Brave Writer News: August 2026

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[Podcast #353] Only Connect: The Power of Partnership in Homeschooling

Brave Writer Podcast

What changes when we stop treating homeschooling as something we do to our children and begin learning alongside them?

Connection is at the heart of meaningful education: connection to ourselves, to the subjects we study, and to one another.

On today’s Brave Writer podcast episode, we explore:

  • how curiosity leads to purpose,
  • why collaboration matters more than perfect independence,
  • and how low-stakes practice can help children build confidence without turning every lesson into an evaluation.

From fractions and cookies to grammar, handwriting, games, and writing revision, we look at practical ways to turn abstract academics into learning that feels useful and alive.

Join us and discover what can happen when we trade coercion for connection.

Show Notes

Only Connect: Why Partnership Changes the Way Children Learn

What are you learning right now?

Maybe you’ve taken up gardening, crochet, breadmaking, chess, painting, or a new language. Think for a moment about how you went about learning it. Chances are, nobody assigned it to you. You became curious. You found a reason to care. You searched for a book, video, teacher, class, friend, or expert who could help.

In other words, you didn’t learn alone.

That experience offers us an important clue about homeschooling. Learning is deeply connected to curiosity, purpose, and other people. Yet we can easily expect something very different from our children. We hand them a worksheet, explain the instructions, and hope that eventually they’ll become “independent learners.”

But complete independence isn’t really how human beings learn.

Collaboration Is Not a Failure of Independence

When something is easy and familiar, children often enjoy doing it on their own. A child may happily bake cookies without help, read an entire fantasy series independently, or settle into a comfortable copywork routine.

Then fractions get harder. Grammar feels baffling. The next writing assignment seems impossible.

That’s exactly when collaboration matters most.

Our children know more than we do about what captures their interest. We know more about how to find resources, break skills into manageable pieces, locate experts, or make connections they haven’t noticed yet. And there are plenty of things neither of us knows. Those become opportunities to learn together.

This is one of homeschooling’s great advantages.

Make the Abstract Concrete

School subjects are often abstract. Children are gloriously literal.

Instead of starting with the definition of a verb, imagine encountering the word splattered in a story. We can say it aloud. Splat. We can notice how the word sounds like the action. Maybe we even drop something and listen.

Suddenly we have an experience.

Now terms like verb and onomatopoeia have something to attach themselves to.

The same thing happens when fractions show up in a cookie recipe, geometry appears in a sewing project, or writing becomes necessary for a role-playing game. We haven’t abandoned academics. We’ve given those academics a reason to matter.

Skills Before Results

This principle is especially important in writing.

When a child hands us a page, our eyes can immediately find every misspelling, missing comma, awkward sentence, and misplaced apostrophe. But correcting everything mostly demonstrates what we know.

Instead, we can ask: What skill is this child actually practicing?

Maybe they know capital letters and end punctuation. Great. Let’s ask them to edit for those things. Maybe apostrophes are brand new. Let’s give them low-stakes opportunities to experiment with apostrophes without holding them responsible for conventions they haven’t learned yet.

The writing then becomes information. It shows us what to practice next. It doesn’t become a referendum on the child’s ability.

We are growing skills, not demanding polished results.

Let Connection Lead

When resistance appears, more pressure is rarely our only option.

We can become curious instead. What would make this meaningful? Where does this skill already exist in the child’s life? Could we do it together? Could we lower the stakes? Could we experiment? Could we connect the idea to a story, tool, game, question, community, or purpose the child already values?

Home education gives us time to ask those questions.

We get to accompany our children down the path of learning, sometimes leading and sometimes following, always paying attention to where they actually are.

Only connect.

That may be the whole job.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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The AI Crisis for Writing

Brave Writer

We’re in a bit of an AI crisis for writing in public high schools and colleges. Students are letting ChatGPT write their essays for them. Instructors are using ChatGPT to help them grade those essays. In some cases, we literally have AI writing and grading itself!

The current solution being offered by many people who are from the previous generation is a return to Blue Books (or handwritten, timed essay writing in class). Many of us remember the tiring practice of clutching a pencil, gripping it tightly, writing as quickly as possible, for sixty to ninety minutes in a classroom.

This generation? Not so much.

Sure, there are some classrooms and schools that prioritize handwriting and penmanship, but that is not true for the many students today. Worse: solving a tech crisis by rolling back to an earlier technology rarely lasts.

Still, we love handwriting at Brave Writer, and we train students to freewrite by hand for copywork and dictation (we even have a FREE Copywork Guide). Your kids should be prepared for whatever may come.

But, also, keep in mind that today’s kids want two things: a challenge and an audience! They like to work hard (for instance, the amount of time they spend learning editing tools to make a compelling short video for social media is proof), and they want to be heard. So watch a make-up tutorial on TikTok or a political rant by a teen on YouTube. Read their screeds about tech, religion, and gaming.

Rethink how students demonstrate learning.

  • Can they produce short films and upload them online?
  • Can they create a “zine”—an analog magazine with pages, artwork, and a variety of article types?
  • Can they give oral presentations or host debates?

Humans love learning, and they love sharing what they learn.

Technology moves us forward, and the solution for how to manage technology can’t be moving backwards. Blame and shame never work. Catching cheaters never works. Comparing the era you went to college to today’s college students misses the mark.

It’s time to adapt.

Help! My Kid Hates Writing

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[Podcast #352] Handwriting: Why, When, and How to Teach It

Brave Writer Podcast

What if one of the simplest tools for improving reading, memory, attention, and creative thinking is already sitting in your pencil cup?

We’re revisiting handwriting and the surprising neuroscience behind why it still matters in a digital age.

We explore:

  • how forming letters supports early reading,
  • why handwritten notes encourage deeper thinking,
  • and how copywork can build skill without limiting a child’s original ideas.

We also share playful ways to practice, from cornmeal and sidewalk chalk to gel pens and tablets.

Download the free companion handout at bravewriter.com/handwriting, then join us as we make handwriting a satisfying part of the homeschool day.

Show Notes

Why Handwriting Still Matters

Handwriting can feel like an unnecessary hurdle when keyboards allow our children to communicate faster and revise more easily. Yet writing by hand is more than an old-fashioned method of recording words. It is a physical, perceptual, and cognitive process that supports children as they learn to read, remember, think, and express themselves.

When a child types a letter, the shape has already been created. The child finds it on the keyboard and presses a key. When that same child writes the letter, their brain and body must construct it. They remember where the line begins, which direction it travels, how the curves connect, and how much pressure to apply.

That physical construction helps children distinguish between symbols that contain the same basic parts. A lowercase b and d are both made from a line and a circle, but orientation changes the letter. Writing gives children repeated, embodied experience with that distinction.

Fortunately, handwriting practice does not have to begin with a pencil or workbook. A child can draw letters in cornmeal, trace them in the air, shape them from clay, or paint them with water on the sidewalk. Gel pens on black paper can turn a reluctant writer into an enthusiastic one. The tool matters less than the opportunity to build a connection between movement, shape, name, and sound.

Protect the Child’s Ideas

Young children can think far more quickly than they can write. When we require them to compose and transcribe at the same time, they may shrink their ideas to fit their handwriting ability.

We can avoid that trap by developing two skills simultaneously.

First, we capture their original thoughts for them. They narrate a story, explanation, or observation, and we write it down. Their vocabulary, humor, and complexity remain intact.

Separately, they practice the physical skill of handwriting through copywork. They might copy a sentence from a favorite book, the names of dinosaurs, a line from a poem, or a list of continents.

Think of these practices as two pedals on a bicycle. One preserves the child’s voice. The other develops the hand that will eventually record that voice independently.

Stop Before Frustration Takes Over

Copywork does not need to fill a page. One carefully formed letter may represent a child’s best effort.

Invite children to stop when they notice their attention fading. We want them to associate handwriting with concentration, satisfaction, and growing competence, not with aching hands and endless lines.

As the movements become familiar, stamina increases. A short daily ritual can help: choose meaningful passages, play instrumental music, write alongside your children, and enjoy five quiet minutes together.

Typing remains an essential tool, especially for longer drafts and revision. We do not have to choose between handwriting and technology. Our children deserve both.

A pencil, keyboard, and voice each offer a different route from the inner world to the outer one. By helping children become comfortable with all three, we give them greater authority over their ideas and more freedom to share them.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Connect with Melissa

Produced by NOVA

Brave Writer Podcast

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