium there at the church, which is really great.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes.

Jill Baumann:

And so it's it's how it rolls. Yeah. And then we have a cleanup time at the end and we do our cogo closing and reflect on our intentions. What did you intend today? How did it go

Timmy Eaton:

So if they're doing extracurricular things, it would just be like on their own, through their families. Mm-hmm. Like If they wanna be involved in any sports. I know in Texas there's even homeschool leagues for certain things. And maybe they can qualify for those. And then what about as far as when they're getting closer to post-secondary decisions? What university, what college, if they're gonna go straight into trades or work, what role do you and your facilitators play in helping them? Do you leave that to the family or do you just do that as if, as they approach you, you help them with that or?

Jill Baumann:

That's our weekly mentor meeting. We're always asking them, not always, we're not badgering them, but we're saying, have you thought about which direction you wanna go and do you wanna try this? And we have different graduation paths. So one is a traditional going directly to university path One is going to community college for either as a gateway to university or as an associate's degree. And then we have an independent entrepreneurial, direct to workforce path. And so they have different requirements. For example if you're going directly to the workforce you don't need algebra two necessarily. You can do different things that are specific to. What you want to do. So that's when you know you have a lot more choice in what you're doing. So all your credits are choice based and they're molded to what you wanna do. So that's how it goes. And then we just work with the kids craft, craft a

Timmy Eaton:

yeah, craft, like a pathway. That leads that. See to me it requires some pause to think about.'cause some people listening to this would say, wow. First of all, do you guys offer a diploma? They do. So they get a, yeah they'll get a high school diploma.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah. And a transcript. And we do grades in high school. These are predominantly self-assessed. But with mentor and facilitator override or it's not, I wouldn't say override, I say it's a conversation.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah.

Jill Baumann:

So the, how we do it, we go

Timmy Eaton:

negotiation.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah. So the students are responsible for providing the evidence and they propose their grade, and then the facilitator has a conversation with them and say, wow, okay. Let's see if we're on the same page.

Timmy Eaton:

That's cool. Because it teaches them to take ownership. And like you said, like the whole thing is about self-directed success and Right. So I've had three kids go from, birth to university without a diploma and without any public schooling. But what this kind of reveals is that there's a lot of ways to do it. Your daughter went to University of Arkansas and she went through, this system and she is at university, fourth year architecture at University of Arkansas. My kids have gone through without any grades, without anything and got into university. And some people are mind blown by that. Like they just can't believe that those options exist. And so it's so good to let these things known. So how was it for your daughter to go into the University of Arkansas? What was that process and what did they require as far as did she take the a CT or anything like that or,

Jill Baumann:

yeah, she actually did take the SAT, but I think even at that point, the I think it was mostly because of COVID, but they were doing SAT optional.

Timmy Eaton:

Oh yes, that's right.

Jill Baumann:

But you had to take it for placement, but not for admissions. So that's how it was for her. I think the key is doing dual credit. So my son didn't, but my daughter did dual credit. And I think you have to prove when you come from a non-traditional environment, it helps to prove that you can survive and do well in the traditional environment. And community college classes during her junior and senior year is what really helps that I think.

Timmy Eaton:

Yes. No, we've had a similar experience. Yeah.

Jill Baumann:

So my son on the other hand, we decided to, we found this program he wanted to study philosophy. And so we found this program at Texas a and m, which is great'cause it's in-state and yes. So in-state tuition is much better. But my daughter had applied to Texas a and m, but she did not get in a lot. What they are doing mostly is they say they have this high acceptance rate, but you're accepted into a satellite school. So you don't go to Texas a and m campus at the main campus. You go to Texas a and m at different satellite campuses. And then if you do well there, then you can

Timmy Eaton:

transfer, move

Jill Baumann:

to the transfer. But I found out this. Obscure program that allowed you to basically do the same thing with the community college. So you could do your first year at a community college and if you signed up for this program ahead of time and committed to your major and you took these classes at the community college that were for the, that Texas A and M1 to C then as long as you got over a 3.2 GPA, you were automatically accepted and I was like blown away.'cause I was like, this is awesome because if you go to a satellite school, you have to pay living expenses and it's just like going off to school. But this way he could live at home. Then do his first year at community college. So when we found this out, we actually graduated him early.'cause he had all the credit. He did. Yes. So he graduated at 17. He didn't do any dual credit, he just went straight into that year I think he needed 30 credits in a year. So he started in the summer and went for the whole year and ended up with a 4.0. And Wow. Got into a and m so he's going into his second year at a and m now.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah that's what I mean, like, when people hear of these different approaches to doing it, they just are, their minds are just expanded because, and I, I've been exposed to it for so long that I just love hearing and not surprised anymore. But I do love hearing so many different avenues and paths to get into either post-secondary or whatever it is that somebody's pursuing. I definitely wanna. Transition to talk about like your business and how that happened. But maybe just before I do that, maybe two last questions on first of all, what was your main motivation it seemed was dealing with environment like you, you didn't really want your daughter going to the school that she was assigned to go to or whatever. And then what did you see as far as the evolution of your reasons for choosing home education or alternative education? What did you observe as oh yeah, that was my initial motivation, but as we homeschooled, what was it about it that you're like, oh man, we like this choice, this route?

Jill Baumann:

Yeah, and I think that's the key is choice, right? In public school they have no choices. Other than, their electives here and there, but just also the way that the kids are treated, so it's very authoritative. But in general, that's, I didn't want my kids in that brat race. Competitive um, peer oriented energy. Yeah. Yeah. So the, as they got older, yeah, I definitely was like the reasons are different based on which age they are. And then also when I would see these kids come from public school and the horror stories, they would tell me, just cemented that in for me. I've heard some really amazing negative stories about what happens. And I know there are positives and there's a lot of benefits in some classes, but overall, I didn't wanna take that risk with my own kids.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. It never came close in the balance for us, like as far as outweighing. Like we just the decision homeschooling. And it sounds like in, in essence, you really did homeschool your kids all the way through. Exactly. You were still their teacher and, exactly

Jill Baumann:

but yeah, I had homeschool friend of mine, she was like, why would you think it's easier to homeschool a school of kids than your own two kids? I dunno.

Timmy Eaton:

Oh no there's a reality. No, no two situations are the same. So I can actually see why that could be for other reasons. And the last question I wanna ask you before we transition to your, the business side of things is just and I often ask this is just your council to people who are thinking about it. We're seeing exponential growth in home education, especially in the United States, and people are coming into it in droves. And so what's your counsel to new families that are either overwhelmed or feeling clueless? What would you tell them as they begin?

Jill Baumann:

Yeah. I would say, especially at the beginning, is that there are no shoulds. There's nothing you should do. There's nothing you have to do. And. It's mostly about just enjoying the time and being with them when they're young and when they get older, then you may have to consider other things to add in. Yeah. And more structure, but you can still keep it fun and connected and personalized to what they're doing.

Timmy Eaton:

Wonderful. Oh I love that answer. There's no shoulds. And if people could really realize that and trust that, especially like you said in the primary years of of their learning, it makes such a difference. So thank you very much. So tell us how you got into your business and the names you chose and just tell us the whole evolution of that and when did that happen?

Jill Baumann:

I think I. Actually formed the business in summer of 2023, so two years ago. But I've been working on ramping it up, but I started out with the desire to make homeschooling more accessible for the teen years because I knew a lot of homeschooling families that their kids were struggling in public school, but they didn't feel qualified or, I don't know how to do algebra. I can't teach them algebra. So there was this resistance even though they knew that the school environment that they were in was not good for them. And then, just. In general, supporting even those that had been homeschooling when it got to the teen years, all of a sudden I don't wanna learn from mom anymore. And encountering that kind of resistance. So I wanted to create something that would address that. And but I knew from my experience in the micro school that it's difficult to engage kids and teens in particular. And so at the same time I was observing my son in particular, just on video games. He would struggle and struggle fail, and keep trying. And I'm like, wow, he is so motivated. To accomplish things in this video game, but that doesn't translate to other areas of his life and so necessarily. And so I, I started researching what is it about video games and how can we apply that to learning? But I also at the same time thought that the key to helping homeschool families of teens was to help the teens be more independent. So if they can take ownership of their education, that relieves a lot of burden from the families and from the parents and reassures them. If the student is taking the initiative and they've got it under control, then there's no stopping them and Right. You can homeschool in two hours a week because you're just checking in and letting them report to you what they're doing. So that's where I wanted to go. And I thought the main crux of that was teaching the teams how to be independent and how to approach it. And I thought that was mostly with mindset, skills, and accountability. And so I developed the actually I applied for a micro grant from Vela and received that in to develop this program. So I developed Scholars Quest, called Scholars Quest for independent success. And it is a fantasy video game based theme or narrative. It's not a video game, but it uses that theme to engage kids and the whole thing is you're on this quest for independence, and that's what it's the whole objective of it. And it's a four week program that every day, at the beginning of the day, it's a 15 to 30 minute lesson, starts with a two minute video, taking them through and meeting different wise characters that teach them different things about mindset, different skills about how to focus, but in a story theme. And then in the process then they have exercises at the after in each lesson and they earn XP or experience points. And so it's just taking all these aspects that I learned from game vacation

Timmy Eaton:

right,

Jill Baumann:

to this. So it's one of them is knowing what the goals are and how to get there making progress visible. And so it's like all these elements wrapped into it to increase that engagement and make it more memorable. And part of it is variety and novelty, right? The same thing over and over gets boring, right? So you have to have a new story or a new character to keep that interest going.

Timmy Eaton:

And how did you create that? Characters in the story? Who made the game or, we, I know you don't wanna call it a game. Who, who made the quest? Who? Yeah.

Jill Baumann:

So I have become very good friends with chat GPT, and I have created almost everything. And my videos are really just still images, like a series of still images that I put together. So I had chat, GPT create the images, and then I played with a couple other AI tools and my images have gotten better and chat GPT has gotten better. Yes. The images are much better now. But basically that's how I did it. I also had chat, GPT help me with the storyline. I wanna create this story about mindset. And I want it to be a fantasy theme-based, and I want it to be like a character in a video game and going on an adventure for independence. And it just came up with this incredible story. And then I selected a voice, an AI voice to have that deep, dramatic yes. Storytelling voice and just put all those pieces together.

Timmy Eaton:

Sounds like you could teach something about using AI right now.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah I've created a lot of custom. GPTs. So different for all different things, but I found them very helpful.

Timmy Eaton:

You mentioned that on your website about just the homeschool gpt things that are geared towards homeschooling. How does that work?

Jill Baumann:

There's two ones called homeschool Advisor.

Timmy Eaton:

Mm-hmm.

Jill Baumann:

GPT and the other is Homeschool curriculum. Generator gp. And

Timmy Eaton:

you created those too?

Jill Baumann:

So I basically just took chat GPT and put in my prompt my programming, if you will. It's really just saying, this is how I want you to behave. These are the things that I want you to emphasize. And when people prompt you, when users prompt you to create a homeschool curriculum, you wanna ask them what grade it's for or do all these things first to get the information and then make sure you provide them with something that is for homeschooling. So you don't want to create what you would do in a classroom, which is very frustrating. I remember that from homeschooling. It was like, oh, this is great curriculum, but it has me do all these discussions and yes. Things geared towards

Timmy Eaton:

a classroom. Yeah.

Jill Baumann:

I just gave it all these, parameters, if you will. And so now you can just access it and put in your prompt and you say, okay, I need you could do a whole curriculum for the semester or you, or a unit, or you can do just one lesson. Say I need a lesson on photosynthesis for my, 14-year-old who really likes, and you can put their interest in there. And then it will generate this lesson you can say, oh do you have any labs or activities? And it can generate those. And you can get your whole curriculum for free. It's just that's really incredible what it can do.

Timmy Eaton:

Wow. Yeah, that's, yeah so that's something everybody needs to check out for Sure. And what's in the future? What are you working on and are you still maintaining the micro school?

Jill Baumann:

Yes, this year will be my first year stepping away from the day to day so I can focus on self-directed success more. And I finally have a a team that I can really trust. So I'm really thankful that I can afford to step away a little bit. And I'll still go in and help with math because that's my strong point. So now I'll be able to devote more time to self-directed success. And the big project that I'm working on, that I'm actually trying to get a beta version ready so that we can pilot it at Inspired Learning Academy this year. It's called mastery of Self Framework. So it's a set of skills and competencies that we can actually you know, and Scholars Quest is part of that. But things that we can actually measure and that, it can be from students collecting evidence that says, Hey, I did this. Or it can be facilitators noticing in class that they've done something. And when I talk about these, I'm talking about, skills like planning and time management. Yeah. And task initiation. And some kids may not even know what task initiation is. So part of that is, lessons on what is task initiation and how they can demonstrate it. So the whole thing is demonstration based and creating a culture of challenge of self-mastery. What does it mean to master yourself and. So this is a whole framework that I'm implementing to be able to do that. And the other half, so there's nine skills and there's nine competencies. And the competencies are more like intellectual curiosity critical thinking and study skills emotional social intelligence resilience. Yes. Self-efficacy. So all these things that I think are the most important to success in any endeavor. So whether you're going to college, whether you're going in the workforce, whether you're being an entrepreneur, no matter what you do in life, if you can have self-mastery, you have what I value most is personal freedom. So my goal is to have all these kids graduate or, have the ability to exercise personal freedom through self-mastery.

Timmy Eaton:

That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of resource for for individual students. So would you say that scholars Quest for independent success, is that basically the online version of the micro school with a with a gamification thing? Or what subject matter are students anticipating to find if they do Scholars Quest?

Jill Baumann:

Scholars Quest for independent success itself is just a wrapper. It's just creating mindset for anything that they're doing. It doesn't include any curriculum. I'm working on this mastery of self framework will be similar, but I also plan to build on that a turn turnkey micro school system ecosystem that would include curriculum but flexible enough that you can add your own things in. Yes. But also have a menu or a catalog of options so that if you are doing a homeschool co-op or you wanna start a micro school, or you even as an individual homeschooler, you want to have all the the framework of mastery of self and all the curriculum. That the main curriculum that would go with that for a high school education, for example. And so that's the idea is to create this kit that would be available to people to have all that in a kind of done for you program.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. It's a one stop shop. So the main outcome of taking or doing scholars quest would be to develop the mindset.

Jill Baumann:

Yeah. So the scholars quest itself is for developing skills of independence and taking over. I see. And one of the main things of scholars quest for independent success is every week, they are supposed to lead a progress review with their parents. I called it proving Yourself to Your Guardians, I think is what it's called. But basically it's where the teen is actually leading this conversation and they're saying, here's the progress. Here's what I did this week. And it includes a reflection. Here's where I think I could do better. Here's where I struggled, but then was able to get back on track. And so that part of it is that's the ownership, right? That's the accountability. So the, that whole scholar's quest is just habits, really skills mindset around any curriculum, right? Yeah. And then, mastery of self, or what I'm calling the SDS mastery kit is more of a done for you program. That includes curriculum as well.

Timmy Eaton:

It sounds like you still have quite a bit of work in the, that you're pursuing and that's that's fun. But it can be overwhelming, I'm sure.

Jill Baumann:

Yep.

Timmy Eaton:

Thank you so much for sharing all these resources. Is there anything else? I'll leave the last word with you. This has been a, an awesome conversation to hear about some resources. I love what we learned about micro schooling in particular and the outcomes of your own children and what's happening in that world. I'll leave the last word with you. Anything you wanna say about where you can direct my audience to connect with you and your work and anything like that?

Jill Baumann:

Okay. Yeah. I would say, self-directed success.com to reach out to me with any questions. But I think the great greatest place to start is with a scholar's quest dependent success, just to build those skills. And it'd be great to do that at the beginning of the year of the school year if you observe a summer. I know some homeschooling families don't do that. Yeah. But and then there are other resources like the homeschool curriculum generator, if you wanna try that out, that's free. So just check it out and see what resources work for your family.

Timmy Eaton:

And obviously this is targeted to the homeschooling niche, but is obviously available to anyone who is interested in these resources, I assume,

Jill Baumann:

right?

Timmy Eaton:

Regardless of their education choice.

Jill Baumann:

Yes, exactly. And if there's other people who, have thought about starting a micro school, then then this SDS mastery kit might be something they'd be interested in.

Timmy Eaton:

Yeah. Thank you very much. This has been a great conversation, Jill. Thanks for being with us.

Jill Baumann:

I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

Timmy Eaton:

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 Podcast 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.