The Sequoia Breeze

Rebecca: Welcome to the Sequoia Breeze podcast. A breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca La Savio, and I'm happy that you have chosen to join us today. Welcome, listeners. We are here today with Stacey McDonald. You might recognize her voice from our wonderful podcast with the parent panel about testing that we did in season three. Today she joins us in a different capacity as she gets. I'll have her tell us more about this, but she is a board member for Feather river as well as a.

Stacy: Homeschooling mom of, wow, three now five. Five total kids, three still in school today.

Rebecca: We are here because Stacy is willing to share her story with us, and I'm really excited because she's fascinating to talk to. It is her everyday life. But I think it's really interesting. So welcome, Stacy. Thank you for joining me again.

Stacy: Of course.

Rebecca: So tell us a little about you and your cool role with the schools and about your family.

Stacy: So we started with Clarksville and then switched over to Feather river with our hst. And I am currently a board member for Feather river. And so I get to see a little bit of the inside workings of the school, which is really, really cool, and to kind of see what it takes to provide us with the freedom of education that we all super, super enjoy. I have five kids. My oldest went through public school exclusively, and she is in her junior year of college in an astrophysics major. So I don't even know what she is learning or doing. My second oldest graduated from Clarksville, and he is in chemical engineering program. And then I have a junior, a freshman, and a 7th grader still, that we are homeschooling.

Rebecca: That's a lot of samples.

Stacy: To collect samples, that's their job. I try to hold them a little accountable. We have a little Google Drive, and I'm like, put your stuff in the Google Drive or scan it to the Google Drive, because otherwise it's not going to happen.

Rebecca: Love it.

Stacy: See? Tips already.

Rebecca: So you have fully homeschooled the other four?

Stacy: No. We started like most lots of people, I shouldn't say most lots of people when COVID hit, and we lived in Texas, and we were very lucky that we lived in a district that it's absolutely crazy. But in third grade, everyone got a new MacBook air, like, everyone. And so when COVID hit, they were all very set up. So we kind of had, like, the best COVID schooling that you could possibly have. But for my youngest, it was 06:00 at night, and we were still doing his. His schoolwork for the day. And one evening, it just kind of hit me. Why are we killing ourselves and working so, so hard and getting. He's frustrated. I'm frustrated. No one's living their best life to meet someone else's expectations. And he was in third grade at the time. And honestly, my thought process was, you know, this all happened in March. What am I possibly going to do to ruin him in two months? Like, I'm sure that whatever I do will be fine for two months, and then we'll be fine. And Texas has no real oversight for homeschool. You just withdraw your kid, and you're kind of on your own. And I definitely fumbled those first couple of months, and I tried to gather support from the community and other people that I knew were homeschooling, but everybody was kind of doing their own thing, and so it wasn't very helpful. And I homeschooled him for the next year in Texas through fourth grade. And then when we found out we were moving to California, I was, like, beyond excited because at that point, we had figured out that homeschool was really the best avenue for him. And I was so excited to have, like, support and structure and, like, funds, because up to that point, everything had been on us. And so if I tried a curriculum, and I spent money on a curriculum, and it wasn't working, it was so frustrating, and I didn't have any way to, like, preview it before or ask people. So when we decided we were moving here, I was super, super bummed. And when we got here, we were in kind of a weird, like, transitional housing situation. We were looking to buy a house, and I asked my older kids, who were in middle school and high school at the time, what they wanted to do. Do you want to homeschool with your brother, or do you want me to enroll you? And they were like, well, we don't want to switch schools. That would be so hard to start and then start over again. We don't want to do that. So we'll homeschool this year. And then by the end of that year, they were all like, oh, yeah, this is it. This is it. I love the freedom. I love being able to explore my interests. I love the time. And that was one of the biggest changes I felt like for our family was all of a sudden, we had. All of this time, we had been getting up in the morning and having to run for 2 hours to get everybody to school and then run as soon as we picked them up and then run to do all the things that they wanted to do after school, and all of a sudden, we could do that during the day. So by the time their dad came home from work, our day was done.

Rebecca: Home? Yeah, just home.

Stacy: And to do whatever.

Rebecca: There's so much worth in that.

Stacy: I didn't realize how stressed I was meeting other people's expectations, working on projects that didn't work with my kids brains and just getting them places took off my plate. It was just like this giant stress off of me that I didn't realize was there.

Rebecca: So I know a little bit from talking to you about the testing experience and your sort of philosophy on that and all of your tips and tricks that I have not forgotten. They were fabulous. That your kids education journey hasn't always been super straightforward. So can you talk to us a little bit about. You've mentioned already, this didn't work with my kids brains or this, you know, trying to meet other people's expectations wasn't working for us. Can you expand a little bit on that?

Stacy: Sure. It's still not straightforward. I'll be honest. It's still not easy. Sometimes I feel like we're spinning on our heads. My daughter, that's in the junior, this year when she was in middle school, got diagnosed with dyslexia. And so that complicates a lot of things. That makes a lot of things hard, harder. A lot of things that I didn't know were associated with dyslexia. Like, she was reading fine, so I thought they were crazy when they wanted to test her for it. But it affects so many different aspects of their education, and it has been amazing to see her go from kind of struggling and not confident to being able to just say, I'm not a great reader and I don't learn that way. And being able to present information to her in different ways, having her do, like, the voice to text or audiobooks, and then she's taking, like, the dual credit and concurrent enrollment classes. And it's been really cool to see her self advocate with those because she's had that freedom to figure out what she needs to be successful. And, you know, she has a 504, and so those are kind of laid out, but she also just knows what she needs. The other day, something happened. One of her assignments for one of her community college classes, she was not successful in doing it. And before I could even say, well, did you email your professor? She said, I emailed my professor, explained to him what happened, and I'm going to need another try on this assignment. And so it's been really cool just seeing her development and her self advocacy and learning so that she can go forward in her post secondary education to be successful. And then my daughter that's under her has super severe ADHD, and she has to be moving or singing or, you know, she just has to be very active when she's doing things, which makes absolutely no sense to my ADHD brain because it presents totally differently. And so she will be very active doing her math work, you know, to where I think, like, well, you need to sit down at the table and be quiet and focus, and she can't. And so her having that freedom to be able to walk on the treadmill with her standing desk and do her math while there's music blaring in the background, and she's, like, singing along, and I'm like, how is this productive? But then, you know, she's.

Rebecca: How did she manage her early years in the public school?

Stacy: Oh, my goodness.

Rebecca: Did they recognize it at that point?

Stacy: Oh, yes. Yes. When she was in third grade, one of my absolute best friends was her teacher, and she was a very seasoned teacher. She for years was in the classroom, and then for years, she did tutoring to kids that needed extra support. Dyslexias, like ADHD, all of those. And I was in her classroom one day, and she was like, stacy, I have tried all my tricks. I have done everything that I can think of, and it's not working. Like, I have run out of. Like, I've got 20 years of teaching under my belt, and I have run out of things to do to help her be successful. I don't, like, help me. I was like, oh, I don't got you, sis. I don't know. I have no idea how to help you. And so it was definitely hard.

Rebecca: That doesn't sound surprising to me that she chose to stay home after trying it. That would be such, I would think, an exhausting battle every day to fit in at a public school.

Stacy: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And just feeling unsuccessful, like that feeling. Feeling of feeling different, first of all, and then just feeling like no matter what you do, you're not ever going to meet that expectation. And she was a very good student. I mean, her grades were fine. She did great grade wise. She did great on her testing. She was by no means behind, but it was hard. And that's kind of.

Rebecca: She probably felt displeasure from a lot of people frequently.

Stacy: And I think sometimes we think, like, well, my kids being successful, and so we're fine. And something that we talk about our house is like, okay, you're being successful, but at what cost? Are you mentally exhausted? Are you physically exhausted? Are you unhappy? Like, what is this costing you to be successful? And is it worth it? And is it a way that we can put in some accommodations, change things, do a different curriculum, do this, do that, do it a different time of day where you wouldn't have to have that same exhausting effort, but you get the same result. You're still successful, but you're not exhausting yourself. And so that's been a really cool thing, to see that kind of blossom and be able to figure that out themselves. And my youngest also has severe adhd and severe performance anxiety. And to see him enjoy learning things is different because he was always capable and like, again, he was always doing it, but there was no joy in it. There was not a love of learning because he was so wrapped up into meeting someone's expectation and doing well and doing it how they wanted him to do it and doing it correctly. And now to have him be able to, again, self advocate. And he'll come and he'll say, I'm supposed to write this out. Can you scribe it for me? Can I tell it to you and you can type it for me? Or can I do this the same orally? Can I make a presentation? Can I make a slideshow instead of writing a five paragraph essay and have him know what worked for his brain and start learning, know where his limits are? Yeah. And not just like, oh, I'm not doing it. I can't do this. I'm not doing this. But being able to have the freedom to look outside the box and be like, okay, maybe I can't do it the way that this is asking me to do it, but can I do it a different way and still relay like that I've learned this information and still share what I've learned in a different format versus just getting frustrated and giving up.

Rebecca: How fabulous that he, first of all, to have found the freedom of homeschooling before junior high, because all of those things that you're talking about as a junior higher would be so tough. Oh, yeah, it's so hard. But also to have the freedom to be working with mom, who knows he's not trying to get out of this and can praise you're finding a different way to accomplish the task you're not attempting to get. Whereas a teacher might be overwhelmed by the other, a classroom based teacher.

Stacy: Oh, absolutely.

Rebecca: Might be overwhelmed by too many other things going on, not enough time, and might be suspicious.

Stacy: Well, and I went through public school and my kids have had 504s since they were in, like, lower elementary grades. And so a lot of this was in their 504s. But I mean, these, they have 30 kids, 35 kids, you know? And so it was hard for the kids to self advocate because they're in middle school. Right. And that's difficult. And it's hard for a teacher to accommodate a different learner when, especially when they get to junior high. Right? They have 300 students. Right? How can they possibly give my child specialized education? I mean, that's not even fair to the other 299 students that they have. And so it was really, I felt like I was emailing someone every day just to be like, hey, did you notice our biggest one was they have breaks. They have a defined amount of time that they can maintain attention. And so I used to have to email their teachers and say, can you pull their test for me? Can you just pull it out for me and tell me if they got the first half right and the second half wrong, and they very often would be like, oh, did you give them a break? Did you let them stop taking their test? Did you put the post it notes where they're supposed to stop and have their breaks like, it's in their 504? And they. I did not. And I'm like, okay, well, we've got to take it. We got to figure out a time for them to come in and retake this test, because that's obviously not a representation of what their knowledge is. That playing field was not level. And so it was really quite interesting to see that over and over and over again when they were trying to fit in a box that they just didn't fit in.

Rebecca: So if you could go back to those early years of homeschooling and take out the simultaneous trauma of COVID the reality is we were all working on half brain power because half of our brain was trying to survive. The other half was trying to do creative things. Like homeschooler. Jill. Yes. So if you could go back to the beginning, what advice would you give yourself as a beginning homeschooler?

Stacy: I think that's hard because I feel like here in this environment would be different. In this environment, it would be find a charter that works for you. Find that community, find that structure, find that support. Find the balance between help and freedom where you can be successful. You do not have to do this all by yourself, and you don't have to figure it out, and you don't have to know what you're doing right away. You're probably going to change your curriculum 47 times before you find what works, you're gonna try different. Did you expect that, though? No.

Rebecca: Okay. So a piece of that homeschool might be you're not failing because this curriculum didn't work. You're gonna have to try a few things.

Stacy: Yeah. And that's okay. Right? And I felt like I had to have this, like, structure, you know, at 09:00 we're doing math, and at 1030 is science. You know, like, I had this, like, idea in my head that it had to be so, so structured and that it should go till 230 in the afternoon, you know, and the first little bit, I mean, he was in third grade, right? I mean, we were done in an hour and a half, and I was like, what do we do for the rest of the day? Like, how do I fill this time and dig holes well, and am I not doing enough? Like, I obviously am not doing enough because he just came from school and they were in a zoom from 815 to 245. Oh, my goodness. And now we're done by 1030. Like, and obviously, like, at the. For us, at the onset, he was the only one homeschooling. So I have my other kids in public school, and they're on these zooms, and it's going for hours, and we're just like. He and I are like, hey, hey, we're all done for the day.

Rebecca: Wanna make some cookies?

Stacy: Like, living our best life. Like, let's build a birdhouse. Like, whatever. And I. That, like, guilt, I guess, and expectation I had for myself of, like, oh, I'm not doing it enough, and I'm not doing, like, was really hard to get over that mindset.

Rebecca: I think a lot of new homeschooling parents, a lot of people doubt whether they can do it or how it's gonna go or whatever, but they also. It takes a while. They're still focused on finding the curriculum, finding the right way for their child, and they. I think it takes a lot of parents quite a while to realize you're kind of an equal factor in this. Oh, right.

Stacy: How do you want to teach? Like, I think sometimes we focus a lot on, like, well, how does my child learn best? What sort of, like, homeschool learner are they? And for me, like, I have pretty intense ADHD. Like, I'm never going to follow a 910, 1112 for doing this this, and I'm not. I'm going to make it. I'm gonna print it out and hang it up, but I will never follow it like, that. Will not. Maybe two days. Yeah, maybe maybe a week if I put, like, sprinkles on it so it catches my attention, but I'm not ever gonna do it, right. And so it is a huge part of the process. How can I, as a parent, be a successful homeschooler, too? And what do I need socially? What do I need support wise? What sort of interaction do I need with an HST or with a family liaison or with people at park day or other people that are homeschooling kids, that are my kids ages? Like, what do I need as a homeschool parent? And what are my expectations, and are they reasonable for myself, even I found.

Rebecca: With curriculum, what it looks like, how it's laid out, what color it is. It plays a weirdly important role for me. And whether or not, like, is there a teacher's guide separate from the students guide, or can we just open one book and keep track of that? Those things play a pretty important role in what I choose.

Stacy: And where's the answer key? Like, I looked at some, and I'm like, I don't know the answer to this. Like, do they think that I should know the answer because I don't. Like, and where's my helper? Like, I don't need that. That cheat sheet sometimes. And when it's hard to find, I'm like, nope, that's not gonna be it. I can't do it.

Rebecca: What are you grateful for through this journey?

Stacy: I think if I had to pick, like, absolutely one word, it would be freedom. The freedom for them.

Rebecca: I'm sorry I have to interrupt you because you're coming from Texas to California and saying, I know, right?

Stacy: Everybody always says, do you know you're, like, swimming the wrong way up the stream? And I'm like, y'all don't know. You don't know. Okay. You don't know what you don't know. It is so much better here. And it's different, right, from a homeschooling perspective. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Like, Texas has a lot of freedom, but there's no support, and so it's freedom without execution. And here I feel like I have almost, like, an equal amount of choice in how I school them. But I have funds, and I have support, and I have somebody. I mean, I have a teacher. Like, a credentialed teacher. This is their job. This is what they've done, to call and say, hey, here's how my kid learns. Here's what's going on. We've been doing this curriculum. We're both pulling our hair out. What can you suggest, what should we do? And then they give me suggestions, right? But it's not like, oh, well, you have to do it this way. They say, well, here, I would do this, this or this, or you know what? I don't know. Let me ask my team and see if they have any suggestions. Or I go on the Facebook group and be like, guys, what is everybody using for algebra one? Because what we've used in the past, it's not working anymore. So what are we going to, what are we trying? What is everybody using? And then having the freedom to do with that information? What I feel like is best for our kids. And then I was thinking about this today. Like, if they say, I really think photography is cool, I'd really like to learn more about that. I'd really like to learn how to take pictures, how the camera works, and it's like, sweet, great, let's add that. We can do that. Here's an out school class. Or let's go to the library and get a book. And they have the time to do it because they're not just 2 hours when they get home from school that are filled with homework, right. And they just don't have the time to explore things that sound cool to them.

Rebecca: That's the freedom is a big deal to me, too.

Stacy: And time.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Stacy: Like, it's, I have a lot of friends whose kids are, I mean, most of our friends are in public school and even with their moms, you know, I'm like, hey, let's go to lunch. And they're like, three weeks from next Thursday. And I'm like, what are you doing? We just have so much time, freedom with our time that we might be.

Rebecca: Busy, but there's an ability to decide what we're doing.

Stacy: Yes. And we'll do that this afternoon instead of this morning. We can shift, we can alter things. And it's not that big of a deal.

Rebecca: What was your hardest one lesson so far? You still have several years of homeschooling.

Stacy: In front of you. Hello, I'm a master now. There's no more lessons to be learned. I think, honestly, it is self grace. I think that as a homeschool parent, you, especially as a homeschool parent to kids with special needs, it can become overwhelming and it can be exhausting because all of a sudden, you're the one that's implementing that iep, you're the one that's implementing that 504, and you're the one that's breaking up assignments for them into shorter chunks or checking to make sure they're doing things, and that can get. I mean, you can burn out, because it's every day. Every day you're the. You're that person. And especially when you have kids that have some special needs, they're probably not going to do it if you're not guiding. And our hope is, obviously, eventually, as they get further into high school, they learn those self management skills, but they don't have them. And so being able to say, I need a break, like, we're not doing school today because I need to go to the lake and play and walk around, and maybe we'll talk about the different trees that are there and, like, how water tides work.

Rebecca: You know, any good homeschool mom would.

Stacy: Like, we're gonna pick up acorns and maybe cut one in half, like, which we did at the park the other day. There were olives. And I'm like, what does an olive pit look like? I don't know. And so we were ripping olive pit, and I was like, oh, my gosh. We are 100% the homeschool kids at the park today. But, yeah, just being able to give yourself grace, myself grace and a break and that it's okay to say, I can't do it today.

Rebecca: It's interesting that your hardest one lesson, as we were talking about earlier, about learning to homeschool, that you have to consider yourself as big of a factor as your kids. Your hardest one lesson is about yourself.

Stacy: Mm hmm.

Rebecca: Not about science curriculum or something. You know, it's not even specific. You knew your kids. You knew what you were getting into, but learning to accept yourself through this process. And I think, again, a lot of people don't realize how much homeschooling will change them.

Stacy: Well, and I'm not an educator. Right. Like, my degree is in sociology. I mean, so that's helpful, right. My degree is in people and understanding people and their behavior. But I'm not. Not a trained educator, so I didn't know what would work for me and what wouldn't work for me and what would work for them and what wouldn't work for them. And that was probably the hardest thing I learned. And to. I mean, I took a thousand of those online. I mean, there's a thousand online quizzes as a homeschool parent that you can take that says, what kind of homeschooler are you?

Rebecca: Did they all come out differently?

Stacy: Yeah, they did. You know, they did. And I was like, wait, but tell me what to do. You guys are not helping me. What? What? And so we just found our own rhythm and it changes. Right?

Rebecca: Like, oh, the phases are incredible.

Stacy: Yeah, we'll have something that's working really, really well. And I'm like, I am rocking this. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I'm not sure. We've done math for four days, like, what happened to our system? And then we have to figure out something else and then we implement that and then that works for a little while, you know, again, just like being flexible.

Rebecca: So talk about a little bit about. I know parents kind of love to hear, like, my kid has adhd, my kid has dyslexia. What, what are your favorite go to curriculums? Like, what have been a couple of resources or curriculum that you have used that have been just really successful in your home?

Stacy: One of the ones that I feel like has been helpful for my high school kids is they do a lot of their core classes on bright thinker, and through bright thinker, you can have, they have modified courses and so modified accommodated. There's words one of those two. And so it automatically kind of creates something that fits their 504 or IEP. So that's easy, right? Because before I found that out, I was going in and taking off questions of quizzes because with bright thinker, you can have teacher access as a parent. And so I can go in and say, this, this is not going to happen like this project or this paper or this assignment's not going to work, and I can take it off or I can go into their quiz that's got 32 questions and skim it down to 15. And so, but at the same time, they log in, they get a video, they get something to read, they have questions to ask. So they can also be very independent with it. But it's still, it's like this perfect balance of independence, but I still have control to make sure it's presented in the way that fits them best. And if they royally screw something up, and I'm like, 33% don't think we learned that, I can unlock it and I can see what they missed. And so it's kind of like this perfect balance of someone else is handling it, but I still kind of like, have my foot in the door a little bit. So we've really liked that one. This year we've started trying Alex for math. We did Beast Academy, and that was great till it wasn't like lots of things, right?

Rebecca: Yeah, there are a lot of things that that's true. It's the right thing for a right phase, certain age, certain development, but it stops being the right thing later.

Stacy: And we've, that's been really great for my kids that are ADHD because it's very streamlined and very quick. And they, like, the other day we were, we were sitting and we were working on it, and we were doing, they have little sections, little pies of different topics, and we were hitting like a brick wall. And I'm like, you're just not even absorbing. And so we switched to a totally different math topic. I'm like, let's go talk. Instead of, you know, these equations and these factors, we're going to talk about lines and polygons, something more spatial and. Yeah, like a different piece of your brain, totally different piece of your brain within the same curriculum, and we can still make forward progress instead of just kind of, like, beating this down and not having that flexibility. So that's been a really good one for them. This year. My son is doing pre algebra and my daughter is doing geometry, and they've both, I would not say enjoyed, but I feel like they've been successful.

Rebecca: But those two subjects would be in Alix now.

Stacy: Yes.

Rebecca: Okay. Beast Academy was before.

Stacy: Yeah. Which we loved until he kind of just hit his limit and he was bored. I'm. So for us, again, it comes back to grace for myself. Right. For us, a lot of times we can't stay with the same curriculum year over year because they get bored.

Rebecca: Well, and because Adhders aren't necessarily systematic thinkers either. So sticking with the same thing all the time is gonna potentially lead to boredom. Yes.

Stacy: So they need it. I need to present it in a different way presented. Right. Yeah. And English is not my favorite. It's just not in my talent bucket at all. And so I've outsourced that this year. And we're taking a class from a vendor and it's online once a week, and then they have a Google classroom. And so that's been really great for my 7th grader because it's created kind of that real independence. He's got his class, he's got a zoom. He's got to interact with other kids, you know, similar to, like the HVSA or the JSV. Yeah, those acronyms. What is this, the junior high one?

Rebecca: Junior high virtual academy.

Stacy: So Jhva. Jhv.

Rebecca: S. Junior high.

Stacy: Junior high virtual. Why am I putting a v in there? It is.

Rebecca: There's a v. Virtual academy.

Stacy: Junior high virtual. I want it to be next to the j. Yeah. Okay. Similar concept.

Rebecca: Junior virtual Academy.

Stacy: It is. It's JV. Right. That's why it's in my head. Right? Jv versus varsity, that's what's in my head. Yeah.

Rebecca: Well, that would be kind of creative. So you talked about maybe taking a break in the middle of a test or reducing the number of questions, working math on a treadmill, maybe doing projects orally instead of writing them down. Are there any other kind of go to. We're struggling with this, so let's change it up so that we can still learn the content, but we're gonna change.

Stacy: Up the way we do it. Yeah. One of the most surprising things for me was when we were struggling with something, like, for math, just being their scribe, like, taking away that aspect and having them work through it orally. Like, tell me what to write down, and I'll just write it down. Made a huge difference. Like, it removed something, some barrier that they were having where they could talk through it and I could write it down, but they couldn't write it down and process it. And so all of a sudden, we were done with our five problems, and they were like, oh, that wasn't hard.

Rebecca: It's been a while since I've done that with my kids, but I think adding mom into the equation adds so much too. It's not so much. You might be taking away a barrier of some sort, but you're also adding mom, you're with me arm in arm, working on this together.

Stacy: Yeah, we're doing this, and I am relearning some things. Right? Like, I'm like, hold on just a second. I need to read through this explanation. Let me do a couple sample problems before I try to be helpful. But, yeah, that was one of the ones I was like, this doesn't even make sense to me. How is this any different than what you were doing? But all of a sudden, instead of taking 45 minutes, it takes 15, and it's like, I can write things down.

Rebecca: And you end those kind of moments with a really good feeling. I can't find a more sophisticated way of saying that. But you've helped. They're encouraged. It's good for your relationship. And now we're done, and so let's move on to something else.

Stacy: Well, and just creating that feeling of success. Right. Like, however that comes, if we can end with a feeling of success, then it makes tomorrow easier. Right. When we sit down and do math tomorrow, if we ended yesterday with a feeling of success, we're not dreading it. It's not, oh, it was so terrible yesterday.

Rebecca: That's a really good point.

Stacy: It's like, oh, no, we were successful or taking a break and trying, like, doing something different and focusing on a different math concept just makes such a huge difference in how they view their schoolwork.

Rebecca: So clearly through this conversation, you are the primary homeschooler. Does your husband play a role in your homeschool?

Stacy: No, he has tried. We are, like, literally the most neurodiverse family on the planet. And he is also an adhder. He loves history. That's what his degree is in. And so he has great, deep conversations with kids about history, and that's his support subject. So, like, my daughter's in a poli sci class at Yuba right now, and I am zero help with that. I have absolutely no interest in being helpful. And so in that aspect, like, then he steps in and they go over what they're learning and they go over her quizzes and he helps her prepare and that kind of thing. But we're done by the time he gets home, you know?

Rebecca: Yeah, I find I will say, I.

Stacy: Will say when I talk about, like, when I get burnt out, I have definitely sent him texts and been like, today was not awesome, and their schoolwork is not done and I'm done. And so then when he comes home after dinner, he'll be like, hey, why don't we sit down and pull up your math? Or can you show me, like, we use, I should say this. We use homeschool planet. And I have absolutely loved it because it. It shows them everything they have to do in a day.

Rebecca: It's a planner, right?

Stacy: It's an online planner.

Rebecca: Okay.

Stacy: And it gives them check marks. It breaks all their subjects down. It even has links for their curriculum right in the planner.

Rebecca: Oh, so they can just go to the planner and click for. And it will go to bright thinker.

Stacy: Or alex or wherever they need to go or whatever subject. And that has, you know, a little checkbox for all of the things. So when he comes home and I'm like, I'm out. He can open it and see, okay, what did everybody check off today? And what do we have left? And then he can kind of nudge them in the right direction so that we can finish some of those things up. And it keeps us all way more accountable than we have been in the past.

Rebecca: That's really helpful to have dad. They know dad's supporting you. They know dad's going to check and he can.

Stacy: And I don't have to tell him, like, that was really one nice thing is they'd, I don't have to go dig up and be like, what were you supposed to do in bright thinker today? What were you supposed to do in Alix today? Because we use multiple different curriculums for multiple different subjects. I don't have to go to each one. I can just go to the homeschool planet. And it tells me everything that that child was supposed to do and if they did it or not. And each day it comes up and it says, hey, they did not do this yesterday. What do you want to do about it? Do you want to move it forward? Do you want to alter the schedule? Do you want to mark it done. So it helps keep me.

Rebecca: Oh, that's interesting.

Stacy: On top of things so I can be like, oh, hey, did you do this yesterday? Why didn't we do this yesterday? What are we going to do about it?

Rebecca: That is a challenge I found with high schoolers as you're giving them more independence that sometimes you discover there's a.

Stacy: Subject that just got skipped for a week. Yeah. And then you're like, oh, but why? Hold on now. How are we going to, like, make that week up and holding them accountable? Like, I can't just put your schedule out. Like, we can't. We can't do that. And we like to leave Fridays for, like, fun things. Let's go and do. And it's like, I'm sorry, but your Friday is eight math topics. And that sounds terrible, but you did this to yourself. So.

Rebecca: Do you see your family continuing to homeschool all the way through?

Stacy: We ask them every year what they want, and so far they. I think for my youngest, absolutely he has no desire to go back to a brick and mortar. And I don't know that he would be very happy there. My junior will not. She'll graduate next year. So she's absolutely loves her community college classes. Like, once she started taking those her freshman year in high school, she was like, this is so lovely because they're, they're just very clear and they're a lot fewer assignments. And, you know, you hop on and they're one semester. They're one semester. You hop on canvas and it has everything written out for you. And so she's absolutely loves those. And she's talked about it and been like, I won't give up being able to take the classes I want to take on the community college level, to go back to jumping through hoops and doing a ridiculous number of assignments just cause that's what the school requires. My middle one, she goes back and forth. She misses a lot of the, you know, dress up days, the spirit days, and the dances and the pep rallies and what have you. So I don't know. I will see with her. I think that she sees the value in what it offers her. I think she struggles with missing, you know, feeling like you're missing out on that, you know, american high school experience. But again, I don't think she's willing at this point to give up. She's that freedom.

Rebecca: She's been out so long, she might have forgotten some of the drawbacks of the american school.

Stacy: Yes. Every once in a while she'll be like, oh, my friends are really jealous at what we get to do and that it's Tuesday and we're going to Monterey to go to the aquarium, and they're at school. So she definitely sees the benefit and the value. But we let them choose every year if they want to stay. And so far, they're not willing to give up what they get from homeschooling to go back to brick and mortar.

Rebecca: That gives them a lot of buy in.

Stacy: Oh, yes.

Rebecca: Well, Stacy, thank you very much for sharing your story with us. I really appreciate it. And thank you very much for serving on the board. I appreciate that as well, because that is such an important role that our school, schools need parents to fill. So thank you for that.

Stacy: It's been very fun. I've enjoyed both.

Rebecca: Thank you. I always find it so encouraging to listen to other parents talk about the journey that they've been on with their home school and the different ways that they've approached things. And I always learn more from them. I hope that you, too, listener, have been encouraged in this conversation with Stacey McDonald. Thank you for joining us on the Sequoia Breeze podcast. I am your host, Rebecca LaSavio, and I hope that this has been a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. As always, I would absolutely love to hear from you. Podcasts@sequoiagrove.org. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.