[00:00:00] Dr. Richard Risbrudt: Well, a lot of parents have apprehension about chemistry in homeschool. They wonder, “How can I teach this class?” It was 25 years ago that I actually took ChemExplained in high school, they say, and I don’t remember. If they’re going to teach them, they actually have to read the book and learn it alongside them. They have to learn it all over again. We like to take that burden off their shoulders.

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[00:00:28] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. I am so excited to welcome Mr. Riz, Dr. Richard Risbrudt, and his wife, Denise, today to talk to you about ChemExplained. I am so excited to finally have a conversation about hard science, or at least that’s what my kids called it. They defined it as science that was hard. Being able to address the sciences as we educate our kids is so huge. I am so blessed that Denise and I had a conversation that started over a briefcase in St. Louis several months ago, and I am delighted to welcome them today. We have lots of things to talk about. I’m going to introduce our guests, and we’ll get started in earnest. Dr. Riz?

[00:01:23] Richard: I’m Richard Risbrudt. My students have called me Mr. Riz for over 46 years. I’ve actually taught chemistry for 50 years. I grew up on a dairy farm 20 miles south of here in Dalton, Minnesota. I grew up and took chemistry as my major in college. I went to graduate from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. I have taught chemistry at a Christian private school for 29 years.

I’ve taught chemistry at a community school for 17 years, and the last four years have been college chemistry at St. Bonifacius, Crown College in Minnesota. I’ve taught over 50,000 classes of chemistry my whole life. I’ve also taught adult Sunday school and Galatians, Daniel, and the Book of Revelation. I have been a church organist for six years, and I have been a football coach for 35 years.

[00:02:23] Gretchen: Oh, my goodness.

[00:02:25] Richard: Did a lot of teaching throughout my career. I have three married adult children. We have nine grandchildren. They’re living in North Dakota and Minnesota.

[00:02:33] Gretchen: Wow, that’s pretty amazing. I’m fascinated by the fact that the two of you are doing this together as well. Tell me a little bit about your journey together.

[00:02:47] Denise Risbrudt: Well, I’m Denise, and Richard and I have been married 48 years. We loved raising our children, and now our grandchildren. I stayed at home. The desire of my heart was to be at home with my children and raise my children. I do have a background in the mental health field. After our children were out of school, I did go back to work. That was one of the things I encourage young moms.

It seems like when you become a mom, you think, “Okay, my career is over.” After our children were out of the house, I still had 17 good years of working until I retired. I encourage you, moms. If you want to go back to work outside the home someday, that’s still a possibility. Richard was often working with coaching and teaching. I just kept the home fires burning. I loved that. It was when one of his students came to him, and she was now a homeschool mom, that she said, “I would love to get the curriculum you taught us.”

She wanted it for her student because she saw that it wasn’t out there, and that’s what she wanted. She encouraged him to create something that could be used by homeschool parents. Here we are, and this is where we are at. I like to say really quickly that we’re a good balance because Richard loves the sciences and maths. I don’t. I help him to relate to people who don’t love science and math because that’s me. Sometimes we help keep each other into perspective.

[00:04:22] Gretchen: That’s a really good thing is to be able to have that balance in all things. [chuckles]

[00:04:28] Denise: Yes.

[00:04:29] Richard: Whenever I’m asked a question, I start answering the question, but then I gradually go into teaching chemistry, then I get a little poke.

[00:04:36] Gretchen: Well, I’m fascinated by the fact that you majored in chemistry in college. It is a rare bird when I find a child who is interested in majoring in chemistry. I’m interested in what compelled you as a young adult, a teenager, to go, “Chemistry. That’s what I’m going to do,” because that’s not common.

[00:05:02] Richard: Well, my goal was medical school. When I looked at all the applicants getting into medical school, a lot of them were majoring in biology or chemistry. I decided to go into the chemistry major. What really got me turned down to chemistry was my teacher. I had an excellent college teacher. I go, “This is really good.” Actually, in high school, my teacher was not very good, very smart, could not teach. When I got to college, I had a smart teacher that could teach. I was really inspired by that. That’s where the start came.

[00:05:41] Gretchen: I love that you said a smart teacher who could not teach. Sometimes we find those folks. Particularly if you have a love for something, you sometimes forget the learning curve that gets you there. You forget how to explain to others why it’s important.

[00:06:04] Richard: When students come back and they tell me that they used the concepts that they learned in ChemExplained at their college courses, I’ll say, “This really helped a lot.” On another class that I taught, it is so difficult. It is so frustrating. In my mind, I’m thinking, “That’s a poor teacher.”

[00:06:24] Gretchen: Yes, I’m vividly reminded years ago when my now 27-year-old was in college. He begged Steve Demme to please come teach college calculus. Steve said, “I’m not interested in doing that, Duncan.” He said, “Yes,” but you’re a teacher. That makes all the difference in the world. He said, “You had the capacity to explain.” I would imagine that if you have students who are coming back to you and saying how much they valued your course materials, you’re like Steve.

[00:07:01] Richard: Well, I tell my students that calculus is actually an easy math class once you understand it.

[00:07:08] Gretchen: [laughs]

[00:07:09] Richard: Once you understand it.

[00:07:11] Gretchen: Oh, okay. All right. Never have I ever, nor would I want to. It’s very amusing that I work for a math company. I think math is spelled with four letters for a reason. I would rather diagram sentences with you, but to each to his own. Tell me about your journey into– you started thinking about medical school, but then you found chemistry to be so compelling. You stayed as a teacher of chemistry.

[00:07:39] Richard: I applied to medical school. I didn’t hear it until July. I knew it came down the wire. I applied to pharmacy school and got in, but then I got a phone call from a principal here in Fergus Falls. I had an interview with him. He said, “I need a football coach, and I need a chemistry teacher.” I walked into his office saying, “No.” I walked out of his office saying, “Yes.” He’s very persuasive. They needed help. He said, “Please stick around for two years.” I said, “Okay, I will commit to that.” Two years turned into 29. That happened. From there, I went across town to the public school and taught for 17 years and coached football. Then, from there, I started teaching college chemistry using the ChemExplained curriculum.

[00:08:31] Gretchen: Tell me now, the genesis of ChemExplained was taking your applications of teaching in a classroom and making it possible to be a homeschool curriculum.

[00:08:44] Richard: Yes. What I learned is if a teacher assigns a student to read Chapter 1, “Okay. Everybody, read Chapter 1, and we’ll come back to it tomorrow,” how many of those students have actually read Chapter 1? Not very many.

[00:08:58] Gretchen: I would be wagering less than 25%.

[00:09:02] Richard: I think that may be high. Over 50,000 times in the classroom, no, not that high. The students know that the teacher is going to explain to them what he wants them to learn anyway. He does it by giving them notes. They are busy writing down the notes and keeping track. Would lecture, give notes, do assignment, come back, and do it again the next day.

I learned that if I gave them 90% of my notes already in paper form that they could just fill in one or two words per line, they could both listen and understand chemistry at the same time. We all remember college courses where we’re writing 100 miles an hour.

We don’t know what he said, but we have our notes. That’s what we study. We like to engage students in three senses: the sight, the sound, hearing, and being engaged, writing. The more senses we can get students involved, the better chances they’re going to understand the concepts.

[00:10:06] Gretchen: In the evolution of that process, how did you test-drive it with homeschoolers, or were you able to take what you were doing in a classroom and bring it into a homeschool environment?

[00:10:21] Richard: Interesting. When I was at the public school, they asked me to flip my classroom. The traditional way was lecture, give assignment, come back and do it again the next day. A flipped classroom is when the students listen to the lectures at home and then come to school and do the homework. That’s a unique concept. That worked for us because I started recording the lectures.

The students would listen to lectures at home, come to school, and do the homework. They could check whether or not the math, when they’re working on their assignments, was correct. They could ask questions, and it worked very well. After I started recording these on my own and not using the school’s equipment, I started recording them on my own. I went to a dentist who was 20 miles here.

In the dentist’s chair, he says, “My son is not enjoying chemistry very much.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Well, he doesn’t understand it.” I said, “Well, I have a course for him.” I made DVDs of my videos, gave it to him. A year later, he says, “You have to market this.” He said, “There is a homeschool community out there that has a tough time understanding chemistry. How do they do it at home? What to do with labs?” That’s how ChemExplained was born.

[00:11:36] Gretchen: Awesome. Awesome. Denise, when he said he was going to create this course for homeschoolers, what were your thoughts?

[00:11:44] Denise: [chuckles] I knew if he wanted to do it that he would do it. He loves teaching. There is a little bit of apprehensive for me thinking of him retiring soon and what would he do. [chuckles] When he had this, 10, 15 years before he retired, actually, when he created this, it was like, “This is going to work great.” He still loves teaching. When he gets a question from a student, he gets excited about it. It gives him an opportunity to either talk to the student and the parent about what they want to talk about when it comes to science. He’s a happy camper.

[00:12:24] Richard: When I get a question, I want to answer it right away. She pulls me back on that if we’re visiting somebody in their house, or if we have grandchildren at home. She says, “He’ll answer your question Monday through Friday,” but it’s actually 24/7.

[00:12:42] Gretchen: [laughs] Well, that just says the depth and breadth to which you enjoy what you’re doing. Tell us a little bit about what a parent could anticipate from using ChemExplained, because you explained it to me when we were together in St. Louis. My first thought was, “Geez, I wish someone had taught me chemistry this way,” because I might have enjoyed it more or hated it less [laughs] based on what you explained to me.

[00:13:14] Richard: Well, a lot of parents have apprehension about chemistry in homeschool. They wonder, “How can I teach this class?” It was 25 years ago that I actually took ChemExplained in high school, they say. I don’t remember. If they’re going to teach them, they actually have to read the book and learn it alongside them. They have to learn it all over again. We like to take that burden off their shoulders.

The best way to teach chemistry at home is to have a teacher. Maybe the teacher is in a co-op, and that’s a wonderful thing, where they get together once a week and hear the instruction, hear the teaching. We like to have students have access to the teacher every day of the week rather than one day of the week. That’s a challenge in working with co-ops. ChemExplained has over 80 hours of online, on-demand video instruction. There’s over 400 videos that average 12 to 13 minutes. There’s 20 chapters, 18 labs.

The labs can be done hands-on, or they can be done virtually. Labs is a whole different subject. The most important part of a lab is, did they learn the chemistry behind the lab? When I go to homeschool conference and I talk to a middle-school student, “Do you like chemistry? Do you like science?” “Yes, we did this fun experiment. It bubbled. It fizzed. It turned colors,” and I say, “What did you learn? What’s the chemistry behind the lab?” They go, “I don’t know.”

Now, the labs are entertainment and not educational. What’s most important in a lab is that students do a lab report. There are certain features that a lab report should have. It should have the procedure, the learning objectives, the safety precautions, the collection of data. Then, whenever you collect data, there’s math calculations that should be performed on that.

Of course, there’s questions and conclusions and a hypothesis in the beginning as well. They should have all those features with the lab report. A lab report is not finishing the experiment, giving a student a sheet of paper, and say, “Write a lab report.” No, it’s giving them a format to fill in. Colleges will accept virtual labs with a homeschool curriculum if there is a lab report associated with that. That’s what we offer.

[00:15:46] Gretchen: Interesting. In ChemExplained, then, you teach them the process of writing a lab report. You put those two words together, and I’m tossed back 45 years into my high school chemistry class and remembering how we were given a rubric, “Here’s what your report is going to be,” but there was zero instruction on what was a good lab report and what was a mediocre lab report.

It was just us rolling around, figuring out what the instructor wanted to be able to present that well. It was so frustrating. I remember thinking, “If you just explain what a good explanation looked like, then we would know.” Failure to hit the target is never the fault of the target. It was difficult in that capacity, and I think that’s why I was probably pretty frustrated with my high school chemistry teacher.

[00:16:49] Richard: The instructor needs to lay out expectations that the students need to get to, but he needs to give them a path in order to get there. It isn’t just, “Here’s my expectation,” and then they figure out how to get there. I was talking to my wife today. She’s like, “Chemistry is like climbing a rock wall. It’s challenging. You’re working hard to do it.” The job of the instructor is to attach the rope and help pull them forward, make it easier for them to climb that rock wall, with maybe the parent pushing from behind. Working together, we can get that student over to the top of that rock wall.

[00:17:28] Gretchen: That’s a good visual. I like that. I can see that happening. When you have a conversation at a homeschool conference with parents, the parents are the reluctant ones because the kids don’t know. How do you convince a parent that, yes, they can effectively teach chemistry at their kitchen table?

[00:17:50] Denise: One of the things I like most about ChemExplained is how flexible it is. Because we do offer the program for four different types of students, it’s a program that would work for everybody. We have the foundational student who will probably– In our ChemExplained program, there are 20 chapters and 18 labs. For the foundational student, we’re looking at covering 10 to 13 chapters in some of the labs.

They’re the student who is hesitant, who maybe doesn’t want to take chemistry, who math can be a little bit of a struggle. Yet, as a parent, you feel it’s important to give them a solid chemistry basis before they graduate. Then, we have the traditional student. That’s where about 60% of our students fall. They would probably cover up to 17 chapters. Our honors student could cover 18 to 20. Then, we have the dual enrollment programs, also two different ways to get college credit. I love ChemExplained in the sense that it addresses every type of student, and you can work with it that way.

[00:18:56] Richard: When chemistry is taught the right way, that includes the math calculations. We have math in every chapter. In fact, in Chapter 2, we take a month just to review the math concepts. A whole month, three to four weeks. We learn about density and how to calculate from an equation. We learn about scientific notation, significant figures, slope calculations. For a month, we cover that math. Every student needs to have that math foundation.

The only requirement they need to take chemistry, we think, is Algebra 1. Once they’ve completed that Algebra 1 course, we teach the math after that. They don’t need to have Algebra 2. It’s nice to have geometry. It’s nice to have other courses before they start. As far as learning the math, we teach logarithms. We teach natural logarithms. We teach the quadratic formula in our calculations. That’s way at the end and into the honors chemistry category at high end of the traditional chemistry.

These students did the basic foundation. The foundational student then would get foundational chemistry on their transcript. The traditional student covering 14 to 17 chapters, not more difficult chemistry, just more of it. They would get traditional chemistry on their transcripts. The honors chemistry, 18 to 20 chapters, getting honors chemistry on their transcripts. Again, not more difficult chemistry because it’s explained. It’s just more of it.

ChemExplained is a long, math-based chemistry course. If you take the entire course and squeeze it into a time frame of eight months, four months for each semester, now, you have a college course. That’s what Crown College in St. Bonifacius, Minnesota, realized. We let them look at our curriculum, which is heavy in the math, but it’s explained. They said, “Of the 20 chapters you have in ChemExplained, we cover 18 in our first-year college chemistry.”

We go, “Whoa, I didn’t know we were making our homeschool students work harder than the college students.” They said, “Can we use it?” I said, “Yes,” and we worked it out. Crown College is now using the ChemExplained curriculum as their college course. I know that because I’m the instructor. We had a company come to us at a conference, and they said, “So this can be used as a high school course or a college course?” We said, “Yes.” They said, “Can we look at this?” They looked at it.

Our textbook, our teacher resource manual, is almost 800 pages. Our notebook for our students is 300 pages. They looked at it and said, “What happens to the student that covers the same amount of material as the college course, but over a longer period of time? They don’t do it in eight months. They do it in 12 or 14.” I said, “Well, if they get to the end of the course, we would give them honors chemistry credit under transcript.” They said, “We will give them college credit.”

There’s a whole process where they take the test that I wrote, and whatever grade they get on that test will be their grade for the college course. From there, the credits get transferred over to the college that they wanted to go to. That’s a process. We can explain that a little bit later, but that’s a wonderful thing. I think we’re the only homeschool curriculum that offers our curriculum as a college course, but also for college credit for students that complete it.

[00:22:47] Gretchen: I think that’s pretty amazing. I think that was the thing that I found so compelling when we had our initial conversation back in March, is that you have developed something that is so thorough that even a college-level– What do I want to say? An admissions board would recognize that this is so thorough. You said something in that, Mr. Riz, that I’d like you to talk about in a little bit more depth.

You talked about the fact that the students have a 300-page notebook. I love the way this is organized. I want you to explain a little bit because being heavily into understanding how kids learn and how kids learn best, I think you have the third rail of the best way to really learn and incorporate information. I’d like you to explain it in a little more depth.

[00:23:46] Denise: Before he explains that, I just want to say, when you talk about parents asking the question, “Can I teach high school chemistry at home?” and they’re nervous, and they’re anxious about that, this is, again, one of the beauties of the program in that it’s so well laid out. As a parent, you have a calendar. No matter what level you’re taking it at, there’s a calendar for you and your student to follow.

You have a checklist that you and your student can follow. You do not have to do any of the teaching. You can correct. You are responsible for correcting worksheets, note sheets, tests, and you can do that with your student as part of the learning tool. That’s one of the beauties of the program is it’s very structured, and it’s very well laid out. That’s the other thing. You have the teacher if you have a question. That’s what’s so important about the program that I like.

[00:24:35] Richard: Our teacher resource manual is our actual textbook. It’s got all the answer keys to everything in a course. It’s got blank student tests. It’s got the answer keys and so on. Going back to when I first started teaching with chalk on the chalkboard, giving notes, giving–

[00:24:50] Gretchen: Chalk? There may be people in the audience who are going, “Chalk? What’s chalk?” [laughs]

[00:24:54] Richard: That really dates me. I know it does. I learned early on that students were writing down notes for the concepts I wanted them to learn, but that was taking so much time. I learned, what if I give them 90% of my notes already, including the math problems, have them all ready for them? They could fill it in briefly, and they could listen and be engaged, and understand chemistry at the same time at a quicker pace.

When I started giving them my notes, and they would fill in one or two words per line, which is our ChemExplained student resource manual, and the lab manual is similar to that. When I gave them my notes ahead of time, and they would fill it in, we could cover a lot of chemistry in a shorter period of time. With the videos, they can stop it. They can go back and play it again. In the classroom, they hear it once. We got to answer questions as they go, and that’s just fine.

We’re finding out that students, when they study chemistry, they have questions every day. Every day. I can’t imagine a student sitting in front of a textbook using one sense and figuring it out. We learned it’s very difficult for a student to teach themselves chemistry. It works a lot better when they hear the course explained step by step. If the math is covered early on in the course, that’s just a nice little prerequisite for what’s going to come down the line.

[00:26:39] Gretchen: I think that it’s fascinating to me the way that you have structured this because I think you have found the correct combination of engagement. Because of the way you’ve structured the notes– I mean, we’ve all done this. We listen to a lecture. All of a sudden, our minds spool off in another direction, and we’re no longer focused. Because you have organized the notes in such a way that, in order for me to properly fill in the blanks, I need to be attentive to the process. That, to me, is brilliant in the way that you have ordered that.

[00:27:23] Denise: One of the comments we’ve heard from– there’s a private Christian school in northern Minnesota that’s using our program. We went to visit. They gathered the students in a conference room. We just got to have a question-and-answer time and visit with them after they took the class to learn from them. One of the girls in the class said, “You not only taught me chemistry, but you taught me how to take notes.” She said, “I feel so well-prepared now to head out the door and go to college because I now know how to take notes, and I didn’t know how to do that before.” I love that, that we not only teach chemistry, but other things along the way.

[00:27:59] Gretchen: Absolutely. I had a conversation just this past week with a parent in Pennsylvania. They said, “What is an adept way to learn to take notes?” I giggled because they said, “Join us for this conversation because I had seen the way in which you all had laid out notes.” I think often as parents, we struggle to know what– particularly if we did not have a good experience in learning how to take notes, we struggle to know, “How do we translate that for our kids?”

[00:28:35] Richard: Well, taking notes has been used successfully by teachers for hundreds of years. It teaches them spelling. It teaches them how to write. It teaches them how to solve a problem in the correct sequence. It’s just a good thing for our students to learn. It’s interesting. One of our friends, Mark, from a college in Tennessee, maybe or Missouri, making the grade, actually has a speech at a homeschool conference on how to take good notes. I thought that was interesting.

[00:29:17] Gretchen: Mark’s references are excellent. I think the other thing that is important with your particular course is the notes aren’t the end game. The notes are part of the process to be able to assimilate the learning. Sometimes we get in the mindset of, “If I took good notes, I’m good to go.” Your notes are only as good as how you assimilate them and incorporate them into your long-term memory.

[00:29:49] Richard: I always tell parents, “I’m a football coach. If I’m teaching your son how to throw the football, step by step, first of all, I don’t give him a book to read and say, ‘Learn how to throw the football by reading this book.'” I show him how to do it, I teach him how to do it, and then we practice and practice and practice before we put them in the game on Friday night.

Chemistry is very similar. We don’t give them a book to read and say, “Okay. Now, go take the test.” We like to practice what we’ve learned. In ChemExplained, they’re watching two or three, sometimes four videos to get through the lesson, but then we give them worksheets to do, which are practice on what they’ve learned in the videos. We don’t give them an assignment to do on something that we’ve taught that doesn’t reflect what the teaching is, and call it critical thinking. We like them to practice exactly what they’ve been learning.

There’s 125 worksheets and review sheets in our ChemExplained course. Once the students can proficiently do those, they’ll do very well on the exam. Some of the strategies that we use, one of the questions is, “What are some of the strategies you use to help kids understand?” One of them is to take effective notes, but then to practice what they’ve learned. A lot of our worksheets are math, so we teach them how to do it. In the first problem, we show them how. On the second problem, we’ll go halfway and say, “Press stop now and finish it yourself.” Then the third one, do it all alone.

They can always go back to the video and see how it’s done. When they study for an exam, they have their note sheets. They can take a blank piece of paper and cover up that math problem and try to do it again on a blank sheet of paper. Then, to see the answer, they just flip it down and look at it. I like our teacher resource manual to be open onto my desk. When I was in the classroom, I had the answer key for that lab. Remember, our students are listening to the videos at home. About two-thirds of them did that, one-third of them did not. Let’s be honest here.

[00:32:09] Gretchen: I bet you could tell the ones who didn’t in a Yankee minute. [laughs]

[00:32:15] Richard: Well, the ones that didn’t do it had to listen to the teaching on their phone. Back in the day, I used to confiscate phones. If they brought a phone into the classroom, I was supposed to take it. Well, after we flipped the classroom, they had to have the phone to watch the video if they didn’t watch it at home. Everybody’s got their earphones plugged in, and they’re listening to it that way.

I would have the teacher edition on my desk so the student could work on the worksheet. Here’s the deal. If they have a worksheet full of math problems, chemistry, math problems to do, when they do that first problem, what do they want to know? They want to know, “Is my answer correct?” They would come up and look at the answer key and go, “Oh, yes.” They would go like that.

If they came up and said, “Oh,” now they look at how the answer is, and they go back and correct it; now they’ve learned chemistry. Don’t do the worksheet, turn it in, and then 24 hours later come back to see if they got it right or not. They can check it right now. They get immediate feedback as soon as they do that problem. That’s how they learn and understand chemistry.

[00:33:24] Gretchen: I love the way you’ve done this because we say at Demme Learning, mathematically, where you learn math is not what you get right. You learn it with what you get wrong, and you’re willing to work through until you understand.

[00:33:43] Richard: Right.

[00:33:44] Gretchen: You’ve done pretty much the same thing with chemistry. I’m sitting here, and I am an old enough adult that I’m well past the years of chemistry, but I’m almost feeling like, “Geez, maybe there’s things that I could have learned that would be compelling that I should take chemistry again.” I got a kick out of the parent who said, “I need all the help I can get.” When a parent says, “Can I actually teach chemistry successfully?” you have broken this down into how many videos?

[00:34:18] Richard: Well, the instruction is 370-some videos, and then all the labs are recorded on video, too. They can be doing the labs virtually. There’s 39 videos there, so it’s over 400. There’s also videos that explain every test that they’ve taken. They can look at the Chapter 2 test and grade it with the answer key, but they can also hear me explain how the concepts are done, how they’re solved, by watching a teaching video for that particular test.

We have 20 chapters, but we have three chapters that are– I call them double chapters, Chapter 2, Chapter 14, Chapter 17. They’re long chapters. We split them up into a first half and a second half. We actually have 23 chapters. We have 23 videos that explain those tests as well. It’s over 400 in all. There’s over 80 hours of instruction. For the parent that says, “How much time do we have to spend on this each day to get through?” Well, with 80 hours, that’s 160 days of 30 minutes each. That’s a school year. That’s nine weeks.

[00:35:35] Denise: That’s just the videos.

[00:35:36] Richard: That’s just the videos. That also has time then to do the worksheets, to do the tests, to do the labs. That all has to be added in there as well. When they ask, “How much time does it take?” Well, in the classroom, when I was in the classroom, I had a 50-minute period. We would pretty much talk chemistry the whole time during that time. Then, I would ask, then it would have a 15 to 20-minute assignment, and that’s the time.

In the schools around here, students will spend anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes doing chemistry. When the parent asks, “How much time does this take?” my initial response to the question is, “How far do you want to go?” It takes everybody the same amount of time to listen to the videos. It takes students different amount of time to do the worksheets and tests. If I hand out a test to 25 students, I have one student doing it in 45 minutes. I have another one doing it an hour and 15, hour and 20 minutes. It all depends on the student when it comes to that question.

[00:36:50] Gretchen: You’re anticipating that a student is working in chemistry every day during the year that they are doing this?

[00:36:58] Richard: Yes. If they don’t do that, that’s fine. It’s just going to take you longer to get to your goal at the end. If you get between the 10 to 13 chapters, then you can give your student foundational chemistry credit and call it good. 14 to 17, traditional chemistry. We find out that students, once they get into the later chapters, they like it, they enjoy it, and they want to keep going.

[00:37:26] Denise: One of the things, though, as far as how much time, and I love, again, the flexibility, which moms love flexibility, because Richard has had golfers. He’s had national trampolinists compete.

[00:37:40] Richard: Yes, in the Olympics.

[00:37:42] Denise: He wanted to be done with the class before just of his competition started. He just worked ahead. He knew his goal, and he was able to work ahead. He was able to complete that before his competition started.

[00:37:58] Richard: I tell students to spend the same amount of time each day in chemistry. Chemistry does not start out easy and get very, very difficult at the end. It’s easy, challenging, easy, average, challenging, easy. It’s up and down. If the student finishes an assignment in 10 minutes, don’t quit for the day. Start watching other videos and start working ahead.

I tell my college students, “Work ahead all the time. Stay ahead.” When we cover a chapter a week or two chapters a week in the college course, I said, “Work ahead.” Then, I’m asked the question, “Well, is ChemExplained a high school course or a college course?” It’s a high school course. 95% of our students take it for high school credit. It’s the 5% that can take it 100 miles an hour that are in the college credit, or the ones that just continue on and finish the course at the end at their own pace that want to receive the college credit.

[00:38:58] Gretchen: Denise, you had said that there were really four ways that a student could address this. As a parent, how do I determine which way is the best?

[00:39:08] Denise: I think you have to know your student. We have parents who talk to Richard also, and just say, “Where do you think we should begin?” He’s happy to do that. I think if your student is an average student, you want to start with the traditional student level. If their goal is to finish the curriculum, you want to start with the honor student schedule. If you’re having to pull them to the table or you know that–

[00:39:40] Gretchen: No, that never happens in a homeschool environment.

[00:39:44] Denise: You want to start at the foundational level. Here’s the fun part, and he has had students who have been on IEPs. He has gone to IEP sessions, and they all say, “How is the student doing in your class?” He says, “I don’t need any adaptations for this student.” I believe because I’ve worked in mental health field, it’s because of the structure of this course. It’s so structured that the student gets into the routine, learns what’s expected of them, and does beautifully.

There are adaptations, though, for the student that isn’t a good writer and has a hard time taking notes. They can take the teacher manual, which has all the notes completed, and they can just highlight the word as he goes by. Students can take their test open-book if you’d like. Instead of doing all the questions on the worksheet, students can do half the questions on the worksheet. There’s just a lot of ways we can help you as a parent adapt to your child’s needs.

[00:40:48] Richard: I like to have the parents start out slow and then speed up when they can, rather than have them start something that’s fast and go, “Oh, we can’t handle this,” and then have to slow down. We like to have our students– The parents know their students. If they start out with the traditional calendar, we tell them every day, “Here are the videos you have to watch each day, here’s the assignment for tomorrow.”

Typically, the calendar is great. It keeps them on track, it helps them finish at the end, but it makes them feel guilty if they fall behind. If they go to a homeschool conference for two days, well, now we have Thursday and Friday assignments due on Monday. It makes them feel guilty. That’s why we have the checklist. The checklist is a list of everything that the student needs to follow from beginning to end. We have parents that say, “Don’t give me a calendar, just tell me what to do in order.” The checklist tells them what to do in order, and then to help them get through the course.

[00:41:52] Gretchen: One of the questions that I thought was compelling. Let me see if I can read this correctly. It says, “I have a student who’s definitely not going into a STEM field. Is chemistry still necessary?” I think I know the answer to this, but I want to hear what your answer is to this.

[00:42:14] Denise: First of all, I’m not sure if you always know that they’re not going into a STEM field. I had a very good friend whose daughter did not take chemistry. I think her mother influenced her decision in that because she told her mother later, “I didn’t take chemistry because you didn’t think I could handle it.” Later, she wanted to go on to be an occupational therapist, and she had to take chemistry in college, and she was unprepared. She survived, barely.

In that sense, we don’t always know what our students want to do. I also think we’ve talked about how physical education exercises our body, but math and chemistry exercises our minds, and I think that’s important. It also can build confidence. Just like we know, we as adults need to force ourselves sometimes to do things we don’t think we can do. Once we do accomplish it is so rewarding. I don’t think high school students are any different. Be sure we don’t impress upon our students how we feel about a subject. We get that all the time at conferences. They walk by us and go, “Nope, not going to do it.” What message is that conveying to their student? Try to remain neutral. As much as you may not like chemistry, I understand. I was there with you. Just try to encourage your student and let them believe that you think they can do it because it’s important.

[00:43:39] Richard: We also had a mom from Virginia. Actually, it was Virginia that sent an email saying, “My son is struggling with Chapter 5.” I said, “Let’s Zoom.” The parent agreed to be there. We require the parent to be present when we have a Zoom call. We Zoomed. We did a meeting just like this. I said, “You have a student resource manual?” “Yes.” “Show me your notes for Chapter 5.” He showed me the notes, and they were chicken scratch. They were all over the place. I said, “Mom, this is the problem.” Here’s a student that is very bright, very intelligent. He thought he could learn by just watching the videos and not taking any notes. When it came time to studying those notes or doing the worksheets later on, he couldn’t do it because he didn’t have any examples to follow. That’s the importance of taking notes. You’re not taking notes just to take notes.

You’re taking notes to help you relearn and to remember the concepts. The student started taking notes, and he started learning chemistry a lot easier and a lot quicker. We tell them not only fill in the blanks, but sometimes we’ll go to a different page, and they’ll say, “Write this on your margins of your notes.” If you write down everything I write down, you will be successful in the course. Gretchen, I had a student complete the ChemExplained course that misspelled their name.

[00:45:18] Gretchen: [laughs] Oh, my goodness. I love the fact that you’re saying this. One of the things that I teach from stage when I talk to families about academics is this is an incredibly valuable tool. We, in the age of digital technology, believe that a keyboard solves all problems, and it doesn’t, because what we fail to recognize is here with a keyboard, your brain can’t tell the difference between this keystroke and this keystroke, but being able to write those notes out puts that into your brain properly.

I have a little bit of goosebumps here, the fact that the way that you’ve structured this. I want to circle back. I want you to talk a little bit more about– I’m a parent. I’m considering using ChemExplained to instruct. What support do you have for me after I make a purchase? I know what this is, but I want you to say it.

[00:46:21] Richard: Once they make a purchase, it takes us a couple hours to promote their account to give them a level where they can have access to the teachings. We offer the entire course, which is 20 chapters, 18 labs, all the video instruction. If they want to order the hard copies from us, they can of the manuals. Once they have the entire course, they have access to the manuals by downloading and printing those off at home if they want to do it that way. We offer them the hard copies if they want to order them from us. There’s four manuals altogether, plus the new middle school manual that we got coming to market now shortly. Then we promote their account, and they have access. They can also get the first semester course, which is the first 10 chapters and the first nine labs. Then the second semester is the last 10 chapters, and then the last nine labs.

[00:47:20] Denise: A letter comes out once they register, explaining the course. We even talk a little bit about Chapter 2, which is where all the math is taught for the course. We tell parents, “Your student may not like or love Chapter 2 because they’re having to do some math, but just plow through it and get through it, and that will set them up for success.”

[00:47:43] Richard: Chapter 2 is not how the course is all the way through. Chapter 2 is the review of all the math that Demme Learning offers– Demme Math-See offers. We just review all that before we start with a lighter Chapter in Chapter 3 and 4.

[00:48:02] Gretchen: Now, you told me yesterday when you sent me an email that you have developed a middle school course. I want to make sure that we spend a little bit of time talking about that. Tell me what this middle school course is and how a parent can fit themselves in the frame for their student.

[00:48:19] Richard: The way this was born is that when we went to homeschool conferences, a parent would walk by and we’d say, “Do you have plans for high school chemistry?” They say, “We’re not there yet. Do you have anything for middle school?” We’d say, “No, but when you’re in 10th grade, give us a shout.” My wife, who has always encouraged me my whole life, she says, “Richard, you have to write a middle school course.”

I took that challenge, and I decided to write a middle school curriculum. It’s a one-year course. I’m going to say middle school. The parent can decide what grade it fits into. The middle school manual has 36 labs, and they’re all homeschool labs. They all can be done at home, and there’s very little chemicals to order. There’s 36 labs. The lab report part is in there. It has the procedure, it has safety, it has learning objectives, the step-by-step. Then it has some data calculation to collect. There’s some math in every one of them, but in most of them. There’s a few little minor calculations to do, and we show them how to do the calculations step-by-step before we give them a little practice to do. Then the most important part is we give them– How is this lab then connected to the real world? There are 36 labs with real-world connections. They’re not just doing something to do it. They can learn how is this used outside the kitchen? How is it used outside the home? That’s where the curriculum part comes in. We have catchy titles to our labs to get their attention. We build bath bombs. I can always tell a 9th-grade student when they come into my class is, “Are we going to blow anything up?” Even a parent will say, “What can I do at home to blow something up?” That’s what really gets them interested in chemistry. I don’t go in that direction because I want to keep my job.

[laughs]

[00:50:43] Denise: One of the questions was, “How do I get students to care about true understanding?”

[00:50:49] Gretchen: Denise, you read my mind. I was going to ask you what your thoughts were on that.

[00:50:53] Denise: This book, hopefully, when they can see how chemistry is applied to the real world, or even apply to themselves. When it becomes personal, when it becomes something you get excited about personally, then I think it becomes more meaningful to you. I know I’ve told this story before, but we had our youngest son, the only reason he would get his schoolwork done was so he could play sports.

[00:51:17] Richard: Football.

[00:51:18] Denise: He did not care to go to school. He was good in school, but he did not care. Then in 10th grade, and this is hope for parents out there that are wondering if their child’s ever going to buckle down, in 10th grade, we caught him reading a book on his bed. I came downstairs and said to Richard, “Something’s wrong with Nicholas. He’s reading an anatomy and physiology textbook.” I went up and put more clean laundry in his room. I was trying to figure out what was going on. He goes, “Mom, have you ever studied the human eye?” I said, “No, I don’t think I have.” He goes, “Wow.” He goes, “First of all, if you don’t believe in God, you would after you’ve studied the human eye.” He said, “Secondly, I can’t believe how much I love this.”

Long story short, Nicholas is now an optometrist. Don’t give up hope on your student. I think if you can find things to do, summer is a great time for field trips. Get them out there in the world and help them find something that excites them and that they love to do. I think this new middle school manual is something we’re hoping people who might fear chemistry or are a little bit wary about chemistry that they’ll get excited about it when they see how these experiments relate to real life.

[00:52:33] Denise: I have an appointment with Dr. Rizbrute on June 22nd.

[laughs]

[00:52:39] Gretchen: I think it’s really amazing that you all have created an environment that you have made chemistry not this mystery, but this applicable science that kids can see its real-life application. I was thinking about the lab report process. I’m going to go back to Denise when we were talking about you don’t know what your child is going to do post-high school.

I would have told you that one of my children was not intent on a STEM field. When she graduated high school, she wanted to go into special education. She’s now a research biologist for USAMRIID. I think it’s really important as parents that we don’t close the doors to potential so that our children don’t feel their options are limited. I love that. I can’t believe we’re almost at the top of the hour. Now my questions to both of you, what should I have asked you that I haven’t asked?

[00:53:56] Denise: I think we covered it very well. I think you did an awesome job. We just appreciate being able to share ChemExplained through your platform with others.

[00:54:05] Richard: We have homeschool students. Of course, we’ve got college students, but we also have micro school students now. We got our first micro school down in Alabama. We’re in co-ops and-

[00:54:20] Gretchen: Tell me a little bit more about that because we had talked about this before we went on air live. How do you work with a co-op? Do you help them figure out how to present this in a classroom, or how does that work?

[00:54:37] Richard: With a co-op, with five or more students, we offer a $75 discount for each student. That comes right off the entire course price. The entire course price is $345. $75 off of that is $270, and so that’s their cost. They can have access to all the documents. They can purchase a student resource manual, which they want, but co-ops get $75 discount. Then each student can work at their own pace. They don’t have to all be at the same place at the same time. They have access to a teacher more than one time a week. We have co-op teachers come by our booth and say, “I’m the teacher.” I say, “Who answers questions the other six days of the week?” I said, “Well, okay, we will take care of that.”

[00:55:32] Denise: That’s the beauty of the program is that they can go home and they can listen to their videos and do their note sheets during the week. Then the one day a week, they can come to co-op, they can talk about it, they can do their experiments. They have a teacher more than one day a week, and it’s flexible with students being able to work at their level.

[00:55:48] Richard: When students are ahead of other students, they become the teachers then at the co-ops. They can help. We love it when kids teach other kids. The teacher doesn’t have to go around and answer everybody’s questions because the students that have worked ahead in the course can answer the questions because they’ve been there, done that.

[00:56:07] Gretchen: A rising tide raises all ships, does it not? Being able to convince those. Sometimes, if you have a child who has enthusiasm, that enthusiasm becomes contagious, and you can pass that along to other kids in the class.

[00:56:23] Richard: That’s right.

[00:56:24] Gretchen: Where do you see ChemExplained in five years? Do you all see yourself continuing to do what you’re doing now? You’ve just created this middle school program. You’re not going to do anything for an elementary school, are you?

[00:56:42] Richard: I don’t know if I’ll live long enough to do that. It took 40 years to do the ChemExplained one, to get the notes all where I wanted to go and all the different resources to bring it in, to do the math, and so on. It was a process. We’re pretty excited about our new website that is up and running now.

[00:57:04] Gretchen: We’ll make sure we include that website in our show notes so the parents can be able to go and see that and understand a little bit more about how the process works because I think being able to see yourself in that frame is so important.

[00:57:19] Richard: It’s always at chemexplained.com. They can go there now. A lot of their questions are answered right there. That’s the front of the curtain, and then once they go to Chapter– They can also go to our shop tab and then try Chapter 1 for free. Parents have the question, “Will this work for my student?” Go try Chapter 1 for free. You can download the 13 pages of note sheets, the four worksheets, and watch the eight videos.

Complete Chapter 1 for free. Then they can watch lab number one. They can download the lab sheets for lab number one and watch the videos. They can take the test, and they can even watch the test explanation video for Chapter 1. Everything for Chapter 1 is there, and the ones that follow want a membership. The membership is for 12 months in ChemExplained, but we do offer a longer time if the parent requests it. If the student is learning chemistry, that’s what we want. Once they get to the 12-month, we don’t cut them off. We let them keep going if they want to keep learning chemistry.

[00:58:29] Gretchen: One of the things I think is remarkable here is that you have a video that explains the test. I don’t know of another course that does that. I think that is really brilliant because as a parent, I remember back in the day when I was doing this with my kids. My goal was to make sure that my kids were in co-op environments for their high school experiences. I didn’t have to teach, per se, chemistry and biology, and I didn’t want to dissect frogs on my kitchen table and those things.

However, knowing that this resource would be available to me would have given me a greater degree of flexibility. I think the other thing, the flip side of that coin, is we had a chemistry instructor who was very adept at knowing the science. As you said in the very beginning, he was not adept at being an instructor. I think it would have been much more compelling for my kids if they had both.

[00:59:40] Denise: Truly, we haven’t talked about that, but I think that’s one of the big pluses of ChemExplained. Richard is an incredible teacher. I know he’s my husband, but he just attended a 35-year class reunion of some of his former students, and they had the best time together. They talked to him about many things, including how they used his [unintelligible 01:00:00] in their careers. He just has the most fun with his former students. Even in the videos that he has, there are entertaining commercial breaks that will help motivate students and keep their interest. About every third video or so, he has these entertaining commercials. He’s a very well-respected and loved teacher, and that comes through in his videos.

[01:00:24] Richard: Why do clocks run clockwise? You’ll have to watch a ChemExplained video.

[01:00:28] Gretchen: Oh, I might have to. See, now you’re just dragging me into this, whether I want to go or not. I want to thank you all so much for joining me for this conversation. I’ve really been looking forward to it because I knew that I was going to come away having learned more than I knew at the very beginning. I think that really is the truth.

I also want to thank our audience for allowing us to come into their living rooms. I hope you’re seeing yourself in the frame here, that teaching these kinds of subjects is not impossible. It’s compelling. Being able to keep the doors wide open for your high schoolers so that they can make decisions when their prefrontal cortex is completely developed, that may be something we don’t see right now in this moment, is huge. I want to thank both of you for spending this time with me. I’m grateful indeed that we’ve had the opportunity to talk. I’ll look forward to seeing you all at a homeschool conference soon. Thanks, everybody, for trusting us today to come into your living room.

[01:01:33] Richard: Thank you, Gretchen.

[01:01:33] Denise: Thank you, Gretchen.