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Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. How are you guys doing? Today is Friday, December 27th. I’m assuming y’all had a really wonderful Christmas. This is episode number 863 and it is meet my friend Friday and I have a treasured friend on the show with me today. My friend Andrew Pudewa is here and we’re going to encourage you to make the most out of the new year. We’re going to be talking about Advent, we’re going to be talking about how you can encourage your children to kind of break out of boredom and start enjoying homeschooling again. Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged

So thanks for tuning in today. I want to say a really big shout out to everybody who sent us Christmas cards for our Christmas card Palooza and you can keep them coming because we’re going to be celebrating all the way through January here and just enjoying those cards as they come in and so please keep them coming.

Also, it’s not too late to send a year-end donation to the nonprofit organization that sponsors this podcast and that is Firmly Planted Family. So we would really appreciate it if you are looking to make a year-end donation, the non-profit here really could use it and we would be blessed. All right. Without further ado, I want to introduce an old friend to you.

A lot of you guys already know Andrew because I’ve talked about in a bunch on the show. We’ve worked together before, but Andrew is the founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing. He’s also a dad to seven kids. He travels and speaks around the world and he addresses issues that are related to teaching, and writing and spelling and he’s basically just an all around great guy who I’m thrilled to have back on the show with me today. So Andrew, my friend, welcome back.

[Andrew] Oh Heidi, it’s always good to be with you, wherever.

[Heidi] Yeah, and I think I’m going to see you out on the road a little bit this year.

[Andrew] That would be lovely. Yes.

[Heidi] I know. Yep. And I was talking to the staff here and you’re at the top of the list to try to get back here to Vancouver again to the Homeschool Resource Center. So I’ve just enjoyed watching and you guys just had an awesome celebration at IEW that I couldn’t come to, but I did send you a video in my defense. I did send you a video with a fireplace on the screen.

[Andrew] It was a lovely video with a beautiful fire that somehow looked like a large TV screen right behind you, but your message was touching, brought a tear to my eye. And of course anyone who would like to watch that, our 25th birthday bash and big news announcement that’s still viewable on our YouTube channel. IEWTV on YouTube. So it was a lot of fun.

[Heidi] You had a pretty great star-studded lineup at that. I got to watch it live, at least parts of it and it was fun to watch all the people who have been blessed by what you’re doing at IW. So for anyone who’s listening that’s not familiar with the Institute for Excellence in Writing, can you give me the 30-second rundown on what that is? Because and also we’ll extend it because I’d love for people to hear because you just celebrated a huge milestone. And I loved hearing the most fascinating part for me in watching your life, that big party was to hear how it started. I think it’s an inspirational story.

[Andrew] Well I can’t give the whole history in 30 seconds, we are…

[Heidi] I’ll give you more time. I won’t cut you off.

[Andrew] We are a publishing company. We publish a lot of video courses as well as printed materials. I travel and teach and do workshops quite a bit. And our goal is to equip parents and teachers and tutors and students with the tools that will allow them to communicate effectively with more structure and style and writing. And our system is based on the tried and true almost classical approach of imitation in writing.

And we cover both of the report research essay side as well as the story creative, inventive side of writing. So it’s very comprehensive. We have materials from kindergarten age level all the way up through high school. And one of the things we did after giving the history of IEW, how I got started with it 25 years ago, kind of on a whim. And now we have, I don’t know, over 40 employees and we just finished this new product line that we had been recording for two years.

So two and a half years ago, I started recording three one and a half to two-hour writing classes every Tuesday for 24 weeks for two years. So I recorded…

[Heidi] That’s a lot of work.

[Andrew] We recorded 144 one and a half to two-hour classes. Of course the the harder part is the backend, the editing as you know. But we’ve got the level A year 1 shipping now we should have level B, year 1 ready in January and level C, year 1 ready in March—all for the next convention season. And so again, you can see the trailer and promo video for that on our YouTube channel.

But for me, one of the biggest challenges, I’ll be honest, Heidi was I had to start every single class with a different joke. So that meant I had to find and practice and tell at least 144 different jokes over the course of..

[Heidi] So you got a repertoire now, a joke repertoire.

[Andrew] I do. In fact, I want to do a conference talk called 45 jokes in 55 minutes or something and do stand up on the circuit.

[Heidi] Oh man, I would do that with you. So do you have a joke that’s at the top of your head right now? Is there a favorite joke that you have?

[Andrew] Oh, a favorite joke. There’s just so many.

[Heidi] Yeah, a favorite joke. See and here’s a fun fact about me. You can tell me the same joke over and over again and it will be new to me every time. I can never remember them. It’s the truth. My friend Steve Lambert, he’s always like, “Heidi, do you remember that joke?” I’m like, “No, I don’t.” It’s terrible.

[Andrew] Well, the one that comes to mind is the, the classic missionaries horse joke. Do you know that one?

[Heidi] No, of course not. I mean, I might know it. There’s a good chance I know it.

[Andrew] It’s a guy wants to buy a horse. So he looks on Craigslist and he sees horses for sale and he sees one that looks really good. And he contacts the person selling the horse and ask a few questions. And the person selling writes back says “Yes, he’s an excellent horse, very healthy. Here’s the age, the size. He’s very fast, he jumps smoothly, can stop on a dime. But he is a little odd because he was trained by a missionary. So to make him go, you have to say “praise the Lord” or he won’t go. And to make him stop, you have to say “amen” or he won’t stop. But other than that, he’s a great horse.”

The guy buying the horse says, “Well, that doesn’t bother me too much. I’ll try out.” So he hops on the horse and he says, “Praise the Lord.” The horse takes off across the butte there and he’s going faster and faster, and then he realizes he’s heading straight for a 200-foot straight down cliff drop. And so he’s like, “Whoa, horse.” Nothing happens. The horse is going faster and faster. “Whoa, horse. Stop horse. Horse, whoa.” Nothing happens. Horse is going faster and faster.

He’s getting closer to the edge and he’s thinking there’s something I’ve got to say to make this horse stop. But he can’t remember. And he’s almost at the very edge and he finally remembers and he shouts, “Amen.” And the horse stops one foot before the edge of the cliff and his heart’s beating a million miles a minute. He’s so relieved. And he finally just says, “Oh, praise the Lord.”

[Heidi] Oh no. You know what’s funny, Andrew? Is I actually did know that joke. And as you’re telling me the joke, I’m thinking, “I know this, I know this, I’ve heard this before,” but now it’s the punchline every time. You can probably tell me the joke next week and I’ll do the same thing.

[Andrew] Well, it’s interesting because children relish hearing the same stories and the same jokes again and again. My son would tell a joke and then he’d say 15 minutes later he’d say, “Do you want to hear a joke?” Okay, fine. He’d tell the same joke. I’d say, “Son, you just told that joke 15 minutes ago.” He says, “I know, but it’s funny.”

[Heidi] It’s funny. That’s right. And actually a little comic relief right now in the culture. Not a bad thing. Right? This is not a bad time to have a little comic relief, so I appreciate that. Thank you, Andrew. By the way, did you have a good Christmas? I didn’t even ask you. Christmas, you love Christmas. You’re the Christmasing king.

[Andrew] Actually, we’re in the very middle of it because we do things a little differently in our home and with our family.

[Heidi] You’re still celebrating Advent?

[Andrew] Well, advent is the period from the first of traditionally from the 1st of December through to the 25th, which is the feast day of Christmas, and then the Christmas feast lasts for 12 days. That’s where we get the expression and the song, the 12 Days of Christmas. So actually starts on the 25th and goes all the way through to epiphany, which is January 6th. So what we did in our family for the last many years is we don’t put up a Christmas tree until New Year’s Eve. Excuse me. We don’t put up a Christmas tree until Christmas Eve.

[Heidi] Really?

[Andrew] Yeah. So we’re in kind of a fasting penitential period and it’s a good penitential because you have to endure really bad Christmas music every time you walk into Target or Starbucks. So it’s a preparation time. Then the feast begins Christmas and we’ve got the 12 days of feasting and celebration. In our family, that works out very well because I have all my children are gone. I am an empty nester and it’s tough, but they have other sides of the family they have to honor.

So my kids actually are coming tomorrow on the 28th and so we’re going to basically do our big Christmas thing I think Sunday, the day after tomorrow on the 29th with all the presents and stockings and all that stuff. I will have one, two, three kids from out of town, five grandchildren. Actually a sixth grandchild. One just born, I’ve got..

[Heidi] Oh, congratulations.

[Andrew] 11 plus one and then two more, one in January, one in February. So they’re coming fast and furious here.

[Heidi] That’s so much fun.

[Andrew] Yeah. And you’re never going to catch up with me, Heidi. 

[Heidi] No and I’ve discovered with my children that when I try to make it into a competition, people just get mad at me. So I bowed out. But you and I, we can still keep score in a friendly way. Right? So, we’ll just keep doing that, I would imagine.

[Andrew] Okay. I’m sure. I don’t know. It’s possible. But there’s an interesting thing that a lot of people don’t know. Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, you’ve heard of that I assume?

[Heidi] Yeah.

[Andrew] That is called Twelfth Night because it was actually written to be performed as kind of the culmination of the 12 Days of Christmas.

[Heidi] I did not know that.

[Andrew] And we at our IEW actually do the 12 Days of Christmas, giving away free gifts. It’s a audio or video download or a PDF or a combination thereof and it’s not too late for your listeners to jump in and go to our link, iew.com/christmas19 and sign up and you can get one gift every day.

You have to go to the website and download it every day. And then on the last day, we actually will be mailing out a physical gift to everyone who has signed up.

[Heidi] That is very cool.

[Andrew] It’s a secret, so I can’t say what it is, but it’s worth it.

[Heidi] We participated in this last year and it really is a lot of fun. So iew.com/christmas19 and I will link back to it in the show notes today. And speaking of IEW, I’ve got a question from a listener that I really wanted to to give to you. Because I know you’re going to have a great answer for her. This is a mom who wishes to remain anonymous. You could see the homeschool mom who’s in the homeschool support group meeting. Just going, “I’d just like to be anonymous for five minutes.”

And she says that she is struggling. She said that her kids are bored with homeschooling and that they’re complaining, So in the morning she said, “I get my kids up for school and they don’t want to come down and do school. They are complaining that they’re bored and it’s frustrating me. And so I’m reacting to them in a manner of which she probably doesn’t want them to remember for the rest of their lives.”

And you and I have had this conversation before because I know you said that when you were in school you were bored as a kid and this one of the things you really love about homeschooling. So I’m wondering if you can talk to the mom who is just out of ideas and needs to hit the reset button when she starts back in again in January.

[Andrew] Yeah. It’s a good time to do that too. Because you have a little, you have that little breather and you don’t feel like you have to do school there. You can take off two, three, four 17 weeks. It’s very flexible. Did she mention how old her kids are?

[Heidi] Yes. She has a 3rd grader, a 6th grader, a 7th grader, and a high schooler. So she’s got kind of the gamut going on.

[Andrew] Well, one of the things that I’ve noticed that I’m sure you have too, is that we learn best when we feel responsible for our own learning. Right? I mean if you say, “Wow, I really want to learn about that, I want to find out about that.” It’s a much more enjoyable and I would say effective lasting process than when someone else says, “I think you need to learn this.”

So one of the tough things to do, but I think an important one, especially for teenagers and she’s one plus a couple coming into that zone, is to try and build into the homeschool universe that you create the culture at home this way for kids to be a little more proactive and responsible in making the choices of what they want to learn.

I always say to my kids, “You’ll know you’re a grownup when you’re always busy, usually tired. You can eat tomatoes and red bell peppers without complaining and you use your time well.” And so that’s part of I think what our goal is, is to make that shift from I, the teacher, dad, mom telling you what to do with every minute of your day until we’ve accomplished everything that I think you need to do. Shifting over to you organize your time and you choose to use your time responsibly. And of course, that’s a many year developmental process.

John Taylor Gatto and I know you’ve heard me talk about his book an Underground History of American Education. He said a real interesting thing once in a talk. He said, “What every 13-year-old kid in the world needs.” And I think he said 13 because he taught 8th grade English in Brooklyn, New York for decades.

[Heidi] So he knows a thing or two about 13-year-olds.

[Andrew] 13 year olds. He said, “What every 13-year-old needs more than anything else is real honest to God meaningful life and death level responsibility,” which is exactly what schools are contrived to prevent that from ever happening. So when you’ve got kids moving into that zone, 12, 13, 14, 15 looking at that deep yearning that they have to have responsibility, which really is to have dominion, to rule, to rule their world to some degree. And how do we create both a culture at home as well as a curriculum that gives them more opportunity to kind of be in charge?

That’s what I would encourage people to contemplate. There may be some things which are non-negotiable. For example, math. Okay. You’re going to do math whether you like it or not just like you brush your teeth. It’s mental hygiene. It’s life skill. We’re not going to argue about it, but there are some other things that you could probably say. Here is a list of things that are part of the curriculum? Which attract you the most? Which would you like to focus on more than others?

[Heidi] You’re giving them ownership.

[Andrew] Exactly ownership and responsibility. And with that, well ownership is two things isn’t it? It’s freedom and responsibility. To rule, you have to have dominion, which means you have to care for that which you are ruling over. And so it’s organization, it’s time management. We have a little course, it doesn’t get a lot of traction because I don’t push it very much, but it’s really quite good. It’s called Victus Study Skills System. It’s written by a wonderful lady, Susan Ison who worked for years in the corporate world and then discovered that the same principles for goal setting and time management and study skills that work in the corporate world also work in middle school.

And so she started to do workshops and seminars for middle school and high school students and then put it all together in this program. And I taught through it a couple times with the group of homeschoolers and what I found was that some of this stuff was kind of like common sense to me. But it wasn’t necessarily to them. Such as make a list of all the things you have to do and put them in order according to priority. Have a daily schedule and a weekly schedule and a monthly schedule and keep track of all those things.

If we can pass more of that organization and accountability onto kids, I think that makes a huge difference in their engagement level, as it would for you or me. If we had a job, we would go to work and we would have a domain where we would rule over a certain part of a shop or a business or an activity and then we get engaged. We get excited about that. So that would be one suggestion. And it’s unfortunately kind of a vague, not impractical, but it’s more philosophical in terms of how do you do that while there’d be many, many ways.

[Heidi] Well, I’m a huge fan of morning. I feel like, at least for me, and I think this is true of most of the homeschool moms I know, particularly if they have a lot of children and a lot of different things or trying to manage throughout the day—if you can get up early and then what I did with our kids, I mean our kids like yours, my now are beginning to rapidly leave my house.

But when I had all seven of them at home and I was trying to homeschool a high schooler and tame a toddler and all the things, it helped me very much to sit down with the ones who are capable of doing it. So if your child is in, I would say 3rd grade or 4th grade, they can totally do this with you. I would sit down with them and we would make a list of what we had to do that day.

And in fact, I had so many children, like the little old woman in the shoe that I didn’t know what to do. So I made a template on my computer. And so every day it had math and reading and language and whatever it was that we were working on. And below it I could write down here’s what your assignment is for that day. So if I got distracted, toddler taming, my 12-year-old still had a direction that she was going.

Because what happens is I think for moms is that we look away for a half a second and the kid who was practicing her cursive is suddenly gone. Right? Or maybe her little brother is under the table playing a game with her or whatever. And this really helped me just sort of keep things moving. And I’m a huge fan. I love that you said the list because I think it’s teaching our children to be, to be able to be adults.

We’re not raising children, we’re raising adults. And so to be able to say, “Hey, let’s make a list. What do we have to do today? And then let’s look at what has to be done first.” Because oftentimes, the kids will write a list and they’ll just do the thing they want to do first. Right? Instead of the thing that needs to be done. So I love that you said that.

Also, you have a passion for making sure that kids are reading, and I’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, the importance of reading out loud to our kids, but you and I were talking before the show about the importance of reading energizing books that are really going to engage your kids. And you were talking about doing that first thing in the morning. Can you jump off on that just a little bit? Explain what you meant.

[Andrew] Well, it fits in with the idea of doing the most important things first. And I have, you know, said in many different talks in many different ways that being read to out loud as a child is the number one predictor of good writing skills in adults. And that if what you want is your child to be a good writer and speaker of the English language 10-20 years from now, the most important thing you could do every day is read out loud to them good and great books, probably at a level slightly higher than their own decoding skills in huge quantity.

And I’m talking an hour a day, maybe two hours a day depending. And I would view that as the single most valuable and most important thing that you could accomplish any given day. So if we as homeschool parents are going to say, “Okay, I’ve gone to have this kid accomplished this and this kid accomplished this and this kid do this and this kid stay out of my way while I do this with this other kid.” And you’re kind of managing that all. But what is above all of that in terms of the most important thing to do every day?

I would say start with that and that would be getting a good or great book and sitting down with the whole family in the room and some of the kids can play with blocks or Legos, others could draw pictures, but they’re all there from the high schooler down to the toddler. They’re all in the room and you start the day by reading out loud. And I’ve talked to so many parents who have done this, who’ve kind of shifted their priority so that there’s that community building element. And when you read the whole book to all the children, you get this shared culture, you get these inside jokes, you’ve got things you can relate to and talk about together.

It’s such a wonderful way to start the day. I wish we had done more of that. I didn’t really understand it as well when I still had kids at home as I do now. And then you’ve got an hour of reading a good book and you’ve been laughing, you’ve been engaged, your heart is activated. Okay, now it’s time for us to do the things we have to do more individually, whether that’s math or the writing or reading something different. And I think it just makes such a huge difference. And I would recommend too, this is a little odd, but I think we Americans are kind of obsessed with new. Just give me the new thing.

[Heidi] The new phone. The new iPhone.

[Andrew] Yeah, yeah. I read that already. Well, yeah, it was 17 years ago, but yeah, I read it. And one of the things that I have said when talking about how do you define a classic, well that’s a book or a piece of music or art that you can experience. You can read it again and again and again and again, and get more out of it each time.

So being the season, I would share with people that for many, many, many years, I read a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens every year and you know what? It never gets old. Not only would I read it every year, we would usually watch one or more versions of the movie every year, and when possible go see the play. Or in one case we actually produced the play. That is an example of a transformative story that can be experienced.

I would say possibly countless times and there’s more value to be gained. There’s more conversion that happens inside as we listen to the story of Scrooge and his coming to the realizations, and the second chance and the mercy and the grace and then the generosity that results from all that. So don’t be afraid to have certain books that you make an annual event.

My friend Martin Coffin, you know Martin. Martin said he read the book Penrod every year to his kids growing up. It’s kind of like a baptized Tom Sawyer. It’s just funny and delightful and insightful, and poignant in so many ways. And so you might rather than always looking for something you haven’t done before in terms of reading, look for the books that you have read before that are worth reading again, and then there’s more familiarity and even more joy and enthusiasm about it.

[Heidi] Well, and really once we realize that something is engaging our children, I saw Eric Metaxas wrote a great article about the enduring allure really of a Dickens’ Christmas Carol and why we like it. It’s because this is a story that it will resonate for all time. Right? Because it really gets to the heart of human beings. And when you’ve established that your children are enjoying a particular story. We’ve done this in our house with the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. A lot of CS Lewis that we read over and over and over again.

And over time, as our kids have gotten older, they have told us those are the most precious memories that they had from homeschooling. It was getting out a book and reading. And we did that for probably 15 years every single morning. I like to read biographies to our children. So we read a lot of missionary stories. We read a lot of CS Lewis and it was a time for us exactly what you said to engage our children. And they grew spiritually. They grew relationally.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I think sometimes people think, “Oh, it’s a waste of time to read out loud to your kids.” And actually the opposite is true. There’s nothing more important.

[Andrew] So true. And I think you’ve probably experienced this having adult children as I have. You look back over the decades and you think, “What were the most important moments and experiences?” You can even ask your kids. What do you remember as being the best things about growing up? Almost never has anyone said anything like doing math, filling in multiple choice tests, doing spelling exercise. They always talk about, those moments where there was almost a magic or I’d say maybe a supernatural, like you said, relationship connection.

It’s so hard to define and explain. I’ve come to believe that academics is possibly the least important thing about growing up. We who homeschool can very easily idolize that and be fearful and say, Oh no, if I don’t do academics well and make that a hugely important thing. I’ll fail in homeschooling.” But as we’ve talked about before, I think a lot of kids go to school and spend a tremendous amount of time being bored to death, not learning much.

If I look back, everything I really do remember learning I remember my parents teaching me, even though I sat in schools every year for 12 years. So we can, as homeschooling parents say, “Hey, we’ve got the freedom to travel more, to spend more time outside to read to our kids out loud.” We still have baseline stuff we can do, but we don’t need to idolize academics in order for our kids to grow up. Not only happier, healthy, but also intelligent, literate, and successful.

[Heidi] Yeah, I love that. And you know what I think you’ve just done? I think you just set a whole bunch of homeschooling parents free right now, because it’s important for them to hear. I mean, everyone knows that you are the guy at IEW and to hear you say, “Listen, don’t idolize academics. There are so much more to our children and we want to do those things.” And I think you’re absolutely right.

Obviously we’re teaching them English and writing and history and that kind of thing, but when it becomes the thing and we think, “Oh, I don’t have time to read with my kids. Oh, we don’t have time to go out and just sit under the stars and we don’t have time to talk about spiritual things and really nurture the hearts of our kids.” We miss it and we miss the most important thing.

[Andrew] Yeah. And the sad thing is that you almost can’t really get that and believe it and know that it’s true until your kids are all grown up when you look at them.

[Heidi] It’s so sad. It’s completely right. That’s why we’re trying to tell these parents now, “Listen, we know this goes against everything that you, that you learned from traditional school, but we’re right.” I think that’s what we’re saying.

[Andrew] You know the other book I read every year Heidi, have you read Skipping Christmas by John Grisham?

[Heidi] No, but I should. That’s bad on me. I have not.

[Andrew] Well, we don’t think of John Grisham as a classic author like we might think of Dickens or Twain or somebody. He’s quite a craft storyteller. But this book Skipping Christmas, I read it every year, I don’t know, for seven, eight, nine years in a row and now I can’t really read it. I know what’s going to happen. It just brings tears to my eyes. But there’s such a magnificent and beautiful sacrificial love for a fellow person, for humanity that is embodied in this book amidst all of the delightful humor. It’s a very funny book.

[Heidi] Skipping Christmas by John Grisham. I’ll link back to that in the show notes today.

[Andrew] Yeah. And it’s not too late because although Christmas happened, we’re still in the 12 days, we’re still in the Christmas season. But that one really had a tremendous beautiful effect. And of course you can also to go back and Little Women has a Christmas theme that’s so nice to put in.

So maybe what you could do is give people some of your favorite books or maybe I’ll list some of my favorite books and you can put that in the show notes.

[Heidi] That’s a great idea.

[Andrew] People can make a New Year’s resolution to read more out loud to the whole family getting off on the right foot here with the new year and-

[Heidi] And it really will be okay. I think a homeschool mom who’s tired and weary and just like, “Please don’t make me start school again. I don’t think I can ever come back from Christmas break.” It really will be okay. And this is a great way to start is just to grab a good book and start reading to your kids. It’s a great time to do.

[Andrew] And ease into it.

[Heidi] Ease into it.

[Andrew] Ease into it.

[Heidi] I love it. Andrew, I love it. I love you and I just am so thankful for your voice in the homeschool community and for just the graciousness with which you approach so many topics and it’s just been a joy to have you here.

[Andrew] As always, Heidi, it is a joy to talk with you in-person or virtually, and we’ll look forward to the next time we can celebrate life together again in-person.

[Heidi] I’m looking forward to that. Thank you, my friend. For more information about IEW’s 12 Days of Christmas. You guys are not going to want to miss it. It just started yesterday. Go to iew.com/christmas19 to get in on the giveaway and I will link back to you in the show notes today, some book recommendations from Andrew and from myself.

And I hope that you guys will take Andrew’s advice to heart and begin if you’re not already doing it, reading out loud to your kids. Take the time you guys, it really is worth it. Thanks for listening today, everybody. And I’ll see you back here on Monday. 

Write to [Heidi]
Heidi St. John
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

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