Question the Experts

Brave Writer

You owe no homeschool expert total allegiance.

In fact, it is your obligation to think critically about any educational philosophy you adopt, consider, explore.

How do you do that? You ask lots of questions. Oodles of them.

Starter questions to pose to any educational philosophy:

  • Who created this philosophy and when? For what audience?
  • What problem is this philosophy trying to solve? Is that problem active in my family?
  • Who has traditionally benefited from this philosophy? Who benefits now?
  • What do the detractors say?
  • How comprehensive is this way of educating?
  • Do some subjects thrive in these conditions? Which ones?
  • Are some subjects overlooked or diminished in this system?
  • Does the philosophy of education imply a worldview that causes harm?
  • Does it imply an association with religious or secular ideas and do either of those matter to me?
  • How critical is the role of the teacher? And am I prepared to participate (or not!) at that level?
  • Which of my children might this suit? Which might it harm or impair?
  • How flexible is it? How flexible am I?
  • Why am I attracted to it?
  • What ideal version of myself does it imply?
  • Who would I be seen as if I don’t live up to its standards?
  • Am I okay with not being good at it, yet doing it anyway?
  • How expensive is it to implement?
  • What accommodations can be made for my special needs children?
  • How much support is there when I have questions?
  • Who are the “experts”? Do I resonate with them?
  • Is there a way to “try” the philosophy before committing?
Raising Critical Thinkers

Posted in Raising Critical Thinkers | Comments Off on Question the Experts

Friday Freewrite: Alliteration

Friday Freewrite

Choose a letter from the alphabet. Now write a few alliterative sentences* using as many words as you can that start with that letter or sound.

*Alliteration example: “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”

New to freewriting? Check out our online guide.

Tags:
Posted in Friday Freewrite | Comments Off on Friday Freewrite: Alliteration

Podcast: The Power of Historical Perspective with Emily Glankler

Brave Writer Podcast

The way most of us were taught history can be boring — just a list of dates and events with no relevance. But once you start teaching history to your kids, everything changes, and you wish you could show your kids now what you wish you had seen when you were first learning history yourself. 

Today’s guest on the Brave Writer podcast, Emily Glankler, is the founder of Anti-Social Studies, wildly popular TikTok and Instagram accounts and a website by the same name. Her passion and sense of humor make history come alive for your family. With degrees in history and international studies, she’s a veteran high school teacher in Austin, Texas, and a love of improv.

Emily Glankler
Emily Glankler

Emily finds the details of world history and turns them into relevant stories for today’s students.. Emily’s mission with her podcast and social media channels is to remind people of the significance of historical events and provide fun and contextualized historical information.

Listen as we discuss how to make history interesting and engaging for kids and adults — and it’s simpler than you might think!

Show Notes

History as Facts vs. Being a Historian

There is a huge difference between studying history for facts and studying history as a discipline of being a historian. When asked what she wished students understood about teaching history, Emily said that the biggest issue is that people view history as a list of events told to them in a textbook. In reality, historians approach history like the scientific method:

  • They start with a theory,
  • conduct research by examining documents and sources,
  • and then draw conclusions based on the evidence they find.

However, history is not as objective as math or science due to the fact that all sources are human-created — and thus subject to subjectivity.

The way we often teach writing is that the thesis statement comes in the first paragraph of an essay, but it’s the opposite in thinking: The thesis statement should be the last thing you come up with, after reasoning through everything in writing. The thesis statement that comes to you in the conclusion will always be better than the one you come up with beforehand. This is what it means to study history in an unbiased way. We have to understand the context in which our source material was created, and attempt to come to our own conclusions rather than accepting what we hear at face value.

Historiography: The Historical Study of History

Emily is knowledgeable on the topic of historical interpretation. She believes that the interpretation of history changes from generation to generation and interpreter to interpreter, as each person brings their own background and social location to the table. Emily is particularly interested in historiography, which is the history of history itself, and the evolution of the interpretation of events over time. To illustrate her point, she mentions her master’s program paper on the historiography of the conquest of Mexico and the interactions between Cortez and Montezuma. Emily explains that different historical records of the same event can have vastly different interpretations depending on the writer’s background and social location. She highlights the importance of recognizing that any interpretation of history is still funneled through a human being and that the current experiences of the interpreter shape how they read the past.

Creating a Sense of Historical Wonder

Emily believes that sparking a sense of wonder and curiosity in children about history is essential for catching their interest. To do this, she uses a creative teaching method by presenting her students with a fictional scenario before teaching them about the Persian Empire. The students then build their own empires, which often predict 80% of the actual events that happen in her class. By engaging the students in respectful imagination and making a personal connection with history, they will be more interested and invested.

Having deeper conversations about history is important, even if it means sacrificing some content. Emily compares her teaching method to homeschooling, where historical fiction is used to immerse children in the story, and then additional context is added. She believes that making history three-dimensional and not just limited to text and memorization is important for children to understand the experience.

When it comes to engaging our children in history, it’s important to couch it in a sense of wonder and relatability. Even an event that feels far off to us can suddenly become more relevant when we realize our grandparents were alive during it. When kids start to think of historical events as things that actually happened, and how surprisingly similar people were in the past to us today, their interest will skyrocket. They just need that little nudge.

Resources

Connect with Julie

Brave Writer Podcast

Posted in Podcasts | Comments Off on Podcast: The Power of Historical Perspective with Emily Glankler

Reignite YOUR Learning!

Brave Learner Home

Do you sometimes feel like you’ve lost yourself? Like you struggle to remember what’s fun or interesting or stimulating for YOU?

  • What do you love?
  • What excites you?
  • Do you have something for yourself not tied to your family or homeschooling?

Parenting demands a lot of you. When you also homeschool, you add another layer of responsibility and commitment.

It may feel radical to stop and declare: I matter too! When you find a way to value your own adult life too, you gain energy for all the rest of your tasks. Together, we’ll discover what being an adult can mean for you.

Let’s reignite YOUR learning!

I want to share with you how the exercises I discovered in Barbara Sher’s book, Wishcraft, helped me invest in my own aspirations while homeschooling.

You don’t have to wait until homeschooling is over to realize your own dreams! In Brave Learner Home, we’ll explore the craft of making your wishes for yourself come true.

Webinar: Reignite YOUR Learning with Julie
Thursday, February 16 at 7:00 pm (Eastern)

Your life is not only about these other precious people you selflessly serve. It is also about your one precious life.

I hope you’ll join me in this first step into awesome adulting.

Become a Brave Learner Home Member

When you join Brave Learner Home, you’ll gain access to the largest home-educator resource library on the internet, including:

  • Live coaching sessions with me
  • A Master Class library with over 80 topics
  • A unit studies library with 90 topics to pair with your literature
  • In-depth product training webinars
  • Member-exclusive Brave Writer discounts
  • Community discussion with homeschool families
  • Expert Brave Writer homeschool coaches
  • and more!

Sign up for a FREE Lifetime Membership to the Brave Learner Home with qualifying purchase.

You’ll find mentorship and make progress in educating and parenting your kids in Brave Learner Home.

Can’t wait to see you inside!

Brave Learner Home

Posted in Brave Learner Home | Comments Off on Reignite YOUR Learning!

Something Worth Saying

Brave Writer

Bogart Kids

I have a million photos of my kids. My 5 are forever hoisting one big kid sideways in celebration of a life event.

I love them, even when the faces are blurry.

I have one well-posed photo that we all hate. Before we took the “family portrait,” half of us were in tears. No one would stand still, there was an argument about whether or not to keep the top button buttoned on a shirt, and we had to stand in line WHILE behaving (as if behaving and line-standing at once are possible in this time-space continuum). The photo shows smiling faces. The family is arranged just so. And it’s lifeless.

Sure, I’ve got some well-staged photos of my kids that show all their teeth, each person looking at the camera and no one seething that they had to button the top button, too. As they’ve gotten older, though, even those photos have changed. They wear clothes that express their personalities, they stand in the order they prefer, they laugh or pose or act all serious.

And now: the Grand Analogy to Writing you were waiting for.

Would you still rather believe that stiff, lifeless prose that matches a format, achieved through tears, tantrums, and trauma will result in better writing than tapping into your child’s quirky, insightful, natural personality?

Can you imagine what would happen if you believed your child had something worth saying and that your only job is to capture it like a candid photograph—a snapshot of their inner life, at this moment in time?

Did you realize that the writing your child does (from their tender heart or their silly sense of humor or their fact-packed mind) IS the snapshot of their person that will preserve who they are for you even better than silly photographs and family portraits?

Nab it! Jot it down! The forms for writing come easiest when a child has full access to their ideas, beliefs, and words. Brave Writer has tools that help you teach the forms while maximizing your child’s originality! These forms match a child’s stage of growth (we don’t expect 3rd graders to write essays—PLEASE).

New to us? Start here!

Brave Learner Home

Posted in BW products, Julie's Life | Comments Off on Something Worth Saying