Natalie Mack: 00:00:00.239
And I think just helping them kind of learn the beauty in meeting new people and making new friendships and how important that is, kind of giving them that diverse experience and exposure, just kind of walking it through with them, making sure that you understand that different children are going to want to embrace that at a different pace. [music]

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:28.313
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this episode of The Demme Learning Show. I am so excited to welcome my sweet friend, Natalie Mack, to talk about military families, because their journey is different. And it is an amazing experience. I’m a former military wife, and I wouldn’t have traded the five years that my husband and I got to spend in the military for anything. But we didn’t have kids. And so life gets more complicated when you have children. So Natalie’s going to join me today and we’re going to talk about what it’s like to homeschool and be part of the military. And we have so many things to talk about. I think the hard part is going to be keeping it to an hour. And now, Natalie, will you please be so kind as to introduce yourself? Welcome.

Natalie Mack: 00:01:18.226
Thank you so much, Gretchen. I’m really excited to be here. We’ve been talking about this conversation for a while. So here we are. I am a retired Navy chaplain spouse. My husband retired two years ago, after 34 years of service. We have been homeschooling for 23 years. I’m a mom of five. So far, we have, thank the Lord, launched four to college. Very different paths. So maybe we’ll talk a little bit about that. And then we have an 11th grader at home. I work for HSLDA as the military outreach community coordinator. And I’ve been in that role for a little bit over three years. I started there as a high school educational consultant and then pretty much started to actually develop and create their military outreach program. It’s been a blessing to be able to use all of my experience in the military homeschool community to pretty much create what I wish I had had years ago, if I was you know in that situation. So I also am president of Fort Belvoir Home Educators in Northern Virginia. I also have a homeschool consultation business, Natalie Mack, LLC, as well as a new nonprofit that’s in the mil spouse space. It’s Military Homeschoolers Association. And I’ll be launching a podcast soon for military homeschoolers. It’s base and then the number two base military homeschooling. So my ideal guest is going to be that military homeschooler on an installation. It could be from Okinawa to Hickam to Camp Lejeune. And you’re going to be able to tell me all about your life as a military homeschooler there, co-ops, resources in the community, just to be able to be a vehicle to share the information about life in these different installations. One of the main questions I get is, what is it like there? Anyone stationed there? Where are the homeschoolers here, right? So that’s the goal of that podcast. So that’s me in a nutshell.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:24.610
Yeah. And if you have listened thus far, you get the impression that Natalie never sleeps. This is probably why we get along so well, is because when we met at HSLDA leadership conference last year, I knew immediately we were going to be friends. We both kind of run life at 100 miles an hour. And so that, you can see a kindred spirit in someone else’s eyes.

Natalie Mack: 00:03:49.703
Exactly. I love that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:50.776
I want you now– I know the story of how you all decided to homeschool, but I want you to share that with our families, because I think it’s always helpful to know someone else’s journey.

Natalie Mack: 00:04:02.125
Yeah, so you probably saw my TEDx, right, the impact of homeschooling.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:08.196
We’re going to also include that in our show notes because I thought that would be a really– I’ve never had a show note with a TEDx in it. So [crosstalk].

Natalie Mack: 00:04:15.903
Yeah, yeah, great, great, great. I think I’m over 12,000 views. And this month is the year anniversary. So I’m really blessed and thankful for that. And so we were living life as I was a licensed counselor. My husband was working for Johnson & Johnson Medical. We have a testimony of Prior Army, and we talked a little bit about that. And then God called him to the ministry. And then, long story short, I can tell you that at another story. Like you said, we could go for over an hour, right? But life was good, and we were happy. But I started to meet homeschoolers, started to feel as if this is something I needed to look into. I just felt that tugging. But we were comfortable with the school. We were able to afford a private Montessori school at the time. And I just felt like if I just volunteered a little bit more, it would be even better. But I kept that feeling and you hear other homeschoolers say, “I’m running from homeschooling. I don’t really know what it is. I’m running away from the idea of starting to homeschool. And then God keeps putting homeschoolers like they’re dropping out of the sky,” right? Yeah, yeah, so you know, right? And so that literally was it, along with the fact that we just felt like we needed more time with our children. And we noticed our youngest daughter being a little bit more excited about her daycare provider who happened to attend church with us than myself. So there were just some little things that God just kind of started to show. And he placed us in a situation where we got orders. We enter back into the Navy, and we got orders to California. And I felt God saying, “Okay, what are you going to do now?” Like, “Okay, you’re going to have to get your license for reciprocity, right, as a counselor.” All the things, everything’s so much more expensive in California. So it was just all these things that were ruminating, and I just felt like, “Okay.” And I talked to my husband and we prayed. And here we are 23 years later with five kids. And at the time that we moved to California, we were expecting our fourth child. He arrived about two and a half weeks after we got to Camp Pendleton, first time with the Marine Corps. And we have boxes everywhere. Like most military families, you move and all the boxes come and then you look around at each other and figure, “Okay, we got to get to work and get these unpacked.” But, nope, the baby was coming, so, yeah. So military life, always one big adventure, right?

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:55.866
Right. And I wouldn’t have– we moved 13 times in five years. And I wouldn’t have traded that for anything. But I didn’t have to pack up kids and do that. And we got out two weeks after my first baby was born. So life changes [crosstalk].

Natalie Mack: 00:07:16.122
So you missed that part of the fun. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:18.123
I did miss that part of the fun. And there’s a small piece of me who misses that in a different way because when you’re on a military base, you meet and create friendships so very quickly because time is short. So I would like to hear from you with your background in counseling, a military– because I hear from families who say, “Oh, we’re military. We’ve just gone to a new base. We’re having trouble finding friends.” So what is your advice? What do you say to a family who’s just relocated to a new base? How do you find and create those relationships expeditiously?

Natalie Mack: 00:07:58.708
Yeah, so I first want to speak to this and say that I recognize it’s not easy. And depending upon your personality, as you probably can tell, I’m extroverted, but there are introverts in this world, and I love them dearly. So it can be a little bit more of a struggle depending upon your personality. But there’s a few things that I always talk about. And I do a workshop called Bloom, Uproot, and Replant. And so this idea of blooming where you are planted. And for some, it’s harder to do that than others. But I feel as if we are going to constantly be moving and getting these orders. So we have a choice to make about what are we going to do each time, right? We’re going to have to push in and figure it out, and we’re going to have to find community. So one of the ways is, of course, now with the presence of social media being what it is, is before you even actually relocate, you can touch base with those family members and spouses on social media. Most installations have a spouse’s Facebook page. So always say just do a quick, “Hey, any homeschoolers here?” You’ll get plenty of responses because military homeschoolers are everywhere. And then once you get there, start to find the community, if there are co-ops on installations, like at Fort Belvoir here, we have a large homeschool co-op and a homeschool support group, really. And so just get plugged in your neighbors if you live on the installation. I know, increasingly, I noticed that what I call the old military where everyone knew everyone in a neighborhood is seemingly less so. Now, we don’t live on installation anymore, but when we did, we did have a close community, but it still was a little less close than years ago, if that makes sense. And I think a lot of times military families, we’re so busy and we aren’t thinking about making those connections, but it’s so important. And if you don’t, military life can be so much more challenging than without connections. And so it’s just making that choice and finding the people, finding your tribe. And hopefully, your tribe is the same as your kids’ tribe. Meaning, you know, the moms and the parents and the kids. It doesn’t always work out that way, but a lot of times it does. And that makes it really nice, doesn’t it?

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:15.960
It does. It does. And I love the thought of finding a tribe. And many of my talks talk about the necessity to find a tribe. But it’s even more important when you’re a place where there is no family, when you’ve been uprooted, and how to learn about that. How does that change then to help maybe and– I mean, I’m an uber extrovert. I’ve given birth to kids who identify themselves as ambiverts. My husband’s more extroverted than introvert, so we’ll talk to a post. But what do you do when our personality is not our children’s personality? When that child is more introverted, how do we make those connections for our kids?

Natalie Mack: 00:11:04.469
Yes, that’s a challenge sometimes, right? Because we see life through who we are, our lens. And it can be frustrating. I remember growing up, my mom was an extrovert. And I remember, I don’t know, at some point I was an introvert. And I remember in high school, I switched and I’ve been an extrovert, full speed ahead ever since. But I remember she would just kind of kept putting me in situations and environments. And eventually, things clicked. Not that it was bad to be an introvert. That’s not what I’m saying. I think God has given each of us our personalities, and that’s all fine. But when it’s different than our children, it’s when we have to really dig deep and have patience. And we have to recognize that how that child is wired and created is good, even if it’s different that God has given us as parents all that we need to be able to find a way to merge and find a way to work with that child recognizing who that child is. So you never want at least in my opinion, to have your child feel like the parents just, “I don’t understand you,” you know?

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:10.702
You’re pushy.

Natalie Mack: 00:12:11.597
Yeah, pushy, right? And but at the same time, parents, typically we have the wisdom to know that maybe the child needs just a little bit of a push, but also maybe finding friends is getting connected into activities and events. A lot of times it’s this thought of if you say, “Oh, go find friends. Go outside and find friends. Look at all the kids outside. They’re out there waiting for you,” and the kid is like, “No, they’re not. I don’t know them. I’m scared. How do you know they’re looking for me? They’re not,” right? And they just kind of [crosstalk], right?

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:43.950
It’s funny you say that because even as an extrovert, if you were to say that to me, I wouldn’t be going out the door to go, “Hi, I’m here.”

Natalie Mack: 00:12:53.605
Right? “I’m here. I’m the new kid,” right? And the reality is all of those kids have lived the same life that your child has, meaning they got there because they moved there with a sponsor who got orders and they didn’t have a say in it. They just had to go. And so military kids are mostly very friendly and very definitely resilient. We talk about the dandelion, right? And so they really have a capacity to adjust really well, but that doesn’t mean that we just assume that they are going to adjust, right? I think we need to check in with our children and make sure, “Okay, you’re okay. How is this move going to go?” And just allow them to kind of unpack what that looks like. Maybe talk about what we’re going to do when we get there. Maybe find out, oh, we’re going to go to the library and see if there’s activities there. We’re going to check our community center and see what’s there for us. Just kind of maybe, I think, journeying alongside your child instead of so far ahead as an adult. We are already there, right? We got the orders, went from penciled-in to definite. And okay, we’re already there, like” Let’s go, let’s go, right”? And sometimes the kids aren’t.

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:06.312
Right. Well, you’ve got your agenda of all the things that have to be. But talk to me a little bit more about how do you have those intentional conversations. Because I know as you all moved, how would you check in with your kids to say, “Are you good? How are you feeling about–” because I’m sure not every move has the same degree of joy in anticipation.

Natalie Mack: 00:14:30.058
I can think of one move and it makes me laugh, but okay, I’ll go ahead and share it. So we were overseas in Naples, Italy, and somebody had to go. So we were happy to be chosen, right? And we loved Italy, right? We loved Europe. And we got orders to Eastern North Carolina. Now, please, if you’re from Eastern North Carolina, don’t feel badly about me saying that, okay? Because I am a person that loves just about everywhere, right? And I loved Eastern North Carolina, so I will say that. But our children are like, “Why?”

Gretchen Roe: 00:15:04.882
There’s not a scale there that would balance you.

Natalie Mack: 00:15:06.949
You’re right. And they struggled with that. We had our three youngest, which were all boys still at home. Our two girls had been launched to college. And they were like, “No. No, no. Why?” And they just struggled a lot. And I remember that when we got orders to move, which was back up to the Washington, DC era known as the DMV, they were excited, like, “Oh, yay, finally,” right? But I’m one of these people, as you probably can tell, get very involved, right? I can do it. Let’s go. Let’s find it. What does the library have? And so we just did that and made it what we did. If we had to go to Wilmington, which was like an hour away because we wanted to get books from New Hanover Library, we did it once a month. We combined all the places that Wilmington had that Jacksonville didn’t have shopping wise. And there was a trampoline park, so they had a homeschool day. So we kind of planned it for that and all the things. But I think just kind of slowing down and recognizing it was okay that they were not okay with Jacksonville, right? I get give them permission. It’s okay saying we still have to go. We still have to move, but it’s okay that you’re not okay with it. And it’s okay that you’re happy we’re now moving, right? But it was just–

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:35.727
It’s a little microcosm of adulthood, isn’t it? Because there’s a lot of things that come into our lives that we’re not okay with, but we still have to do.

Natalie Mack: 00:16:44.420
Yes. Yeah. So true. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s the military. There’s a lot of places you get orders you don’t want to go, right?

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:53.593
I have to say we were very fortunate that we never had that experience in those five years. But still, I’m sure if we had stuck around, it would have eventually come around to the point. So how did you frame for the boys? What were their ages at that point in time?

Natalie Mack: 00:17:13.093
Let’s see here. So we had a son who was beginning 11th grade. I remember the grades, And let’s see. And then our next son would have been, let me see, starting probably about what, sixth grade, I think. And then we had a six-year-old. So a spread, yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:32.003
So that 11th grader, that had to be particularly hard because he had created a social environment that he was now going to be pulled out of.

Natalie Mack: 00:17:40.266
Exactly, yes. He was playing on– and one of the benefits, our children have all loved soccer. Our oldest daughter did two years. And then she said, “No, that’s not for me.” But all the other four have loved soccer. And overseas with DoDEA, military homeschoolers can play on– they can try out and if they get selected, they can play on the DoDEA high school sports teams.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:03.956
So what is DoDEA?

Natalie Mack: 00:18:05.709
Oh yeah, sorry, Department of Defense Education Activity, or some call it DOD schools, basically.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:11.453
Right. Okay.

Natalie Mack: 00:18:12.677
Yeah, so DOD has a school system. They used to have a lot of them in Konas, a continental US here in the States. Mostly, there’s a few like Camp Lejeune has one, I think Quantico West Point. I think they have DoDEA schools, but most of them are now overseas because, of course, we are Americans, English speaking mainly. I mean, I know there’s other languages that people do speak, but in general, that’s how language. So the Department of Defense has to provide a vehicle for education for all of these families that are getting orders overseas, accompanied orders, meaning the sponsor gets to bring their family. And so as a result, DoDEA allows homeschoolers to take advantage of like taking three classes. They can do the AP, they can do the SATs, PSATs, all of that. And they also can do clubs. They have access to the library. And they can play, like I said, on the sports teams at the high school level. So both our youngest daughter who ended up getting picked up to play D1 at Liberty, we went through the NCAA process over in Naples, Italy, and then she launched to college. And then our oldest son, the one that I just referenced who was 11th grade, both of them got to play on the high school team. So he had that experience of, I mean, they were traveling to Vicenza and traveling to play the American School of Rome. And once a year, we were in Germany and K-Town and Kaiserslautern for what they call Europeans. And we were all over. And as a homeschool family, my son and my daughter would get on the bus with the team to go to the destination, play. And then we would scoop them up because what, we homeschooled. So of course, we’re going to explore Germany. Of course, we’re going to stay a little bit longer in Vicenza and explore all of that, right? And Ciganella, right? We drove down to the tip of Italy and got on the ferry and went over and watched the games that they played in Ciganella. It was like this type. We were all over Europe, literally, and so thankful we were able to do it. And that’s what the adjustment for him was coming from that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:27.459
Coming to the United States.

Natalie Mack: 00:20:28.942
Coming back to the United States. And it would have been a hard adjustment just about anywhere, though, to be fair, I think.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:35.658
Particularly as an 11th grader.

Natalie Mack: 00:20:37.755
Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:40.694
Right. So talk to me a little bit about your daughter being a homeschooler and going through the NCAA process to get into Liberty. Because I have parents who ask this question of me and I don’t always have an answer for them. And I think that that’s very interesting. What did you have to do differently to prepare her to make that college experience happen?

Natalie Mack: 00:21:04.264
Wow, that’s a multilayered question. Yeah. And I love it. It’s good because one of the things that I want to make sure I let homeschoolers know is that don’t throw in the towel and stop homeschooling because you have a child who wants to play college sports. It is doable. It is possible. Homeschoolers are doing it all of the time. Now, this was in, what was it? 2012 when she graduated high school. So it’s been a while now. But one of the things I do is I do speak on NCAA and do workshops. I just was in Georgia for the flourish and talked about NCAA. And so more and more families are reaching out because they want to understand the process. So there is a homeschool toolkit. So when you go to NCAA Eligibility Center, you just go and download the toolkit. It tells you everything. But it can be a scary process because you have a student who says, “I want to play. I want to play in college.” And you as a parent, a homeschooling mom, typically, is saying, “I don’t want to mess up. I’m scared. I don’t understand the process. Are you sure it works? Can you help me walk through this toolkit to understand everything it’s saying? Because it sounds like foreign language to me, right?” And so I try to help families in that respect. And HSLDA, we’ve put together a PowerPoint. So I was traveling and doing that workshop. I did it for Chia last June in California. And so we do, yeah. So I just try to help families realize that it’s possible to do it. And a lot of it is just following, all of it is really following what they say. And that’s for homeschoolers can be a little bit because we’re so independent, right? We’re so independent.
Gretchen Roe: 00:22:54.694
We don’t stand in line well.

Natalie Mack: 00:22:56.825
We don’t stand in line.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:58.411
I used to laugh that you could always tell the homeschoolers at the zoo.
Natalie Mack: 00:23:02.724
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:03.279
Because here we’re all the classes standing in line and the homeschoolers are wandering everywhere.

Natalie Mack: 00:23:07.810
Yeah, yeah, we’re exploring. What’s that? And oh, mom, look at this, right? And so you’re right. So as parents, we’re kind of like that too. And we’re used to like, “No, I want to do it this way. I want to homeschool this way,” which is totally fine. And the NCAA doesn’t restrict how you homeschool. They’re very accommodating. They recognize homeschoolers want to play and they are very welcoming to homeschoolers, quite honestly. And that’s why they created this toolkit. But I do tell families, now they recognize and they want you to come and play, they want you to become eligible for– but recognize that you need to do it their way, right? So just follow the toolkit and it’s separate. Eligibility is separate from college admissions. So that makes sense, but then sometimes it doesn’t and families…

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:56.482
And I was a homeschooler back in the the day in 2004 when my daughter got ready. Well, 2003, she started taking the SAT and there was no block to check that you were home-schooled back in 2003. I remember the SAT administrators scratching their heads going, “What are we going to do? Where are we going to send the results? How is this going to happen?” And by the time kid number three came along, there was a block you could check that said that you were home-schooled.

Natalie Mack: 00:24:29.435
Yeah. You could identify with. Right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:31.819
Yeah, yeah. But I think the important part of that message, Natalie, is that as parents, we have to be as diligent in studying the process as our children are diligent in their academics.

Natalie Mack: 00:24:45.794
Yes, exactly. Totally true. I agree.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:48.819
[crosstalk] Did your daughter then graduate from Liberty?

Natalie Mack: 00:24:52.342
She did. She did graduate from Liberty, and then she got picked up about a year later to play in Verona. So she went back to Italy. And she ended up practicing. Italy is interesting. So I love Italy, so I will say that, but it is a little chaotic sometimes. And the rules aren’t really rules. And so they didn’t have– they, meaning the Italian team, had never really welcomed an American player. So there are rules that they didn’t know. So she ended up not actually being able to play in a game. And so, but she was there in practice and she did get selected. So it was a good experience to some degree. But she now plays for a team here in the area, like on the weekends. And then she does foot soul indoor soccer as well. As a matter of fact, she started to play with a friend who played with her on the Naples Wildcats soccer team, who ended up being in the DC area as well. And so they connected and ended up being on the same indoor team. And they were teammates in Italy. Crazy.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:02.490
Now, talk to me a little bit about what it was like to prepare a child for college when you couldn’t exactly do the typical college visits. You all were still in Italy.

Natalie Mack: 00:26:12.563
Right.
Gretchen Roe: 00:26:13.200
And you were preparing her. So what kind of homework did a parent have to do? Particularly as a home-school parent, because there’s a lot more homework there. You don’t have a guidance counselor to sort of point you in a direction.

Natalie Mack: 00:26:27.362
Right, yes, yes. So, well, for the sports piece– well, let me back up. Our oldest daughter, we were in Virginia Beach and we got orders for Naples, Italy. And she applied to Regent University because at the time, she was thinking they have a great online program, and she wanted to accompany us to Italy. So I was good with that, right? As home schoolers, we’re like, we’re not really pushing them out the nest, right, so. But I knew I wanted her to stand on her own two feet, but I wanted her to be able to come with us as well. So that worked out perfectly for her. So her first year was a Regent University Online. When we got overseas, a lot of installations have partnerships with– like University of Maryland. I think it’s called Global Campus.

Gretchen Roe: 00:27:18.103
Campus, yes.

Natalie Mack: 00:27:18.974
Yeah. So it was University College years ago. And so she was able to then take in-person classes that were held. They used the high school building for classes. So she had a combination going for a while. And our youngest daughter, prior to going overseas that summer, she had gone down to UNC Chapel Hill. Now, if you know anything about women’s soccer, Chapel Hill is like– you go there and you love it and you get picked up, then you’re on your way, right? And she went there and had a great week, but a not-so-great week. And she came back and said, “That’s not for me.” She said, “But I would like to check Liberty.” And so she we went to the next year, we were overseas that first year, and she applied for their college-bound soccer camp. So we all hopped on a flight, on a Space A, on a hop, right? And so Space A, space available for anyone that’s like, “What is that?” So we hopped on and made it to Dover, rented a van, got back down to the DC area, went to Liberty, did all these different things. So in that process, with her touring Liberty and attending the soccer-bound camp, our oldest daughter took a look at Liberty and said, “I’m missing this experience on a college campus. I feel good here.” And so she applied and got accepted, literally. So that’s how they both ended up at Liberty, for totally different purposes, different majors, different experiences. The life of an athlete is a serious commitment, especially at the D1 level. You have to really want it because you have to be able to survive with all of the requirements and [crosstalk].

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:08.045
There’s a lot of plate spinning that goes on.

Natalie Mack: 00:29:10.055
A lot of plate spinning, right? But it was a great experience in many ways for our daughters, but totally different experiences because of their different paths. So I would say, you’re overseas and it is a lot more challenging, right? It’s a lot more challenging to– and so if you do get an opportunity to travel back and jump on a hop, a lot of families, that’s what they do. They make it over the summer and they go. Now the summertime, you get a little bit more– a little different experience on a college campus than you do when school is in session, even though they do have summer classes at most universities. So if you can go a little bit earlier, you get a full– like you can see, okay, this is how it is in the cafeteria.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:53.125
And this is how crowded it might be.

Natalie Mack: 00:29:54.946
This is how crowded it might be. Right, right. And this is that– yeah, all the options, you get to really see what life is like, though.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:01.704
Absolutely. So we talked about this before the episode began. And so I want to make sure that we talk about this before we move into talking about the questions that parents submitted. And that is, how is life different for a family when they have a child who learns differently in the military? And so I would like you– you’ve got so much depth and breadth of knowledge here. Give us some insight. How do you make that happen?

Natalie Mack: 00:30:29.165
Yes. So what I think we were talking about too, is the number of military families who are choosing to homeschool and children who learn differently, right? And I applaud these families because ultimately you have to see this, you have to make a decision that’s best for your family. And if your children are potentially not getting their needs met, then you do have to make a decision about what you’re going to do about that. And if it’s not working, they are tending to choose to homeschool. So how are they doing that? Well, there’s two ways. Some school districts allow homeschoolers to get assessed for learning differences, right, through their local school. From what I understand, because we did pursue speech therapy for both of our sons and when our middle son had visual impairment. So we were an EFMP family because of that. And so having said that, we did go through the local school for one son. And then for this last one with speech therapy, we were told, thankfully, that as a homeschooler, we were kind of going to be last in queue. And if my son needed twice-a-week therapy as a homeschooler, more likely he would just get once a week in the public school. Because quite honestly, they’re allocating their resources to the student who’s enrolled as a public school student. And I hear people saying, “Oh, we pay taxes and all. And that’s a fight that I mean, people say that, right? But the reality is still the reality, right? And when someone’s telling you that about your children, then you have to figure out what can I do to get the services that they need. And so thankfully, our PCM, our primary care manager, went ahead and put in a request through TRICARE, which is typically the military insurance. And we were able to get services through a civilian provider, which was the best decision ever. It doesn’t always work out that way. So in the end, get what you can get rather than nothing. But recognize that if you can advocate and ask for your PCM to consider putting in for outside services. And we were able to say that actually when a school counselor did tell me that, “Your son would be kind of a last to get.” So that was helpful. I took that info.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:56.135
Sure. All information is good information.

Natalie Mack: 00:32:57.885
[crosstalk]. Yeah. Right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:58.903
Just depends on how you use it, right?

Natalie Mack: 00:33:00.357
All information. That’s good. So, yeah. And so a lot of families that have the children have learning differences and they’re starting to homeschool. And these children can learn. Sometimes I hear families say, “Oh, well, my child has this or that. And so that’s why they can’t learn.” That’s not accurate. That’s not accurate. I think sometimes that’s the message we want to believe, right? Because it is a little bit of a harder mountain to climb, right? There are more things to do if you have a child that has some learning differences, but it’s not an impossibility. And I feel like as a homeschooler, you have more ability to really address those and find the way to help your child learn than to hear a public school say, “Oh, your child can’t learn because of learning differences.” That’s the message you pulled away from to embrace being able to help them learn.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:55.569
I love that line. That’s the message you pulled away from to help them learn.

Natalie Mack: 00:33:59.560
Away from. Right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:01.460
Yes.

Natalie Mack: 00:34:01.983
To help them learn. And so don’t allow yourself to believe that maybe you were told that and you believe it. And you feel like, “Okay, I just don’t want my child to be bullied or anything like that or misunderstood. So I pull them out to keep them safe.” That’s all great. But they can also be pulled out to learn, right? You can do both. They can be kept safe and to learn. And don’t underestimate. I mean, it’s amazing. Children can do so many things. And most kids come ready to learn. Even with differences, you just have to seek help, get support, get evaluations, get in a community, ask questions and be an advocate. Do not just believe anything you’re told, even about your child. You know your child. So advocate to get what they need. So that’s my soapbox.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:52.444
No, I love your soapbox. I have a 25– will be 25 on Thursday, son who was told when he was eight, he wasn’t college material. He wasn’t going to be able to learn effectively enough to go to college. And he’s a systems engineer with a degree in computer science. And we just chose not to receive every diagnosis we were handed, so.

Natalie Mack: 00:35:16.026
I understand. I understand. And look where he is, right? So yeah, definitely.

Gretchen Roe: 00:35:21.940
So we had so many good questions. So I wanted to go through some of these questions to see if you can provide some guidance because you have such a depth and breadth of knowledge. You bring not only the experience of the military family, but you also bring a counselor’s hat to the table to sort of parse some of these questions. So one of them is about how do– I’m going to throw you a softball. This one’s easy. How do homeschoolers get information about the military if their student’s not part of Junior ROTC? And I know the answer to this, but I want you to tell us this so that other parents will hear this.

Natalie Mack: 00:36:05.658
Yes. Okay. So if you have a homeschool who’s interested in learning about how to join the military, military service is the question, right? Well, that’s another one of my soapboxes that I do. And we were just talking before they cut me.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:17.829
No, I knew it was because of our conversation last winter or last fall, so.

Natalie Mack: 00:36:23.221
Yeah. And so I advocate for homeschoolers for their transcript for and I advocate with HSLDA and then I advocate personally from my own experience that homeschoolers’ transcripts count, right? They are good enough, they are acceptable, and a lot of families are concerned about that. There’s a myth out there and some of that myth is based on some real situations where, you know, a young person, a homeschool student has said, “I want to enlist,” and maybe there’s a recruiter who says, “Oh, no, we don’t accept your transcript,” or, “Homeschoolers, we don’t really want you.” But that is really not the reality. And so if a family encounters that, I always say, for one, contact HSLDA because they have an attorney to handle that. And then I am, on the other end, working with the Army and the Air Force and all these powers that be to train the recruiters, the ESSs, which for the Army, that’s Education Service Specialists. They go out to conferences and promote the Army opportunity. So helping them understand about homeschooling and that so that they can talk intelligently to homeschooling families about their life and the homeschool students journey. And they can look at this student and see, wow, all this potential. And they take these, you have to take an ASFAB, right? Armed Services, what is it? Vocational Aptitude Battery, I think.

Gretchen Roe: 00:37:52.032
Yes.

Natalie Mack: 00:37:52.734
They have to take that and the higher you score, the more opportunity you have for different MOSs, Military Occupational Specialties, more jobs, right? So if you want to be around, work with planes and potentially fly and different things like that, there are ways that people will enlist and then become an officer. So there’s so many routes there. And I talk about enlistment. I work with West Point. They have homeschool admissions. I just met about a couple of months ago with University of North Georgia, which has– it is a military college, which is similar to VMI, Virginia Military Institute, right? ROTC, where you say you want to go to a certain college and you don’t want to go through the military college route or a West Point or Naval Academy, you can join ROTC and get money and get potential opportunity to be commissioned. So there’s an international guard. Say you want to stay in your neighborhood, your home, right? For different reasons. And what you want to serve, National Guard.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:01.723
That’s a great– I hadn’t thought of the National Guard. I guess I kind of discounted that. But yeah, that makes it. My husband’s a military school graduate, so.

Natalie Mack: 00:39:10.406
So you understand. Yeah, exactly.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:11.632
I do. I do. And he says that he paid for his education. He graduated from the Citadel, so.

Natalie Mack: 00:39:18.262
Yes, the Citadel, right? Yes, yes, very much so. There’s about five, I call them five tracks. And so each one is different and each one requires something differently. The Military Service Academy one is probably the hardest one because that I equate to applying to an Ivy League and– but homeschoolers do get accepted. So again, don’t believe that they don’t.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:45.280
I have a friend’s daughter who will be graduating from the Naval Academy in a couple of weeks. Not long now.

Natalie Mack: 00:39:54.229
Right, right. Exactly. It happens quite often. So, yeah.
Gretchen Roe: 00:39:59.931
And so those five tracks would be then Military Service Academy, Rozzi.

Natalie Mack: 00:40:08.075
Yes, National Guard, Military College like VMI or University of North Georgia. There are several of them in the enlistment.

Gretchen Roe: 00:40:18.739
Sure. [crosstalk] Okay. All right.

Natalie Mack: 00:40:21.666
And they’re all completely different tracks. And you can go from enlistment to the officer’s core if that’s something that you want. There’s processes to do that as well. So it really just depends. A lot of families whose students want to pursue Military Service Academy, we call them MSAs. They want to pursue that. They also kind of have like a ram in the bush. They kind of like will also look at what schools have ROTC, and they have that as a backup. Because the reality is there are only a few slots at the MSAs for freshman class, incoming class. So you may get a no, but it’s not necessarily because you’re homeschooled. It’s just they can’t accept everybody. But homeschoolers do get accepted.

Gretchen Roe: 00:41:09.537
I think what’s also important here is as a parent, our goal is to equip our children for life. So I would suggest putting a little skin in the game and letting your kids do some of that research as well. It’s not all on the parent to figure it all out.

Natalie Mack: 00:41:25.064
Right. Totally true.

Gretchen Roe: 00:41:25.954
That burden needs to be shared, so to speak.

Natalie Mack: 00:41:28.639
Yes, yes, yes, because it’s really important for the students to understand what the requirements are. A student that wants to say, “Oh, I want to go to US Air Force Academy. I want to be a pilot.” Well, there’s a process that you have to be willing to submit to and complete. Are you willing? And the student needs to be willing. The parent, it doesn’t matter what the parent thinks. The parent could be a graduate of the Air Force Academy. It does not matter. It’s the student that has to do all that work. There’s a lot of work there, right? Physically and mentally and academically. And so the student needs to know that enlistment. You need to know that the military is looking for people who graduate, right? Don’t feel like yet, go get a GED. No, no, that’s not what they’re looking for, right? They’re looking for people with a transcript. So I always say, and I learned this from Carol Becker. You probably remember Carol Becker, right? She’s a guru consultant with HSLDA for a long time. She no longer works with us, but we love her dearly. And she would say a transcript is the best gift. So I kind of have segues to that piece is to just get that word out there is if one thing you can do to finish well as a homeschool is to give your student a transcript, not years later, not when they need to call HSLDA and get help because they didn’t get one. As part of finishing, give them a transcript.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:56.466
And I will say just as a plug, we did an episode last November about the transcript process and preparing your child for a post-secondary experience. And I will include that webinar in the show notes so parents can reference that because that’s not something you start when they’re a senior in high school.

Natalie Mack: 00:43:17.152
No.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:17.877
You need to start that well in advance. We recommended in the webinar that we did that you start as a seventh and eighth grader looking at what that is and start guiding choices and preferences.

Natalie Mack: 00:43:30.830
Yes, exactly. Exactly. I agree.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:34.071
So how do you manage kiddos when they have to keep making new friends because they keep moving? And I know this from a personal basis. I have to say one of my dearest friends for almost 40 years is one of the first friends that I made when we were first stationed in Germany. And we’re still good friends. But there’s effort that needs to be expended there. So how, as a parent, do you guide that effort

Natalie Mack: 00:44:02.719
Yeah, so that’s not an easy question, right? I think that you can encourage them to get the contact info when you’re getting ready to move. Ideally, I think the best thing too as a parent is to make sure you have the parent’s info because, for example, our area code is 757 on my cell, and it’s been that way forever. And so wherever we move, it’s still 757. But clearly, we’re not in the 757 zone. So you can find the parent versus your child trying to keep track of the student, right? And as they get older and change addresses and relocate and emails are different and all of that. But the parents, we tend to kind of keep the same thing. So you can help them and kind of maintain that contact as well. And I think just helping them kind of learn the beauty in meeting new people and making new friendships and how important that is, kind of giving them that diverse experience and exposure, just kind of walking it through with them, making sure that you understand that different children are going to want to embrace that at a different pace. And that they’re not going to be harmed if they are slower than maybe a sibling to connect with new people and at a new installation. A lot of times children, like one of our daughters, she kind of was like a watcher. She just kind of was near me for a while. But oh my gosh, now she’s just– and she was the soccer player who just did her thing. Yeah. So they develop into who they’re supposed to be if we just kind of be the coach, right, and kind of be the support and give them a little nudges when we need to. But I think–

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:54.530
Yeah. I think part of that “be the coach” is to have those intentional conversations of how do you have a conversation with someone who’s new? If you rehearse those kinds of conversations at your breakfast table, it’s easier than when they find themselves in that situational spot, so–

Natalie Mack: 00:46:10.690
Yes. You can model it, right?

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:12.251
–there’s not that kind of hesitancy.

Natalie Mack: 00:46:14.758
Yes. Yes. Yes. And you’re relaxed. You can make it a game, right, within your home. And just give them the opportunity to learn. And then they watch how we do it, too, right?

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:29.121
Right. That’s true.

Natalie Mack: 00:46:30.586
They watch how we do it, too.

Gretchen Roe: 00:46:32.002
A lot of education is taught, not taught.

Natalie Mack: 00:46:35.269
Exactly. And homeschooled children are, I mean, they’re home where we are, right? And so they get a whole lot of us. And they get a lot of opportunity to watch how we do things. And so it’s interesting. You’ll see a lot of yourself in your children. So just pause a moment if you get really frustrated, because it’s probably you that is what you’re looking at, right?

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:02.684
What do you mean? [laughter]

Natalie Mack: 00:47:04.780
Maybe a little bit.

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:06.470
No. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Melanie. [laughter] Okay, so toward that end now, let’s go to the practical end of the spectrum as far as– now we’ve talked about the emotional. Let’s talk about the practical end of the spectrum. When you are a military family, particularly like you were a military family with multiple kids of multiple ages, could you have it all? And I know what the answer to that is.

Natalie Mack: 00:47:33.232
No. No.

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:33.232
So how do you prioritize what’s most important?

Natalie Mack: 00:47:38.213
Oh gosh, in terms of activities, for example, and things like that, is that what you would say? Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:44.888
I think I’m asking a little bit of everything. So maybe home life together. I get the distinct impression from all the conversations we’ve had that you had really promoted that your kids had each other’s backs, that your kids love each other and look out for each other.

Natalie Mack: 00:48:03.123
Yes. For me–

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:04.315
And I find today that I don’t always hear that from families that I have conversations with.

Natalie Mack: 00:48:09.277
Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:09.561
So how can you, particularly as a military family– because when you move to a new location, all they’ve got is each other.

Natalie Mack: 00:48:17.708
Right, right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:18.292
How do you foster that? I guess, is the question.
Natalie Mack: 00:48:22.985
Yeah. I think a lot, quite honestly, is a lot of it is my personality, I think. But I think that you can be intentional about it as well. So for me, I am a bonder, and I wanted our children to bond with each other. I mean, one of the things that I was looking for in homeschooling, and one of the things I felt God was blessing us with the ability to homeschool was for this family bonding concept. Right? That doesn’t mean that they like each other, that they don’t argue, and that they don’t think, “Oh, you took the last slice of pizza,” and all the things. Right? So that happened. Right? And even sometimes, I probably was like, “Oh, don’t fuss about that.” I probably did say that. If I could hear my kids, they would say, “Mom, you didn’t even like that either,” but they knew I didn’t. You know what I’m saying? But I knew it was something that happened. So we would talk through a lot of those type of disagreements. We would focus on how you treat people. We are family of faith. So that was definitely key. And times of Bible study, times of just talking about how God would have us treat people. We embraced and look forward to meeting a lot of different people and seeing different things and experiencing different aspects of life. And so we just kind of lived life fully, and I think that that allowed them to feel comfortable. I remember that for our youngest daughter, for example, so when we were overseas and she was on the soccer team, and they, like I mentioned, would travel to a game. And what was a mindset, I think, that a lot of the teammates would have was, “Oh, let’s kind of do whatever so-and-so wants to do.” When they had downtime, “Oh, you know, let’s go do this.” And it was kind of this group movement, this group’s think.

Natalie Mack: 00:50:32.373
And as a homeschooler, which I think she may have been the only homeschooler, maybe there was one more, but for sure, I think she was only one for at least two of those two years, two or three years. And so for her, it was she was very like, “Mom, I was comfortable making my own decisions.” Right? And I was like, “Wow, that’s what we want. That’s what we want,” because I am raising adults. Right? We’re not raising children. They are children. We’re raising adults. So for her to be launched as an adult on a college campus, I needed to feel that she was comfortable being who she was and confident and okay if her choices and her decisions and how she saw things were different than the rest of them, especially going from one team to now being on a college campus and a team and playing at that level. There’s a lot of stressors and demands and everything. And so I think that that was, yeah, we just kind of– it was, for our family, it was just important. It was just very important what we talked about. Yeah., that’s what we–

Gretchen Roe: 00:51:34.599
So what kind of advice do you offer to families as far as choosing curriculum? And I mean this in the greater context of there’s so many choices available. I laughingly say this to parents at conferences, when I started homeschooling, you could have stuck everything that was available as a resource in a single aisle of a typical homeschool conference today. There are so many choices. It’s hard to discern. So do you offer to homeschool families in your your advisory capacity, do you say, “These are the important things, and then these are the additional things.”? Or how do you [crosstalk]–?

Natalie Mack: 00:52:11.089
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely, for subjects and all and trying to find curriculum. Yeah. They are what we call the core courses, the main things. And then you have your electives. But high school, to me, is an exciting time. Right? I recognize I hear people saying, “Well, it’s so stressful. Right?” and I hear that. So please, when I say this, I’m not pie in the sky kind of Pollyanna thinking, “Oh, it’s all great.” I realize that there are lots of things that you need to get fairly right depending upon where your child wants to go. I recognize that. Right? But at the same time, I think that it’s just this canvas that the student with your help can paint this beautiful, right, outcome. And I always tell a lot of families, college is one outcome, one next phase, but it’s not the one for everybody. Right? There’s different next phases for different types of children and different paths that God has them on. And so I think that we always– I always recommend that you homeschool to college because it’s the hardest one to catch up. Right? So you have everything you need. And then at that point, if you don’t need all of it, you just off-load. Right? But to try to onload it, it’s going to be hard. And so having said that, just focus on the students’ passions and interests and help them know who they are. Help them understand what they like to do. A lot of times they don’t know. You may ask a ninth grader or even an eighth grader planning for high school, like, “Oh, what do you want to study?” And they’re like, “I don’t know.” Well, you know as a parent, there’s some core ones they have to do. And then just start exposing them to different ones that can count as the elective. And then maybe find extracurriculars that complement that learning. And they will start to develop and see who they are. But I think it’s really about being intentional as a parent to give them those exposures. And as a homeschool family, wow, you can see from years ago to now how many resources there are for homeschoolers. Even in small towns, there’s something for a homeschooling family. Right? It may not be as much as here in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area because there’s a lot. Right? But there’s enough to evolve from 4-H to– we have a Beta club here at Fort Belvoir. We have a 4-H club. We have a chess club. There’s just so many things. I created a DC Explorers Club which is super popular. It was this idea that, “We’re near this metropolitan area, and let’s give homeschoolers at 13 and above to join this club.” And they get to form teams that plan once a month an outing into DC. They sometimes will do Alexandria because it’s a smaller city, but they go into DC, and they have to plan the whole thing. “Where are we going? How are we going to get there? Oh, we’re going to get on the metro from here to here? How much does it cost? What time? What metro? What train are we catching? Oh, we’re catching the 9:21 train. Everybody has to be there by 9 o’clock. Bring your smart cards for the metro. Are we going to eat lunch there? Who’s doing what? Bring your lunch. [crosstalk] the monument or what?”

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:30.590
You know what I love about that, Jude? That’s so much more than a club.

Natalie Mack: 00:55:34.933
Yes. it is.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:35.330
Because what you’re doing is you’re incorporating what you said earlier is, “We have to teach them to be adults.”

Natalie Mack: 00:55:40.287
Yes. It is.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:41.413
And I think that makes–

Natalie Mack: 00:55:42.340
Yes. You’re right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:43.380
–so much of a difference.

Natalie Mack: 00:55:44.321
I haven’t thought about that, but you’re right. Yeah. Thank you. [laughter]

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:46.479
Yeah. You are. Congratulations. Look at that. And so if you don’t have that where you live, maybe this is the opportunity for you to create that.

Natalie Mack: 00:55:56.999
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:58.354
There’s a possibility.

Natalie Mack: 00:55:59.991
There’s that path to find.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:01.286
If you can’t find what you want, I mean, my husband and I sat on a board, a high school co-op board, for six years because we wanted to see that co-op continue. And truth to tell, I didn’t want to teach high school math.

Natalie Mack: 00:56:17.676
I hear you right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:18.602
But I didn’t want to teach high school math. So I had a vested interest in making sure that go up.

Natalie Mack: 00:56:23.895
Yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:25.987
I think there’s a difference there as well. Okay, Natalie, we’re almost to the top of the hour. So what have I not asked you that I should have asked you?

Natalie Mack: 00:56:36.657
Oh my gosh. Oh, there’s so many things. I’m trying to think of what you have not asked me. Let’s see here. One of the things I have done, too, that I think we can talk about real quickly is the school liaison officer. I want to make sure I put a plug in for that. So a school liaison, we call it a SLO, S-L-O. The Air Force calls them school liaison program managers. And a lot of the branches now just shorten it to an SL, school liaison, right? But either way, they do all the same job. Basically, each branch has this person or these two or three people. They are assigned to installations. Their job is to serve military families in the arena of education. So whether you are choosing the DoDEA school, if the installation has one, DOD school, right? Or you are choosing, it’s a county school that is on the installation or whatever it is, right? Homeschoolers, all right, they service the military homeschooler as well. And so I’ve been doing a lot of training before it’s an Army, Marine Corps, Navy. They fly me around or have me jump on a Zoom. And at the high headquarters level, I’m training in all of the SLOs. And so I am honored to do that. As a leader, even when I led the group in Naples, Italy, and now here at Belvoir and other places, I’ve had great relationships with this person at these installations, and they have been great in facilitating resources for our community. And so that is one of the things that they are really good. They are basically this liaison between the garrison command and you, the military homeschooler. So they have access to resources for military homeschool.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:32.073
I think that’s something I don’t think I expected, is to find that resource as a homeschool family. I would expect that as a resource for a family who was military with kids in school. But that’s a resource for a homeschool family as well.

Natalie Mack: 00:58:48.674
Yes. And they’re looking for us because sometimes we are a little elusive. But yeah, so I love working with them. And I’m going to back to Germany in a few weeks. Matter of fact, I fly Sunday to the Panhandle to support a school liaison officer there for the Air Force at Eglin Field. She’s actually the regional school liaison, but I’m going down to the Panhandle to Herbert Field Airfield and Eglin and supporting Gina Payton, who’s the leader there of a group, military homeschool group there. And then in a few weeks back to Germany, this will be– gosh, this will be our second time going for the European Homeschool Conference. This is their third annual, and it’s held in Kaiser Garden, K-Town, as we call it. So I’m excited to go support Michelle Segren and her team there. So a lot of opportunity, a lot of things that are happening in military homeschool world. Definitely. So yes.

Gretchen Roe: 00:59:49.015
Great. That’s tremendous. Well, so if you had one piece of advice to share with military homeschool families, and ooh, this is a difficult question to even ask of you, what would the advice be that you would give? And I think I know what my advice would be, but what would be the advice that you would give them as far as their journeys are concerned?

Natalie Mack: 01:00:13.902
Yeah, I would say bloom where you’re planted. That’s something I always say. Military families, I know we move so often. And I know this idea of getting reconnected and adjusting again, and we’ve talked about this during this podcast, but it can be a deal breaker for so many families that they just are so tired of moving it or they just don’t know how to do it one more time. And you miss out on two to three years of your life in that new location, right? Because you’re living life. You’re going to live it whether you stay where you were, where you were happy, or you moved to the place you didn’t want to be. You still are living. And there’s things that God has for you to embrace, to learn, to experience. And so bloom where you are planted, even when it’s hard.

Gretchen Roe: 01:00:58.749
I think that makes a difference for our families to recognize that wherever you are, that’s where you are. So to find and make the best of a situation– our family motto is Semper Gumby.

Natalie Mack: 01:01:19.168
Yes, Semper Gumby. Exactly. Yes. That’s it. Semper Gumpy.

Gretchen Roe: 01:01:22.970
So I think it’s always important to recognize that that we don’t have to just say, “Well, it is what it is.” That’s one of my least favorite phrases. I think it is what you make it.

Natalie Mack: 01:01:35.943
Yes. Exactly. Yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 01:01:37.683
And I think that makes all the difference in the world. I want to thank you so much for joining me for this time. I’ve been so excited to have this particular adventure with you because I just found a kindred spirit when we met last September. And I think that this is just an absolutely tremendous opportunity for us to be able to figure out the world of the military homeschooler is different, but it’s rich and it’s full. And don’t say you can’t just because the world is different.

Natalie Mack: 01:02:10.305
Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. I’m so passionate. I love military families and I’m passionate about supporting military homeschoolers. So I’m so honored you asked me. Thank you. Thank you.

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:19.878
Well, I think I think you are, as my husband describes me, someone who could thread a sewing machine while it’s running, so.

Natalie Mack: 01:02:27.491
Probably so. Yeah, yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:29.587
And if you need omeone to carry those bags back to Germany. I’d be happy to volunteer for that.

Natalie Mack: 01:02:34.927
I would love you. We would get in so much trouble. We would have a good time.

Gretchen Roe: 01:02:37.995
It would be fun. We would have a great time. Thank you again so much for joining me. This is Gretchen Roe for the Demme Learning Show. Thank you all for joining us today. You can access the show notes and watch a recording of the Demme Learning Show at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. And we’ll look forward to joining you in your living room again for a future episode. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.

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