Lisa Chimento: 00:00:00.000
I was doing most of the academic work at home, but there were a few things that I saw that I knew my children, different children at different times would be interested in. And so I wanted to give them that opportunity. We talked about it, and then we went with that. But the very first group that I ever joined was just a very large group. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. I just knew we needed connection. We had just moved into a brand new state in a new city, and I knew no one. It was my opportunity to make connections with people. And it ended up being a marvelous experience.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:40.486
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this episode of The Demme Learning Show. It’s fall here in North Carolina, and my voice has sort of left me. So you’re going to have to put up with a little bit of a scratchy voice. Lisa has said the same thing. She’s having the same challenge in Florida. We’re excited to have a conversation with you about co-op environment learning. And we want to bring a little bit of a different twist to it. We want to talk to you a little bit about some of the Demme Learning products and what you might find an enhancement to a co-op experience. But we also want to talk to you about reading the room and being able to recognize how to get the best out of a co-op experience, how you as a parent might need to know when it’s time to change the co-op experience, how you might be able to encourage a reticent child to participate in a co-op experience. And I have brought two of the best here today to have a conversation about that. I’m going to let them introduce themselves. Sue, we’ll start with you, and then Lisa will continue on.

Sue Wachter: 00:01:44.748
My name is Sue Wachter. I have been with Demme and hanging out with parents for since almost the beginning of the Math-U-See product. So I just have to say is every time I go into a situation like this, I know I’m going to learn something. And that’s kind of my theme of how I work with small groups is also it’s not always about me teaching them. It’s what can I learn to be better at what I do.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:18.630
And I should say as an aside, before Lisa introduces yourself, Sue’s a bit of a ringer. Sue is also our professional staff artist and she teaches small group environments all the time, but she works with adults. Now, does that mean that’s an entirely different enterprise than working with kids? No, not really. Not really, because we all have the personality that we bring to the table. And it’s up to Sue to figure out how to help those personalities work together. So we’re going to let her tell a few stories, because I think you’ll be able to fit yourself in the frame of how important it is to be part of that dynamic that is a solution finder. Lisa?

Lisa Chimento: 00:02:59.178
Thanks, Gretchen. Yes, my name is Lisa Chimento. I am a placement and support specialist here at Demme Learning. I’ve been with the company for seven years full time. And before that, I worked summers as a contractor at homeschool conventions. And it is a joy to meet parents, meet families and help support them, just encourage them. And I just love what Sue said. I have learned over time how much I learn from my colleagues and from the parents that we get a chance to speak with all the time. So it really is a collaborative effort.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:36.438
And part of the reason I asked Lisa to join us is Lisa’s the mother of four. She says they’re all grown and flown. But she’s homeschooled in more than one state. So she’s had more than one kind of co-op experience. So she brings an expertise to the table of being able to understand how to enter an established co-op, which can sometimes be a little bit of a scary proposition. Or if you don’t find one you like– maybe how to find one that fits or create one that fits. Lisa, one of the things I want you to talk about, and I think I’ll begin with this, is Steven’s experience in a sports oriented co-op. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think we all are in the frame of, “It’s all academics. It’s all academics.” And it’s not.

Lisa Chimento: 00:04:29.394
No, it definitely isn’t. There are so many things that I know that we’re going to hear from Sue later, but there are so many different ways that kids can learn in group settings. So there was a group in– a group that we were in when we were living in central Florida. And it initially started out as just a sports group. And it allowed homeschool students to play competitive sports against small schools. We weren’t going to be playing against large schools or anything like that, but we did play against small private schools and just some smaller– maybe some charter schools that were local in the area. But we played all around our county. And so a couple of my kids. Sarah played volleyball. And Daniel and Steven were both runners, and they ran cross country. Steven also ran track. And they made it to state championships in Jacksonville one year. It was really, really wonderful to give kids that had athletic ability and a desire to excel that opportunity to go and compete. That same group, though, then did branch out eventually, and they started offering some academic courses as well as some enrichment courses. And we had lots of opportunities. My kids took some English classes. There were math classes offered. There were history classes. There were biblical studies classes. So there’s lots of different opportunities if you look around. And hopefully, wherever you are, if you’re interested in teaching or giving your kids that opportunity for a group setting, you can find groups that do offer a variety of different things.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:08.924
So Lisa, in your experience, you kind of went and looked for the things you were looking for for your kids, rather than “looked for an experience that sort of filled all the gaps.”

Lisa Chimento: 00:06:21.500
Yeah, I was doing most of the academic work at home, but there were a few things that I saw that I knew my children, different children at different times, would be interested in. And so I wanted to give them that opportunity. We talked about it. And then we went with that. And in that particular group, that’s the way it worked out. The very first group– and I can talk about that more later, if you like. But the very first group that I ever joined was just a very large group. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. I just knew we needed connection. We had just moved into a brand new state and a new city, and I knew no one. It was my opportunity to make connections with people. And it ended up being a marvelous experience.

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:06.856
Terrific. I’m really excited to imagine that. I didn’t have a co-op experience until we’ve been homeschooling about six years, and our co-op experience was limited to high school. So we created a couple of co-ops where a bunch of us would get together for a project oriented adventure. But I never really had the experience of having young kids in co-op. It was my 8th through 12th graders that had that experience. Sue, I want to circle back to you and talk a little bit about what we talked about earlier this morning, because I think you had a wildly valuable insight about different kids in different settings. And so I wonder if you’d talk a little bit about the experience you had last week teaching to the group and some of the insights that you learned from that experience.

Sue Wachter: 00:08:03.260
Yes, it was getting prepared for this presentation has been just really– I’ve learned so much just already, just from this. So I was asked to come and speak to a junior high group about art. So it was art related. And the first thing I noticed when I walked into the room was there was this huge room with a small group of kids and they could just be anywhere. And so already there are five rows back. There’s a big cluster of them. But then the one that really got to me was the the young girl in the front who reminded me of me. She was like, didn’t want to look at me, kept going like this type of thing. And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, that’s me. That’s me growing up.” And so she was just on my heart, but I didn’t– I made sure knowing what I would have wanted. I did not like point her out or try to get her to talk or anything like that because that would be what I would not have wanted now. And then I did contact the teacher later and said, “Hey, I was that way growing up. Please let me know if I can help in any way.” But also that the kids were allowed this large space. And my thought was I’d never had that experience where the room is too big. I thought if I were to speak there again, I would encourage everybody to come forward. I would not allow that big space where you know how kids are. There’s who’s in, who’s out and all that. And I mean, I could tell who’s in, who’s out just by looking out into the audience. So I would have probably found a way to deal with that. It’s not mine to deal with, but those are the kind of things. Safe space is real important to me, and it probably has to do with my shyness growing up. But that’s real important. But it’s not always clear how to make the space safe.

Gretchen Roe: 00:10:19.841
You need to look at the environment your kids are in, not just assume because they’re rolling into a co-op class, that it’s what you want it to be, right? Sue? Because one of those students didn’t have a terrific experience because you like she was sort of on the outside. And so being able to, as a parent, not necessarily to intervene, but to observe and then have a conscious conversation. We had the privilege last week of talking to three fantastic co-op directors. And one of the questions I asked them was, how do you make it inclusive? How do you include kids who are more reticent to be included? And I think it’s up to us as parents a little bit to teach that inclusion, to create an opportunity for the shy child to be included, maybe to find a child to include them. I know I experienced this this morning. I coach swimming and I have 15 freshmen swimmers. And it’s going to be quite an adventure this winter. And two of them are very, very shy. You stand them all in a line and you’ve got two who were stepped one step back behind the others. And so my immediate thought was to go to those two reticent students and say, “Who brought you here? Who was your friend?” And sort of get them to connect to each other so that they would feel a little bit safer and a little bit more connected. In homeschool environments, we’re kind of used to doing our own things. I used to laugh when we would take field trips to the zoo because you always knew when there was a group of homeschool kids. The teachers would have all the classes lined up. They’d all be lined up in different directions, and the homeschool kids are all wandering everywhere. [laughter] Nobody’s in line anywhere, which is funny. But it’s up to us to create that environment where kids feel included and they feel safe. I wonder, Sue, if you could talk a little bit about– I want to set a scenario, so I want to talk about, I’m in a co-op, I’m a mom who’s teaching math, and I recognize there’s some kids in the co-op who have some fundamental deficits in their math skills. I wonder if you could talk just a little bit about how maybe pulling them aside and having a conversation with a parent about AIM might be helpful for those kids. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Sue Wachter: 00:13:10.335
Right. And the fascinating thing about working with parents with AIM or– I’ve been recently trying to figure out how to get AIM in a co-op setting and make it work, so we’re working on that and hopefully we’ll have something that could be more of a group setting. But the big thing is, a lot of times we’re so busy looking to see, “Did they get the work done?” We’re not looking at the behavior as they get the work done, and the tragic thing is, kids can get into even high school and still counting on their fingers to add and subtract, and so this is something we were seeing over the years continually happening. And a lot of times they get the work done and you don’t realize it, like in second and third grade, they can still get the work done and count on their fingers, but as it gets older and more complex, they’re not able to. So first of all, if I was a teacher or a parent, I would be looking for evidence that they’re counting, and it could be wiggling their fingers. I mean, they know they’re not supposed to be counting, so they often hide it, so you have to be looking for it. But the cool thing is the AIM program is designed for that student, the older student who did not get their facts mastered and have developed a habit of counting. At this point, it’s a habit. It’s how they get it done. So it doesn’t mean they’re not capable, and a lot of times drill sheets and those types of things are used, but for many, many people, drilling does not go into long-term memory, so it doesn’t work. And so the beauty of AIM is it takes care of it and gives them more fluency, and you will see their in general math scores start soaring. I just had a tutoring– or a school that did a one-on-one tutoring with a ninth grader, and they are just blown away. She now has her facts. She’s functioning at a whole new level in math. So I can’t stress enough the importance of that. However, it’s currently better in a tutorial one-on-one setting. We have not quite figured out how to get in a group setting, but we are working on that. So I can’t stress enough, especially in the map, how important that is, and again, those kids are not going to want to be embarrassed to show themselves counting. So so how do they function or do they just not answer? What do they do? But that’s something to be aware of, especially of a student that is hesitant to give an answer and isn’t otherwise shy or anything, that it could be that they’re still dealing with this.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:19.065
Absolutely. And one of the things that we as parents have a capacity to do that is rare in any other environment, in a co-op environment, yes, you know your student. But sometimes you’re not always the prophet in their land. So it’s important for you to know who the tutor or the instructor or the co-op presenter is so that they’ll be able to understand your student as well. And I’m saying this in the context of I want to teach my children to be accountable to more than just me. But by the same token, I think it’s also important if I have a child who’s absolutely going to go catatonic if you call on them in class, it would be in my best interest to let the co-op instructor know that ahead of time and maybe create a situation where that student could be comfortable before we called on them. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference. Lisa, I want to talk to you a little bit about WriteShop because I know you said you wished WriteShop had been around when you were teaching your kids because the creative writing end of the experience was the part that you found to be difficult. Did you ever have the opportunity to engage in a creative writing experience in a co-op environment? And if not, what would you have looked for because you weren’t comfortable with a co-op experience?

Lisa Chimento: 00:17:55.078
Yeah. When we first acquired WriteShop, I kind of dove in. I wanted to see what was going on with this program because I had bopped around to a lot of different kinds of language arts curriculums and things to try to help me figure out how to teach writing better. I knew what good writing looked like when I read it. I just didn’t have the tools to teach it properly. And I didn’t have the proper tools to give my kids constructive feedback the way that they needed. I didn’t always know what to say or how to guide them into better writing. Fortunately, because we read such quality literature, they kind of all accidentally turned into pretty good writers. [laughter] I was very thankful for that. And so good literature is a key for sure. When we got into this one group that did expand into academic courses, there was a teacher there who was teaching a grammar course and a creative writing course. And Sarah especially really wanted to do that. She’s my writer, and she really looked forward to that. And she got so much out of that class. And I think the reason she got so much out of it was because this teacher not only had the tools to teach the writing skills, but she knew how to give that constructive feedback. And that’s one of the things that WrightShop does. So I think that if you are a co-op or someone who’s considering being a teacher in a co-op, the Write Shop course provides those tools for the instructor. It equips the instructor with those tools to be able to present the skills, teach them, give the kids opportunity to write, and at the same time, allowing them to write about the things that interest them, which I think is just golden. And then also those tools for constructive feedback. That’s a critical one that I think is just so necessary so that you’re not just red-penning a kid’s writing thing and then giving them a grade, but you’re giving them opportunities to grow and understand how they can improve the different skills that they can learn to tweak their writing in such a way that’s going to make it even better.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:17.884
One of the things that I found that I loved about WriteShop– and I never had the opportunity to teach it. But unlike Lisa who was very comfortable teaching mathematics, I was not. So in a co-op environment, I had to choose what I was comfortable teaching. And that was creative writing. I taught creative writing for 17 years. I love the fact that WriteShop gives you a rubric that– particularly with an older child, that rubric is designed for them to say, “Did I use complete sentences? Did I vary my sentence structure? Have I punctuated properly? Did I check to see that my spelling was correct?” Now, let me just say as an aside, creative writing is the most complex thing we ask a child to do. And it’s a little bit on the crazy side the amount of content we ask them to complete when we ask them to do a five-paragraph essay because there are so many things, so many skills that they have to bring to the table simultaneously. But I love the way that WriteShop has broken it out, and it makes it really super co-op friendly because you can take kids with a variety of skill sets, and you can still have a collaborative experience with it. In fact, WriteShop, I think, is probably one of the most brilliantly designed curricula in the fact that it gives you either smaller increments to instruct or more creativity to instruct. And you can tailor within a group of kids who needs what. And isn’t that what– that’s kind of the alternative definition of a co-op is to be able to do something like that and do it successfully.

Lisa Chimento: 00:22:03.414
One of the things I really like about it is that so much of the creative part of writing is done conversationally with WriteShop so that kids aren’t being given a blank piece of paper and here put something down. I mean, that would just give me the hives. But to be able to be that facilitator, really, for a group setting, you pull out a big sheet of blank paper and say, “Let’s brainstorm ideas. And there are no bad ideas. So just hit me with your best shot.” And let those kids call out their thoughts and their ideas and put them all down. Everybody’s ideas are valid here at this point. And then we’ll start narrowing down. And then we’ll start tailoring. And then we’ll start cutting things out that aren’t going to be used. But I love that idea so that kids aren’t stymied. For some kids, the mechanical part is hard and the creative part is easy. For people like me and others, the creative part takes so much mental energy that having that blank piece of paper is just going to stop the wheels right there. So having that opportunity to just do this conversationally and in a group setting, allowing everybody’s ideas to get thrown out and on that page, I just think it’s wonderful.

Gretchen Roe: 00:23:18.170
That’s awesome. Yeah. I think now, see, you have me thinking, “Where could I go to have the experience of teaching that again?” like I need something else to do, right? But it would be fun. I think it would be fun. Sue, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about advocacy. I know that you had a different learner in Kyle. And I love, love, love the story of you advocating for him and teaching him to advocate for himself. And advocacy is even more important in a co-op environment because we’re working with a variety of different people, and they’re not the people that sit around our kitchen table every day. So can you tell a little bit of that story and how you helped him learn to advocate for himself?

Sue Wachter: 00:24:11.456
In college, my son was– he’d always struggled in school. Learning was hard, but he worked hard. He’d do extra credit. He’d do whatever he had to do to get it done. And he always had test anxiety. So I never stressed out about his test. And so I remember one day, he came home. They had to take their state testing thing, and he said, “Mom–” He goes, “I didn’t know all the answers. So I just guessed, and I got done with everybody else.” I said, “Awesome. Good job.” Okay? And when we would get the results back, he’d hand me the results. I said, “Looks like you’re doing great.” Yes, I would take note of where he was struggling, but he just needed a lot of encouragement. And he was already advocating for himself. He was already willing to do extra credit. So that was just part of his personality. But when he went to college, he– he was failing the first college he went to. And his professor said, “You really need–” because test anxiety– he would go and help all the other kids, in study group, get an A on their test, but then he would flunk it because of the anxiety. And so the instructor said, “You need to go get a neural eval so that you can get accommodations.” And I just want to make sure those of you with struggling students out there know there are colleges out there that do amazing things with accommodations. So the main thing is my number one job with him was to keep believing in him. And he has graduated from college and he struggled in math, but he’s an engineer for the Department of Transportation. So I’m just saying don’t limit them by their struggles. And back in those days, we weren’t big on getting them evaluated. But these days, get that neural eval if they’re having trouble. And the beauty of it, the neural eval was when the doctor said, “Okay, here’s your list.” And I’m saying list of ways that– I mean, he had OCD. He had it all. He had it all. He says, “Now, go get that first degree. Don’t let this limit you. This just tells you how you learn.” And that’s the important thing, is, especially the beauty of homeschooling, you can figure out the way they learn and help them get an education. And even in it, if you’re with the students enough in it, because I have taught kids too, and I’ve done art camps and that type of thing, is to– I really pay attention to the students, how they learn, where they struggle to learn, all of that. And I mean, it’s not easy, and you’ve got to be real observant, but you can accommodate a lot of kids in a space.

Gretchen Roe: 00:27:29.893
I think that’s always a valuable conversation. What I love that Sue brings to the table is the opportunity to be able to look back and say this was successful. And that’s what we all want for our kids, is we ultimately want them to be successful. Lisa, I want to talk to you for a minute about how a co-op experience might have been valuable for you because you had a child who thought entirely differently than you did. And so I wonder if you might tell this story a little bit about Sarah and how you guys saw the world so differently [laughter]. And that’s where I think having a co-op experience is unbelievably valuable.

Lisa Chimento: 00:28:16.690
Yeah, it was tremendously helpful for her to have other people teaching her certain things. I loved being my kids’ homeschool teacher. But there were certain things, especially for my daughter, because– we do. It’s like we speak two different languages sometimes. And it took me way too long [laughter] to figure it out. Eventually, I got to that place where I realized, “I’m saying things and she’s hearing something else.” So I started to ask that question, “What did you hear me say?” And then, what would come back would be something entirely different And I’ve realized her mind is kind of marvelous. She is a gifted writer and a gifted artist and she– her brain is going much faster than mine. I’m extremely linear. She’s crazy random. And I would say something. She would hear those words and take four steps forward in a direction sometimes that I didn’t intend, you know what I mean? And that’s where some of that miscommunication really went on. Her brain was going so much faster than what I had understood. And it was really a helpful thing for me to have that co-op for those courses where I knew she was going to really love the material, love the content, love what she was learning, and she would be able to hear it from someone that she could understand. So she did take the writing courses there. And I was so thankful there was an artist who was teaching art classes because if– first of all, I’m not an artist, but if I were to attempt to teach art classes, it would be very structured. It would be very linear. “These are the mechanics of it,” because that’s me. And that’s not the way she needed to learn. This guy was fabulous. He really challenged her. And when she would kind of tighten up because she felt like maybe she wasn’t doing something wrong, he would almost scold her. He would say, “You’re not taking chances. I need you to take chances. Get rid of that. And I want you to go out there and throw stuff on that paper and get the paint on there and do something interesting with it and just enjoy it.” And my goodness, it just opened the world for her. And that’s the way she paints and draws and everything else now. Her room looks like [laughter] a museum. But it’s just this is who my daughter is. And I needed somebody who spoke her language to be able to share those things with her and help her grow in her skills and her proficiency in those things in a way that she could receive and understand and really excel. So if you have that child that maybe you find yourself butting heads sometimes, you’re not speaking the same language, you have that opportunity as a homeschooling parent to find other people who speak [laughter] their language that they can receive from and can grow and excel in in those areas that they have aptitude or a desire to learn.

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:32.545
Think for me what you would like to leave parents with as far as participating in a group experience and what you would like them to think about for their own students as far as going forward into maybe some of the things they might want to look for in a group environment that might be an inviting one. We’re screaming up on the holidays here it’s the first week of November and co-ops are going to start placing kids in January. So what are some of the things that you would recommend a parent to look for to figure out that they’ve got the right place to be, Lisa?

Lisa Chimento: 00:32:17.142
Well, I think the communication between the adults involved in the group and the parent is a key thing. I also want to explore. When we talked last week, we brought up some ideas that I think were marvelous. And I don’t want to steal Sue’s thunder on this because you used this word, Sue, that just captivated me. And you talked about exploring wonder and that opportunity for group leaders or teachers in a co-op class to allow kids to explore and wonder about things without that oppression of I’m afraid to say what I think the answer is because it might be wrong and then I’m going to be embarrassed. And one way to explore that and this can be done by parents at home if you’re teaching one child, multiple children, or if you’ve got a co-op class that you’re thinking about, even in something as typically structured as math, you can play the part of the student. In a recent webinar that we did, Gretchen, I talked about that idea of– one thing that homeschoolers tend to miss out on is being called to the board, right, to work a problem out in front of everyone. That can be a humiliating experience for a lot of kids. But there’s a value in it because there’s expression going on. It’s not just receptive learning they are expressing. And there’s so much more that happens that way. Well, what if the teacher goes up to the board and the teacher says, I’m going to work this problem? And I want you guys to lead me. I don’t know what’s next. What do I have to do next? And allow those kids to think it through and start calling out what they think should be the next answer. And then let the teacher do it. Let the teacher make purposeful mistakes and ask the kids, what did I do wrong here? I went wrong somewhere. And what’s happening there is that they’re all getting their brains working. They’re all contributing. They’re thinking and wondering and exploring different ways to approach a math problem. And they’re having that opportunity to learn that a mistake is not the end of the world. You are going to make mistakes. And this gives the teacher, whether it’s a parent at home or a co-op teacher, that opportunity to reframe error as opportunities for better learning and better understanding and long-term retention. And so I just, I love that conversation we had. I don’t know if it answers your question here, but I didn’t want to let the time run out without throwing it out there because I just loved the idea of putting that teacher into the place of a student, let the students give that opportunity to teach themselves and by offering those different answers. And I think it’s going to make the class collaboration much more cohesive. People will be working together instead of being afraid of being laughed at by somebody else.

Gretchen Roe: 00:35:26.423
This was so valuable. You said, I wonder if it would work if– and so help us help a parent, particularly a linear parent, see a scenario where you would pose that. Lisa’s given us a great math scenario. Where’s another scenario you might be able to propose that for us?

Sue Wachter: 00:35:52.222
Well, of course, art. No risk, no masterpiece is what I always say. Because in the reality is study the masters. They all took risks. They all thought outside the box. And even with math, there’s more than one way to do it. So you would say, “I wonder if anybody have any ideas. I wonder if there’s a different way we could do this.” Think of something crazy. It doesn’t have to be a fast way. It doesn’t. “How else could we? How else could we?” And then say, “So which way would you go? This one that took us the long term?” So don’t tell them what they can and can’t do, but wonder. And be a safe place to wonder. And you might even say, “Okay, we’re going to wonder, and we’re going to do some crazy stuff. So come up with some crazy answers that don’t even make sense.” But that type of thing where it’s a safe place to wonder and make mistakes. I don’t have to worry in my classes that I could– I don’t have to fake a mistake. If I’m truly wondering, and if I’m truly being authentic, I’m going to make mistakes. And it’s just a great opportunity to say, “Oh, there it is. Oh my goodness. That was such a great mistake because now I’ll remember.” I remember more from my mistakes than trying to pound in information and memorize. I remember where I messed up and why I messed up. And be calm about it because the minute you beat yourself up, you won’t remember the mistake. You won’t use it in a healthy way.

Gretchen Roe: 00:37:32.459
And I think perhaps in these last two or three minutes, we have perhaps hit on the most important part of the whole conversation. And sometimes, depending on how we were parented, it’s difficult for us to look at a mistake as an affirmative. I think of the– what is that word? Acronym. I can say it. I think of the acronym of fail as a first attempt in learning. And I think that that’s really important. But we have to be willing as parents to make mistakes in front of our children in order to give them permission to make mistakes so that we can break that cycle of perfectionism. And I had the opportunity a year ago to have a wonderful conversation with one of our coworkers, Amanda Caps, talking about the myth of perfectionism and how we need to kind of walk that back a little bit. We’ll put that in the show notes for those of you who are still interested in doing a little bit more research. I think that was a really valuable conversation.

Sue Wachter: 00:38:44.589
And I think it’s important, Gretchen, that we don’t say– when I talk about learning to make mistakes, it’s been a process for me as well. It’s not easy to become a lover of making mistakes and taking risks. It has to be intentional, and it has to kind of grow on you, to be honest.

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:04.253
I think you have to be willing to sit with those first mistakes and not beat yourself up and feel that different emotion to be able to replicate that again. And sometimes that’s a scary proposition to do. It’s a particularly scary proposition to do for homeschool moms because this is the longest game you’ll ever play as far as investing time and not knowing what the outcomes will be. So it’s a tough proposition. Ladies, for our audience today, you all can see why I chose these two ladies to have this conversation. It was a very profitable one, I believe. I want to thank you all for trusting us to come into your living room this week and have this conversation. I hope you’ve learned some valuable things, and we’ll look forward to having you all join us again in future conversations. Ladies, thank you all so much for the time that we spent together today. I appreciate you both more than you know.

Voice-Over: 00:40:12.309
Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing, and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.

[music]