This year, we enter our 5th year of homeschool. 

I’ve had a lot of people begin to ask me more and more questions about how it works, what we do, how involved I am, etc. so I thought I’d write this to help anyone who has similar questions.

We are part of a community called Classical Conversations, known as ‘CC’ for short. 

CC is a classical education curriculum through a Christian worldview. 

I won’t go into immense detail on the inner workings of CC, but there are a few highlights worth mentioning:

As a community, we get together in person every Tuesday, similar to a typical public school day. (But as Mandy and I like to jokingly say, we’re all a bit more feral than public school. Lots of bare feet, running around, and big laughs.)

Like any other community, we have our own language of sorts. “Normal” subject names won’t suffice. To start off, they’re called ‘Strands’ not subjects. Some of these go by different names while others have been removed from traditional school altogether. Here is a snippet of what these kids are learning:

• Grammar
• History
• Timeline of the world (quite possibly the coolest thing they do.)
• Latin
• Geography
• Fine Arts (including music theory, famous orchestra composers, and artists)
• Tin Whistle (every parents worst nightmare…kidding!)
• Logic (Math)
• Debate (Cartography, mock trial, and more)
• Exposition (Writing, literature, along with diagramming and parsing sentences)
• Reasoning (Analogies and Clear Reasoning)
• Research (Hands on science experiments)
• On top of all that, they practice public speaking, every week. Yes, even at the youngest ages. (What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and have had that for myself. Lots of sweat and anxiety in a college classroom could have been avoided!)

I remember my first day of CC with our kids like it was yesterday. While many people might be turned off by what appears to be chaos, I felt right at home. We’ll get back to that part of this story in a few.

We don’t have traditional grade levels. The program is broken into three main parts, and I’ve included the grade level equivalents in parentheses: Foundations (K-6), Essentials (4th-6th), and Challenge (7th-12th). The former two are 24 week programs while Challenge is 30 weeks.

Class sizes at all levels range from 2-12. In our community, we have 5 Foundations classes, 2 Essentials classes, and one class at each Challenge level. For the latter, it goes Challenge A, B, 1, 2, 3, 4. 

So for our two kiddos it works out like this:

Quinn is 9 and is in the Foundations and Essentials programs.

Jesse is 12 and is in the Challenge A program. 

Our Tuesday CC day runs like this:

Foundations kiddos meet in their classes, with their tutor, from 9:00am-12pm.

Essentials kids meet in their classes, with their tutor, from 1pm-3pm.

Challenge kids meet in their classes, with their tutor, from 8:30am-3:30pm.

And now we get to the part that a lot of folks miss when it comes to homeschool. 

Take note that during our community day, I didn’t refer to the ‘teacher’ that is in front of the class, but rather the ‘tutor.’ They are there to introduce or review the material for the week. These are parents of kids in the program that choose to invest in the lives of these children.

The teacher is you; mom and dad. It is each child’s parents. 

Parents are known as ‘lead learners,’ which means that they are right along side their children learning the material that they teach them. 

That’s why, for the rest of the week, school takes place at home. Or in the car. Or on vacation. Or wherever we happen to be when work needs to get done. Opportunities for education abound when the constraints of traditional school learning are removed.

Back to the brief story I started earlier, about my first impressions of CC. Like I said, I felt right at home. Everything that I saw happening just really lined up with our family values and I always wanted to play a bigger role in the community, similar to Mandy. She just began her 4th year as a tutor, working with Quinn’s Foundations class. 

I’ve admired the joy that it brings her. Yes, she puts in a TON of work, but I also know how fulfilled she is. Being an active part of these kids, and their families, lives just absolutely fills her cup. 

Fast forward to the end of 2023, when our community director Noelle Oakman casually asked Mandy if she thought I’d be interested in being a tutor. I think Mandy already knew what I’d say, but she asked anyways. She couldn’t get to the end of the question before I emphatically said YES. 

Now I’m not going to lie, there was a giant part of me that felt a lot of pressure, as I’d raised my hand to be the Challenge A director – Jesse’s class. We did a lot of praying and had a lot of conversations about it, particularly with Jesse. I wanted to be sure he was okay with me being his tutor. Surprisingly, he was “pumped to have dad lead his class!”

So yes, now I’m not only learning a lot of new things (like latin!), but I’m also dusting off the cobwebs from deep in the recesses of my brain to teach writing, math, science, cartography, and reasoning. Each week requires hours of prep, but thankfully I’ve got a beautiful model in my wife to mimic.

Fast forward to this week, and Jesse and I just finished our 4th week of CC. I am blessed to have eleven wonderful kids in my class. There is much negative said about this next generation, but let me tell you – these kids and their families give me nothing but encouragement for our future. They know how to think, they love and support one another, and most importantly, they love the Lord. 

I’d love nothing greater than for more dads to get involved in the homeschool journey, so if you’re giving it some thought and would like more information, hit me up!