Gretchen Roe: 00:00:04.941
Welcome to the Demme Learning Show. Our mission here is to help families stay in the learning journey wherever it takes them. This bonus episode was previously recorded as a webinar and was not created with the audio listener in mind. We hope you will find value in today’s episode. Hi, everyone. My name is Gretchen Roe, and it is my very great pleasure to welcome my dear friend Charlene Notgrass today to talk about history. And I am so excited to have the opportunity to spend this next hour with her, because I promise you you will be blessed. By way of introduction, my name is Gretchen Roe, and I am the community relations coordinator here at Demme Learning. I am the homeschooling mom of six. Five of them are college graduates and out on their own. And I’m about to graduate my last one. So the road changes yet again. And Charlene and I are going to talk today about how that road changes. So Charlene, please introduce yourself.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:01:09.662
Hi, everybody. And thank you, Gretchen, for having me with you today. I’ve really been looking forward to it for what, since September, I think, when we first started talking about this. So I am Charlene Notgrass with my husband, Ray, and our son, John. We founded Notgrass History in 1999. We called it Notgrass Company back then. Along the way, we decided we’d better change it to history so people would know who we were and what we did. But I’m the mother of three. Being a mother is such a joy for me. It is what I wanted to be. And I loved being a mom. I won’t say I loved every minute of it because none of us do, do we? I was not really confident for a long time. And when homeschooling became part of who we were, it just changed my life so much for the better. Ray and I live in Tennessee. Our house was built between 1840 and 1845. You’re seeing part of what used to be a wraparound porch that wrapped on two sides of the house. But before we moved in, it was enclosed. And now it’s my office. We feel very blessed to live here. We have three children, John, Bethany, and Mary Evelyn. And we now have nine grandchildren. And that is absolutely fantastic. I love it. I studied urban planning in college. And after we started Notgrass History, I remember thinking, I used to plan cities and now I plan pages. And it’s amazing how even that was preparing me to do what I do today. It is fun when you get gray hair like mine to look back and see how God made this tapestry that’s my life. And I’m very thankful for it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:34.716
But Charlene, how many of your children are involved in your business?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:03:38.178
All of them are owners. One is an inactive owner who is on our board, but she is not active. She decided to step back about three years ago so she could just concentrate on homeschooling her children. And then our son, John, is our– I guess you call him our business manager– our chief financial officer. And our daughter Mary Evelyn writes, in addition to homeschooling her children. And her husband is our warehouse manager.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:18.529
Wow, that’s really terrific. What a joy it is to be able to work in business alongside your children. That has to be a very special pleasure. So you and I had a great conversation last week talking about how you got started homeschooling. And I would love you to retell that story briefly because I think it is– we all find our way to homeschooling in different ways, and I love the way that you found your way here. So can you tell me that story again?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:04:45.984
Well, as I mentioned, I loved being a mama. And I remember thinking that I wasn’t going to send my children to preschool. I did try that a couple of times with our oldest. Both times, he stayed one day. I just couldn’t stand it. I thought, “He is going to have to be in school for 12 years.” We didn’t have kindergarten in the state where we were living then. So I thought, “Well, he’s going to have to be in school for 12 years. I want him to learn our values as long as he can.” And so I loved being a stay-at-home mom. And one day, I saw a television program where Dr. Raymond Moore was interviewed, and I learned about this wild and, to me, wonderful idea of teaching your children at home. Ray, on the other hand, who was, at that time, a campus minister in Mississippi and who had student taught and had a minor in secondary education said, “No, school is the place for children. This is not– no.” He was not for it at all. My husband, who’s been writing history curriculum for homeschoolers now for over 20 years, that was how he felt. And so I had to give up that idea. And our children were in public school. And we took them out when our children were in sixth grade, fourth grade, and first grade. And that decision came because of issues we were seeing in the schools– issues of safety, issues of our children being taught values that were different from ours. And so, being organized people and always planning everything way in advance, we decided in August, and started homeschooling that fall. So we had a start that I remember with great joy. I put a bulletin board up. I got a place for each of the children to work. I made sure we had a flag for the Pledge of Allegiance. We brought school home with our values. And so that’s how we got started.

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:29.706
So how long did it take you? And the reason I wanted you to retell that story is because there are a lot of mamas out there right now who are finding themselves on the homeschool journey, whose husbands have not joined them yet on this journey. And the reason I say yet is because I understand that journey very well. My husband said, “Well, if you want to do that, fine, but I think you’re crazy.” And it took him about three years to come around to changing his mind about seeing the value. So how did you get Ray to see it from your point of view?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:08:08.091
Well, as I told Gretchen last week when we were chatting, we homeschooled that first year with a gigantic stack of textbooks. And then I went to Ray and I went to our first home schooling convention at the end of that year. And I saw a very mama intensive unit study that looked great to me. The book was that thick and it gave us ideas to find all kinds of other wonderful possibilities and that absolutely wore me to frazzle. I was up every night till 11 o’clock. Well, I wouldn’t say every night, but night after night, up late, working on what we’re going to do tomorrow, trying to find these books that weren’t in the library anymore. And it was so stressful. Now, Ray was watching and we learned to do some things well. We sat on the couch and read Little House on the Prairie books aloud, and things like that. We did some things that worked really well. But at the end of that second year, Ray came to me one day and said, “There has got to be an easier way to educate these kids than this.” And so that next year we put them in a private school for a year. And I told that story at homeschool conference after homeschool conference. And one day Ray said to me, “I remember what else happened the day I said that to you. You wrapped yourself around a pole in the basement and fell to the floor crying.” I literally had forgotten it. It’s like childbirth. It’s really hard. And then you forget it.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:10:07.560
So Ray’s watching, and he’s participating some, nothing like what I was putting into it. But he was participating some. But then, as I told Gretchen, we had a year in private school. He got a part-time job. He was a full-time minister. I got a part-time job. We had one child with a paper route, three children in piano lessons. It was crazy. And then we moved back to Tennessee and where people told us, people who recruited him to be the minister here nearby said, “We don’t need private school. We don’t need Christian schools here. Our teachers are Christian.” And that was, to a large degree, true that many of the teachers were Christian. It was not true that there didn’t need to be an alternative to public school. But that year, we put him back in public school. I knew deep down in my heart that that was not what I needed to be doing. But I was exhausted after these two years, and we had just moved. So they spent another year in public school. And then is when Ray and I both had a very deep change of heart and a spiritual awakening about our family, we decided we really want to homeschool. And when we did that time, I like to say we became homeschorers. Before that, it was this heavy sack of rocks with some joys, but still a heavy sack of rocks that we were carrying around. And when we came back we decided, “We’re doing this for God.” Our goal, and I actually wrote this down, was that our purpose was that we and our children and their spouses and their children and their spouses throughout our generations would be faithful to God and would live with him forever. And then we had our perspective. And then homeschooling became just wonderful for us. And when we got almost to the end of it, we decided we were going to write for other homeschooling families.

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:44.456
Well, the reason I wanted you to tell that story is because there’s so many parents who have homeschooled for a season and then felt so bedraggled if you will. Because that season has ended and they’re not homeschooling now. And the message I want parents to be able to take away is whatever you do, as long as you’re involved in your child’s life affirmatively, it will show fruit and it will show profit.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:13:18.730
And if I could do it over again, none of my children would have gone to any school. If that is where I am. But that isn’t her story. I can wish it were, but it isn’t.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:33.917
Correct. And you know what? That phrase, if wishes were horses, we would all ride. But the truth of the matter is we as mamas particularly, and I know I’ve got homeschool dads who are going to watch this as well. Because we have a lot of dads who are really excited to hear that we were going to talk about history. But moms wrap their identity up in the success of their children. And I want you to understand that the kids are going to be fine. And that’s such an important message. And that takes me into your blog. Because I think that was the message you wanted to share as well. So tell us a little bit about the blog that you write.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:14:17.662
Well, in 2013 that’s come up on my 10th anniversary with the blog. Our son, John, said, “Mom, you want to write a blog? I think you’ve got something that homeschooling mothers need to hear.” Well, you can imagine how that felt in me. It made me feel absolutely wonderful. On the other hand, I was very intimidated by the idea. I didn’t read anybody else’s blog, this was completely new to me. But I decided at that point I was going to do it Monday through Friday. And I remember one of our children saying, “You can’t do that, don’t you dare try to do that.” But I have. And it has become a deep personal blessing for me. Because every day I have to come up with something. I don’t have to, I could quit tomorrow. But I have committed myself to come up with something every day that encourages other people. And of course, I’m encouraged. And I didn’t do this the first day, I did it the second day. I ended the blog with a bible verse that second day. And I’ve done the same thing ever since. And it again, it centers me as I pray that it does for other people. I do pray for my blog readers, this is a relationship as far as I’m concerned. And from the responses I get, I know that is true for many of them. And I do have male readers too. And one of my really special joys was finding out that the man who inspired Ray to write history the way we do, who was his high school American history teacher. When I found out he was reading my blog, oh my goodness, that was just wonderful. And as you were talking earlier, I just want to throw this in. We all about staying encouraged. That’s one of the things we do to encourage homeschool moms is this daily blog. But another thing we just started last summer is a website called behappyhomeschooling.com. And that is a website where we reach out to four kinds of parents. We have a section for people who are saying, “Should I homeschool?” Then we have a section for parents who are saying, can I? Am I capable? Do I have what it takes?” And then another section is for parents who are thinking, “Yeah, I’m homeschooling, but I’m sure not very happy about it. And I’m exhausted and I don’t know what I’m doing. And I’m scared to death.” And then we have a fourth section for those who are happy. They’re contented. They’re glad they made this decision, but they could just use a little boost. So we have printables and articles and videos all on that. And we release new content once a month.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:54.023
Well, Charlene, we’re almost 20 minutes in here and we need to talk about history.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:17:59.613
We do, yeah.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:00.785
Did you and Ray decide that history was where you were going to hang your hat?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:18:06.344
Well, that’s a wonderful story too. And I’m going to step for just a second. Do y’all see that quilt right back there with the quilt on it? You can’t see the quilt, but it’s a cathedral window quilt that my mother sewed every stitch by hand. And she finished it when she– I saw her work on it for about 20 years, off and on. And she was with us at our home when she finished it. And by then, she’d had a major stroke and she had difficulty talking. And one day I was talking to her about her quilt, and she couldn’t say much together. But she said, “I want to finish.” And that is what all of you want to do. You want to finish. But one thing that’s just so crucial for homeschooling parents to understand is that as responsible as you feel for your children, ultimately, you are not. God loves your children and He made you, their parent on purpose, you is as adequate as you feel. It was his decision that those children you have at your house are with you and he trusts you. And he is working on this quilt. That’s one way I like to think about it. And that’s how we began writing history. First of all, Ray’s dad was always saying, “Ray, why don’t you read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens? Why don’t you read such and such?” He was a very literature-oriented man who did not have a college degree, who worked in physical jobs at a newspaper for over 50 years. He set type on an old-fashioned, hot, dirty linen-type machine. But he was brilliant. He was a thinker. And he encouraged Ray to write, I mean, to read great literature. I, on the other hand, grew up with parents, not in a, I would say, in middle-class income, we were on the lower end of middle-class income in my childhood. And my dad literally got one vacation a year. He was only off a whole day on Sunday. He did get a half day off on Wednesday. And once a year, we could leave on a Sunday morning early on a trip somewhere. But he had to be back by Thursday afternoon to unload the truck from the warehouse at the grocery store where he worked, which was owned by my grandfather. That’s how much vacation time my daddy had. By the time we got married, I had been to eight states. I had been to Fort Sumter. I had been to Andrew Jackson’s home. I’d been to Lincoln’s birthplace. We’ve been to Mayo, Kentucky home, the inspiration for Stephen Foster’s song about that. We’d crossed the Mississippi River. We’d ridden on a ferry across the Mississippi River. We’d been to state park after state park in Tennessee. And so I am soaking up going and doing. And my dad never said to me, “You ought to love history. History is important.” But he was just giving us this environment to grow up in. Meanwhile, Ray’s reading great literature and going practically nowhere. When his dad got a vacation, he stayed home and painted the house. But daddy never painted the house. And it looked like it. But that’s OK because I wouldn’t trade that it was priceless. And he knew how to make everything fun. If we’re playing on the playground, he’s playing on the playground with us. And those lessons, Ray and I know we stand on our father’s shoulders and our mother’s shoulders. And Ray’s grandfather was a Civil War collector back when you could walk across the Shiloh battlefield and pick up a bayonet. He had a wonderful collection. And he had traveled to, he said, every Civil War battlefield that he knew about. So this is our background. Well, when we decided to write curriculum for homeschoolers, we thought we would write Bible because we’ve been doing that for churches where we had been ministered. But literally, at the first homeschool convention that we set up our measly little booth with classic literature, we may have been selling Dover coloring books by then and Dover stickers. And I had written a couple of curricula to learn the book of Psalms and creating a sense of wonder neither. We do sell to learn the book of Psalms still in a digital format. But anyway, that’s not what’s important. A lady walked up to her booth and said, “I wish somebody would write a Tennessee history.” And that afternoon, Ray and I just kind of looked at each other and said, “Well, we could do that.” I’ve got a degree in political science. He’s got a master’s in New Testament and a master’s in American history. And so we wrote Tennessee history and we traveled around the state for several years doing a show called Walker, Tennessee History and Story and Song to let people know about it. I mean, we started on the ground floor, back when we wondered how we going to eat during the winter. We never were hungry, but I used to stay– I used to worry that we were one disaster away– we were one accident away from disaster or something like that. But God taught us that He wasn’t going to let that happen. But anyway, then Ray was invited to teach adjunct American history at Tennessee Technological University, which was where we were living at the time. Now we’re about 30 minutes away. And he got all these American history notes. And he said, “I want to write on American history for high schoolers. And I want to do it the way I learned it in high school,” where his history teacher and his English teacher coordinated their timing of what they were teaching. And so he would read The Scarlet Letter while he’s studying the colonial period. He’s reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin when it’s pre-Civil War, etc. Also, his history teacher made them buy a book of original sources and made them read those, assign those too.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:25:25.322
And Ray said, “And I am going to add Bible.” So when we wrote Exploring Tennessee, our first history book, we put 150 lessons in it because Psalms has 150 lessons. [inaudible] Psalms. And I had written Draw to Learn the Book of Psalms, so it had 150 lessons. And I thought, “150 lessons. A school year is about 180 days. I think 150 lessons is just right. Because you can do a lesson almost every day, but you can finish this book. If you do school 180 days, you can finish 150 lessons.” And so every Notgrass History curriculum since then, starting in fifth grade, that– if it’s a whole year long, it is 150 lessons. If it’s a half year, it’s 75 lessons. We don’t do as many lessons for the younger ones. We don’t do 1 per day for those. It’s different, but. And he said, “I want to add Bible.” Oh yeah, what I was going to say. Explore Tennessee has 150 lessons, and we put a Bible verse at the end of every lesson. And once a week, the handwork that went with the lesson would be a Bible study. So we already had this kind of Bible and history pattern. Then, though, with the high school, we add in this English component because he would assign writing assignments related to the history lesson. So he said, “I’d like to write it, but I don’t know if anybody buy it. And I want to do it like I learned it.” So he wrote it, and we started selling that. And people started saying, “When are you going to write world history?” And they would say, “Can I use your American history with my eighth grader?” And we would say, “He’s probably not ready for The Scarlet Letter. We really don’t think that’s best.” And after year after year of saying that at convention after convention, we just kind of went, “We must [inaudible] supposed to write American history for younger people.” I’m telling you. This is how it happened. And now we have nine years. And the other three are in the planning or writing stages. And then when they’re done the Lord wills, you can start with us in first grade and go through 12 with history.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:07.643
So that actually leads me into some of the questions that parents have asked. If someone’s going to use Notgrass History with a variety of ages, how do they make that work?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:28:18.042
Okay, we’ve thought a lot about all of this, as you can imagine. And we’re constantly learning and reading and trying to figure out the best way to help families and to do what’s best for children at each age. So this is what we’ve come up with. We have an elementary set of books. We have what we call a middle school set of books. So elementary is for first through fourth grade. Middle school, our books are for fifth through eighth grade, and then we have high school. So one way you can use them with multiple ages is say you’re using a middle school, one of our middle school curricula, if you have a fifth grader and an eighth grader, then they can both use it. And in this introduction, we tell you ideas of how. And we also tell you how to be kind to yourself. So if you’re using, say, America the Beautiful, which is our American history for fifth through eighth graders, a fifth grader who is struggling isn’t going to be doing or should it be required to do the same thing that an eighth grader who’s going to end up at MIT, and you already know it by eighth grade. And so we try to tell parents, we try to offer them grace and help them realize that we’re educating a person. Our slogan is teaching the heart, soul, and mind. And we take that very, very seriously. One year– there were conventions back then. And I planned to do some more this year for the first time in a long time. But anyway, that same year, a mother came to me and told me that she had boys and that the curriculum they were using was keeping them at the kitchen table till 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Yikes. That’s really not a very fun way to be a kid. It’s really not a fun way to be a little boy. And so just set that aside for a minute. Let me tell you about another mother I met that same season. That mother’s mother was in cancer treatment. And that mother was taking her children with her and they were in the waiting room while her mother is having cancer treatments. And they’re doing all the school they can under their circumstances and being a blessing to the other people in the waiting room. Now, we can look at both of those mothers and ask the question, what is that child missing? They both were missing things. The ones who were sitting in their kitchen until five o’clock every day were missing playing outside. They were probably missing the joy of learning a lot of that day. And the other one, yes, they were missing some academics that year. But there is only one time that you can take care of your mother with cancer treatments, and that is when she needs them. And we serve a God who is big enough to weave all that into a tapestry or to make a beautiful quilt like my mother made. God told the Israelites to teach their children as they walked along the way, as they lied down, as they sat down, as they rose up. I’m not quoting that exactly, but you know what I mean. And so multiple ages. That was my question and I got to rambling and I apologize. So if you’re doing our middle school curriculum and you’ve got this challenge learner who’s in the fifth grade and this brilliant eighth grader who– the fifth grader probably is brilliant too. They’re just on a different timetable or they may be different in areas that our society does not recognize.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:08.894
Absolutely.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:33:09.970
Let me give you some historical perspective. And we have a question somebody gave us ahead of time about the relevance of history. Well, let me tell you a quick little story. This is a made-up story. There’s an Indian princess, and she lived in a village. And if she lived now, she’d have really had trouble learning to read. And school wouldn’t have really been that great for her. But she was an amazing cook and other people loved the spices and herbs she picked to put in her soup or whatever. And she made beautiful jewelry. And she was one of the most admired young women in the village. Had she lived now, she would have been made to feel like she didn’t measure up. On the other hand, maybe this eighth grade student I was talking about, his head’s so big, it can’t get in the door. And he’s not kind to his siblings. You see what I mean? We have to educate the whole child. So our curriculum is for four grades. So if you bought America the Beautiful for middle school, you could use that in fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade or eighth grade. And you could use it with multiple children. So let’s say you’ve got a fourth grader, and it’s best for your family that you all do it together, then do it all together. You can make it a read-aloud for the ones who aren’t reading or aren’t reading well yet. And yes, there are some 10-year-olds who aren’t reading yet, who are absolutely brilliant, but they just have a different timetable. So for one thing, we make it for four years. So that gives you that multiple-edge flexibility. It isn’t perfect, but we try to make the units in our middle school, in our elementary, and our high school coordinate well enough that you can take the same field trips, you can go to museums and see the same exhibits, etc. Because all our history is chronological, of course. And the exception would be our civics track. We have our 50 states for the youngest ones. We have Uncle Sam and You, which is civics for the middle, and then we have a half year of economics and a half year of government for high school. So those don’t really coordinate. But it still might be fun to do those all the same year. And then here’s another thing. You’re a homeschooling parent, a homeschooling mom or dad. If you decide you want to take one of our history books and spread it out over two years or four years and add all kinds of wonderful things in there, that’s your prerogative. I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it says, “You’ve got to do this. You got to learn about the American Revolution when you’re in the 11th grade [laughter] or whatever.” So we try to communicate flexibility all the time. But just quickly, because I don’t want to confuse anybody, we still do have three more to go, so this isn’t complete.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:36:53.151
But when we’re done, we plan to have world history for first through fourth, fifth through eighth, and high school. That’s what I’m working on right now, is that elementary world history. Then we already have American history for each age category. We already have the civics-economic/government piece that’s done. So it would be world geography for a year, world history for a year, civics, government economics for a year. And so American history, world history, geography, and civics. I’m getting my words twisted around, but that’s our plan. So you might wonder, “Well, if I did your American history in the first and fourth grade, why would I want to do it in high school?” They’re all very different, and they build on each other. Now, you can use one of ours just for one year, and it’s going to be valuable. But if you wanted to use it, our whole program, then they would build on each other. And just a real quick example of what I mean by that. America the Beautiful for the Middle Grades has a paragraph about the Monroe Doctrine. The high school has a whole lesson on the Monroe Doctrine. So you’re going to get some review that way. But when do you think it’s most appropriate to teach about the Monroe Doctrine? Fifth through eighth or high school? We think it’s high school. On the other hand, high school has a brief mention of the Pony Express, but the middle has a whole lesson on Pony Express and stagecoaches and rodeos and all that kind of horse stuff [laughter], and which might lead us into the idea that history is boring. That all depends on how it’s presented and what is presented. “Columbus sailed in 1492, and then Vasco da Gama did this, and then so-and-so did this, and so-and-so did this.” That’s boring, just that. [laughter] But stories about the lady born in 1867 to parents who’d been enslaved, who grew up and started a beauty line and recruited other African Americans throughout the South to come and sell it and ended up building a 32-room mansion in New York City and gave scholarships to the Tuskegee Institute started by Booker T. Washington, that’s fascinating, and that is a story for life. If I’m successful, then what am I going to do for other people? And she also was a strong believer in God as well. So–

Gretchen Roe: 00:39:50.813
So Charlene, that actually leads me to the question that I found most intriguing of all the questions that parents ask, and that was a parent who said she loved history but had a 13-year-old daughter that doesn’t. So, “Please help,” was the way she phrased it. So how do you engender a love of history when kids think it’s nothing, particularly if they’ve been exposed in the public school where it’s nothing but the recitation of a bunch of boring dates?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:40:22.022
Well, you have to use your imagination, just like you do in any subject area that a child might find not their favorite. In our family, we watched old movies, old black and white movies. We went everywhere on a very limited income. We decided it was worth eating cheese and crackers in the car to see the Grand Canyon. And the Grand Canyon isn’t just a place of amazing geology. It’s a place with a fantastic history. The first person of European descent who led an expedition – I think he was first – anyway, he did a very important expedition after the Civil War with just one arm. And it’s a story. Everything has a history. And C.S. Lewis– oh, I wrote down the quote to share with y’all, and then I don’t know what I did with it. If you don’t know history, you’re trapped in now. And that is a very dangerous place to be. Because okay, let’s say a child grows up and they make a decision at 20, “I am not going to follow any of the values I was taught. I am just going to do my own thing.” Think about what a scary, dangerous kind of life that is because you don’t know anything about how to live. And you’re not taking advantage of all these ways that you’ve learned how to live. God doesn’t give us rules and teachings to make our lives miserable. He does it because he loves us so much. He doesn’t want us to fail. So imagine a parent who every morning, they say, “What kind of stumbling block can I put from the bed to the door for my three-year-old so he doesn’t know what he’s getting up to every morning?” The wise parent makes things pretty much the same today that they made them yesterday so that the child learns trust and safety and feelings of, “Everything’s going to be okay.” So I hope that helps a little.

Gretchen Roe: 00:43:24.896
I was thinking back that your dad and I would have gotten along terrifically because there was never a historical marker that I couldn’t whip it off the road. And I remember vividly my now soon-to-be 34-year-old son sitting in the back of the car at about the age of 12 going, “Ugh, homeschooling means you have to read all the historical markers everywhere you go.” And the funny part was they were here for Christmas, and his six-year-old daughter said to me, “Yeah, we’d have been here sooner, except Dad had to stop and read some markers along the road.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:44:05.441
Oh, I love it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:44:06.735
The reason I tell you all that is because you don’t know what kind of seeds you’re sowing for your children’s future. And that’s why studying history is so very important, particularly in this day and age, when people want to modify history in a way that closes off to us the truth of what happened.
Charlene Notgrass: 00:44:30.679

Absolutely. We feel passionate. I feel passionate about writing history for homeschoolers because I fear– I mean, this is, I’m going to say a too broad statement. I fear that homeschoolers are going to be the only ones who know it, who know what really happened and what a terrible thing for the world that is. What if you don’t know what Adolf Hitler did and somebody like him comes along and is elected president of your country and you don’t know to go, “Oh, my goodness, I see what’s happening here.” And we see that everywhere, that all over the place. There are bright spots. There are people who know, there are people who care. And that’s another thing that is important about history is that history teaches you that no matter how bleak things seem right now, they have been this bleak before, or they have been bleaker before. But it’s also true that there have been wonderful things that have happened. When I was growing up, we were scared to death of Russia. I am from the generation where we went to the state fair and saw fallout shelters that were to teach our families what we should do to prepare for the day when Russia might drop a nuclear bomb on our town and we should go hide in the ground and we should have all this water and food and everything and cots ready for us. That’s the generation I grew up in. I mean, it was real for me as a little girl. I can remember distinctly thinking– I think I was at church when I thought it, or at least I imagined myself in one of those basement classrooms at the church across the street from my house where we worshiped God. And I remember thinking, what would I do if one of the Russians came in and asked me if I believed in God? And I knew I was going to die if I said yes. I remember thinking that. And so when the Berlin Wall came down for Reagan and people of our generation, that was astounding. So history teaches you that bad things have happened before and that good things have happened before. It gives you hope. Learning history gives you hope. And you learn that people are capable of horrendous things and of amazing things. And that we are all in the same boat. We are very special because we’re the only beings God created in His image. We’re the only beings He sent Jesus to die for. And so we are valuable. And that’s where world history has to start. And so we’ve been asked if we could take the Christian content out of our curriculum because so-and-so wanted secular curriculum and they didn’t want Christian curriculum. And the answer to that is, no. One, I wouldn’t be caught dead doing it. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I did it that way. But two, I couldn’t tell the truth either. And why would I write history if I didn’t want to tell the truth about what happened? I mean, I don’t have any agenda other than that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:48:49.342
So Charlene, this conversation has been so profitable for me in so many ways. It’s brought back terrific memories. I remember when the Berlin Wall came down. My father’s family was on the other side of that wall. So that affected my family on a very personal level. But I want to ask this question because a parent asked this, and I know there’s parents who are thinking this question. And that is, why does it make a difference? And the question that follows behind that is, how will history help my children get a future job?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:49:27.230
If you talk to– at Notgrass History, we have a staff. We have team members who help us do what we do. And if you talk to people who actually employ people– now, I’m not talking about people who work in a college and are trying to recruit your kid to come, I’m talking about real people who pay money for other people to do things. You’ll hear over and over again, hire the person. You want to hire somebody who is going to be a person of integrity, who’s going to be a person who can learn, who’s going to be a person who will work hard, who will be creative, who will stay within legal bounds and all. And history helps you become a better person, for one thing. And we also, as employers, are looking for people who are well-rounded. And you may prepare for a job in, say, chemical engineering. And that field just completely dries up. Technology, I mean, we can’t imagine that, but technology completely changes. You need to be somebody who is well-rounded. And if you don’t know who you are, you don’t know how to treat other people, and so you’re not going to– I’ve never been asked the question, how can history help myself find a job? So I’m scrambling for how best to say this. But I just thought of myself as an employer and what kind of person I want to be on our team. And history, it’s David McCauley who said, if you don’t know history, you don’t know who you are. He was a popular history writer who just passed away last year. And it’s just true. If you only know now, you are handicapped.

Gretchen Roe: 00:51:57.054
I remember a humanities teacher in college whom I dearly loved who said, “The reason we study history is so that we can learn how to comport ourselves in any situation.” And I think that is really a very true statement. And I think it makes such a tremendous difference. Charlene, I can’t believe it’s five minutes before the end of the–

Charlene Notgrass: 00:52:22.120
I know, and we have it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:52:23.434
It’s gone so quickly. Before I ask you for closing comments, I want to make sure that I give parents these links again. If they want to find your blog, it’s charlenenotgrass.com. And then there’s a website that you said that’s behappyhomeschooling.com, which sounds like it has a wild variety of resources for every kind of homeschooler, no matter where they are in their journey. And then, of course, notgrasshistory.com, because that’s where you’re going to find the meat of the conversation today. One of the things that I love about Notgrass History is I am like Ray in the fact that I read great literature growing up. I immersed myself in that. My children immersed themselves. I was talking to a parent earlier today who said, “How do I incentivize my children?” And I said, “Well, you must be a good observer of your child to figure out what rewards them.” One of my children, her incentive and reward was to be allowed to stay up late and read books. And we’ve gotten away from that with technology a little bit, but I think an enthusiastic study of history and the literature that parallels it is a way to help keep your children engaged and make them informed and contributing citizens for society. So in the last five minutes, what would be the closing words you would have for our parents?

Charlene Notgrass: 00:53:54.959
I think, well, first of all, if you’re discouraged with homeschooling, find somebody who can help you. And don’t compare yourselves with other mamas. It is so easy to see other mamas and what they do and feel like you ought to do the same thing. Maybe you should and maybe you shouldn’t. And you don’t know that mama’s whole story. And we should be mothers of grace. We should look at other people and think– if we think we’re doing a better job than they are, we should look at them and think, I don’t know what is going on in her life. I don’t know what went on when she was growing up. And we need to look at her with grace and with the people who are doing what we think is a better job than we are. We need to realize that mama baby crying herself to sleep every night to keep all of those plates spinning. Her marriage may be on the brink because she’s spending all of her time being super mom and not be well-rounded. And you have to have grace for yourself. If God has grace for you, then you can have grace for you. And about history, I just love the stories. I made sure in the lesson about James Garfield, one of the reasons he was president. One of the reasons he’s remembered now is because he had a child out of wedlock, but he had a child with a woman who wasn’t his wife. He admitted it. And when he was in the White House, his mother lived with them. She was infirm, and he would personally carry her on the stairs at the White House. That’s the kind of thing I like to learn from history, because it teaches you how you can do a better job at living by looking at these examples of other people. And as I was saying before, by knowing bad things don’t last forever and knowing that good things don’t last forever either. But that they both happen and we can just be encouraged by that and be warned by that.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:45.467
Absolutely. I think that’s probably the most important message because the years passed really swiftly, but some of those days, they lasted forever. They really did. And now I look back and I think, “Wow, that happened so fast.” And the one thing that we’re not taught is as our children grow, their needs change, but they don’t need us less. And so in order to understand that to the depth and breadth that is possible, I think you need a study of history to see how those who came before us did it well.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:57:29.377
Yes, yes. One of our daughters has five children, 11, down to about 19 months. And we recently went to the funeral of the mother of a friend, and that mother was one of 13. And our daughter said, “She had twice as many girls as I had and almost three times as many boys as I had.” And she was just astounded. But in a way, that’s like a lesson from history. She made it. I can make it too.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:05.407
Absolutely.

Charlene Notgrass: 00:58:05.407
And I love what you said, Gretchen, about it going so fast. I was thinking yesterday about changes of seasons when our kids were little. I would think, “Oh, I got to put up all the summer clothes and get the winter clothes.” And then I realized, “Well, I have clothes for the kids.” And I’m grateful for that. But now that my children are grown and we have grandchildren, I would love to wash those change of season clothes and hang those little dresses on those little hangers. And now I have different joys, but I miss those. So don’t miss them, mamas. Live in those moments. And all that time you’re worried about what the other mamas are doing, you might be missing something your child wants you to share in right now. And right now is the only time you can share it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:59:05.713
Absolutely. I think we’ll let that be the last word. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Charlene, thank you for your time. I have looked forward to this for months. And I knew it was going to be a huge blessing for the families who will watch this video. And I’m looking forward to maybe doing this again someday soon. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or go on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it.

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