HS #257 College Isn’t the Only Path to a Successful Future with Janice Campbell and Cindy LaJoy

HS #257 College Isn’t the Only Path to a Successful Future with Janice Campbell and Cindy LaJoy

Links and Resources:

Show Notes:

An unexpected homeschooler, after a dozen years Cindy is entering her final year of homeschooling with her youngest of five kids. Her children, now young adults, were all adopted from orphanages in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and presented her with the unique challenge of educating learners with numerous learning disabilities, no English, and giftedness in the mix as well! Three years ago Cindy founded the Facebook group and website "Blue Collar Homeschool" to help others find the support and encouragement she couldn't find for her own family. College is not the only path to a successful future, and Cindy's kids are proving that as they operate their own pizzeria and tech businesses. Her online group has grown to a membership of almost 9000 and is a haven where families with kids who are not college-bound can post questions to find resources for everything from business start-ups to barn building to creative arts pursuits...and not be bashed for having children whose gifts may be discovered outside the academic arena. Blue Collar Homeschool is helping many discover "A different kind of homeschooling excellence!"

Books Cindy would share with every child:

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch (https://amzn.to/2R8P1oR)

Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (https://amzn.to/3hdrSMJ)

Website: Blue Collar Homeschool http://www.bluecollarhomeschool.com/

Blue Collar Homeschool Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/496763804008415

Email: [email protected]

Connect with Janice Campbell:

Website https://EverydayEducation.com

Blogs https://DoingWhatMatters.com and https://Excellence-in-Literature.com

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jcwords/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/excellenceinlit/

College Isn’t the Only Path to a Successful Future

Show Transcript:

HS EP 257




Wendy -

Hello and welcome back to another installment of the Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Wendy Speake, and I am one of the many hosts we have here on the podcast. Each week, you'll hear from one of us, inviting one of our friends to join for a conversation about this busy, blessed season as we educate our children at home.

Now, the title of the show is Homeschool Solutions. While we don't have the answer to every question, we know that all the solutions to every stress and every struggle can be found in the Person and presence of Jesus Christ and His living and active and applicable Word. We are so glad that you're here to join us for today's conversation. But before we start the show, I'd like to thank our sponsors.

Medi-Share. An affordable and Biblical health care alternative. Find out more at mychristiancare.org for their ongoing support of homeschooling families just like yours.

Operation Christmas Child. Many of you have packed gift-filled shoeboxes, just the journey of a shoebox doesn't end there. Discover how Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts lead to evangelism, discipleship, and the multiplication of believers, and planting of churches at samaritanspurse.org/makedisciples.

And now. On to today's show.




Janice -

Hi, I'm Janice Campbell, and today I'm here with Cindy Latoy to talk about blue-collar homeschooling. In our society, we're surrounded by messages that imply that college is the best choice for everyone. But that isn't always true. Some kids and families have the kinds of gifts and talents that make a skilled trade or entrepreneurship a much better option. So, as I was thinking recently about college alternatives, I thought of Cindy. About a dozen years ago, Cindy was faced with educating her five children, all adopted from orphanages in Kazakhstan and Kurdistan. They came, not with, only with numerous learning disabilities and no English, but also some giftedness. Cindy hadn't expected to homeschool. But it seemed like the best path.

Welcome to the show, Cindy.

Cindy -

Hi, thanks for having me, Janice.

J -

I'm so glad you could be with us today. So, talk to us a bit about where you are in your homeschooling journey right now.

C -

I mean, today is the first day of the last year for my kids, at least, so that's awesome. We have our youngest, who is 17, who is a senior this year. And I actually shouldn't say the last day because I'm really doing nothing this year. He's taking college classes online, as we're talking about blue-collar, that's a little ironic, but, yeah, he's the one of my five, that's heading, probably, towards college for teaching. So, yeah, this is the last year and I'm taking on a new student that I'm teaching distance learning, who, I'll be teaching the next four years, so I'm looking forward to that. So, yeah, things are shifting in my life finally, just a little bit. Still gonna be in homeschooling, though, and I didn't anticipate that. You know, here I am.

J -

Isn't that...it's an amazing journey, even in a path you didn't expect, and it sounds like it's been a really good fit for you and your family both.

C -

I can't imagine that...I don't think I'm being overly dramatic to say, we couldn't have made it without homeschooling. My kids were...the gap was way too wide between them and their age-related peers. And, for example, we had our daughters come home at ten and twelve years old, and my twelve-year-old didn't know where food went in a cupboard. Living in an orphanage, you don't work in a kitchen, and you don't know. And so we had, you know, thawed chicken breasts in the pantry and she thought mermaids were real at twelve years old.

J -

Oh, wow.

C -

Yeah. We had to do a lot of preschool work. We literally went to preschool. We didn't...you know, my kids, although they came home older, orphanages are a little bit like prison for kids. They don't get out into the community. They don't have interaction daily with regular people, so to speak. They didn't know, like, what a bank was. They had a vague idea what a post office was. They didn't know how to make change, because they never had money to spend. You know. Lots of things that little guys learn when they get their first birthday gift at four or five, to go buy their first toy. My kids had never had those experiences, plus many more, so we couldn't have dropped a ten or twelve-year-old child, which would...two of our older adoptees...into, you know, middle school. It would have been a recipe for disaster for us. So, in addition to the relationship and all the pieces, homeschooling answered the ability to be able to be at whatever grade level they were in any subject and meet them exactly where they were at. Which, of course, offers the best opportunity to educate, so. Yeah. I think our life would've been awful had we stayed with public school.

J -

I can absolutely imagine. What a gift to those kids, though, to be able to come in to someone and be led by someone who knew them, loved them, and really planned to lead them from where they were instead of trying to leap ahead and just fit a square peg into a round hole, basically.

So, as you progressed through school, and you started seeing their gifts and talents and abilities, and they started being able to navigate our society a little bit better, what led you toward that blue-collar option?

C -

Well, part of it was, the adoption expenses as well as the ongoing expenses for everything under the sun, for therapy, for dental work. We've probably spent sixty thousand dollars on dental work for our kids. We knew there was no way we could afford college, and with the skyrocketing costs of college, that became a real concern for our entire family, was, kids ending up in debt in a huge way later on down the road. And also, we ended up with learning disabilities that were so difficult to manage that even maintaining full-time employment was a little sketchy. A little worrisome. We began to realize we have a mixture of kids. Some that could go to college, some that probably really shouldn't consider it. Each person is an individual. No reason to think that they're the same. And that probably looking towards a blue-collar path of some form or another would've been the best option. And in...so far, it's turning out to be.

J -

That sounds amazing. Because I guess with the pressure from society around, did you feel that pressure around you...

C -

Oh, yes.

J -

...to do all of the things that...everybody goes to college, and everybody does all the things.

C -

Yes, including a lot of people who negatively spoke to me about it. One of our children is a 2E, twice-exceptional. He is quite gifted and he is also learning challenged in a lot of ways. He has dysgraphia and a slow processing speed. What comes out on paper does not at all match the intellect. Not even close. The school district tested him and we figured that out. It's...we started adding things up and it made total sense, but, in particular, with him, many people said, well why aren't you steering him towards college? He's so bright. And Matt did not want to have debt. He really really didn't wanna go that route, and he's currently studying web design. He's gaining an equivalent of a computer science degree by doing classes through EdEx and Coursera, and he's designing websites and cloud-based systems and he has a lot of certifications from CompTIA. And Amazon web services, as well as...he's in his third year taking college courses from MIT and Stanford, with no cost, except for maybe somewhere around a hundred dollars, give or take, each one's different, for a certificate of completion. So, he'll end up with the equivalent of the same knowledge, but without the debt. And, in his field, that makes more sense. Some fields, of course, if you wanna be a doctor or a lawyer, there's no way you're gonna get around it. Ya gotta go to college. But, in his field, there are lots of workarounds for that. And so, that's the route he decided to take.

But the criticism we have experienced from a lot of people because of the cultural conditioning around college, I would say has been pretty big. Now that we're a little further in and our kids are doing a few things, suddenly people are going, well, that was really smart of you. But you know, yet, you have to get to the end to show a result for people to, quote-unquote, approve of what your, you know, decisions were. And maybe people didn't' understand some of the learning challenges our kids have, because they present as, you know, normal bright kids. They are bright, but we have three with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, that really, severely impact them in some areas. College would have been intellectually, at moments, in reach, and in other moments, really not. And so, you know, whether you have ??? all over the map, odds are they're not gonna make it through. They can maybe pass certain classes. They can maybe make it, you know, in terms of diligence, and work ethic, but the kind of debt and the risk taken...one year, when a kid drops out of freshman, if they can't make it, they could be thirty or forty thousand dollars in debt. And, that doesn't make sense.

And so, we've gone totally different directions with our kids. And so far it's working on our three that have FAS... are running their own business right now, a pizza and ice cream business that they developed through their senior year in high school. And they developed it fully from start to finish, and they are running it 100% by themselves now. My other son is studying computer website development, and such. He's also running his own business. He's done a couple of websites for pay, and, you know, he's really not out working yet, but he has his own little business. And he's been helping with other sorts of tech needs for people individually, so, you know, they're slowly finding their way and getting there. But, you know, college is just not the right path for a lot of people. And there's not a better or worse than, that's the bigger problem than what I found, was, when you have to educate differently, even within the homeschooling community, there's an awful lot of negative feedback that you get if you're in forms or things like that, if you say, my child literally cannot handle algebra 2. What else can I offer. Then the heat that you can take is incredible, when really, if your child cannot do it, they can't do it. You can't sit every child down and have them be a concert pianist either. But somehow we accept that in other arenas and somehow you're a loser parent if you don't force your child to not do work that's really about their capacity. And I say this as somebody who's...I have a 21-year old whose disability leads them to only being able to do third-grade math and we have done everything possible. But I also have kids who have done calc 3. I'm not a bad homeschooling parent. I have a child who can't do it. We accept it. We offer what they need and we move on and try and find the other strengths. It's not about, like, offering a lesser education. It's about offering appropriate education for the learner, and that's something that a lot of people haven't figured out, I think. It's not about less than, it's about different.

J -

It's about an education that fits.

C -

Yes...

J -

And I think that's...

C -

All the way across the board.

J -

That is absolutely the key thing, you know. I grew up in Los Angeles, in the middle sixties and the seventies, when everything was new, everything. And one of their experiments was letting us, as little high school kids who knew absolutely nothing about anything, choose our path through high school. We had to take, like, one class from each of the main disciplines or whatever. But, I took math one class. I took pre-algebra. I did not go past pre-algebra, which did not serve me well at all. When I got to college and had to take precalculus. But, you know, I've never had the need or the desire to use that, but, because all of my interests and all of my abilities are focused in the humanities, really. And, so many kids don't need that deep education in the maths or the sciences or the humanities, but, you do need to give them a foundation. I would have liked to have had a better foundation in everything, to the point where, you know, I could do it. And I think that's what you're talking about, is just giving that superb foundation. Because once you've laid that foundation, your kids can go on and continue to learn. You...

C -

If you've done your job well, to create in them a desire to learn, and a natural curiosity, and shown them how to find the answers that they want, you're just getting the ball rolling. You do need to make sure that they can read well, if that's at all possible, I get, for some learners, even that is a huge struggle. And that's probably a harder one to set aside because all the rest of the learning generally tends to come from reading. So that one is one that's probably a little harder, but you know, there have been studies about how the drop out in public school is so high because some kids literally cannot do the higher levels of math. And then they begin to have ??? about learning itself in general. And then they begin to view themselves as globally stupid. And then they drop out. And then what opportunities are being missed to tap the gifts to lead them into areas where they can really excel, because of one subject area where they can't manage to do that. And I think that's a crime. I think that we're losing a lot of intellect in a lot of different arenas because, and maybe I'm not a math genius. Or maybe I'm never gonna write really well, but I can understand everything, you know, at a college level and I'm a superb mathematician. But I'm suddenly not gonna graduate high school or not gonna get into the college classes I want because I can't do this one thing, you know, very well. And most of us aren't great at everything across the board. You know, and we shouldn't be letting those kinds of issues get in the way of the other areas of learning or to create an attitude in a kid that, I can't do it.

J -

Absolutely. It is one of the great losses that we have. And I remember, in our schools growing up, something that has disappeared from a lot of the public schools now, is the trades classes. The auto mechanics, the print shop, you know, I edited the literary magazine, but it wouldn't have gotten to anybody had we not had the little print shop there, where all those kids who wanted to learn how to do the printing jobs, and do everything connected with that. The distribution, the layout, the graphic arts.

C -

All of those are different skills that they're learning.

J -

Yes. And...

C -

Absolutely. Well, I grew up in the same era and I grew up about an hour from where you were living. And we had a regional occupational center for all of the high schools that fed into it. And you could graduate high school. You could be a florist, you could be a dental hygienist and already be done with your education. My husband went through the auto mechanics course. You could do construction. All kinds of trades were taught in high school, along with the foundational academic pieces, so you weren't missing out on all of it, but instead of, like, the heavier, you know, like, college-oriented prep courses, you were... there were lots of kids that were well suited and they went out in the world really prepared to support themselves. And now, we've dropped the ball big time on that. And if you aren't college-bound, you know, the idea that you're doomed to be a burger flipper, well, public education now is making sure that actually happens. And it doesn't need to, and it didn't use to happen. It does now, though, because it's either college or nothing. And that's a huge disservice to our youth, I think. It's also creating a huge need in the trades for people to fill those spots. And we've told everybody, you don't wanna go out and work physically for a living. We've told them that. You don't' wanna do that. And maybe that's the way a person is built. You know, some people are more kinesthetic. Some people love that. Many people don't wanna sit at a desk for the rest of their lives. But we've basically told them that your heart's desire is useless in the world. And I'm tired of that message. I think it's an inappropriate message for everybody.

J -

It is. It's an absolutely terrible thing to say, if my husband, for example, had to be behind a desk all day, he would not have made it this far. He is a machinist. He is a skilled tradesman. He loves his work. He is creative at it. He does it. He looks forward to going in to his job every day, because these are the things that excite him. I had a kinesthetic learner, one of my sons was not academic. I've always been very academic and could sit and focus for hours and hours and this little third kid was...absolutely fabulous little boy. But he couldn't really sit still. He was kind of my husband, young.

C -

Yeah. Sure.

J -

And he loved to do things like be outside. Be climbing trees. Do all of those things. And low and behold, there's a career for him where he's making as much as a college graduate. He's an arborist. He's climbing trees all the time. And he's got a great, you know, noisy chainsaw. He's got all the tools. He's got everything, and it's perfectly organized and he loves his work. He goes in every day and he makes a good living. And it's...I think the trades are splendid. I think entrepreneurship is excellent. I told my boys, I want you to have a head skill and a hand skill when you graduate. I don't care what you pick, but every one of you, whatever is...you know, you can have a career path you wanna go on, but I want you to have something backup, just in case the, you know, the economy changes, your life changes, something happens. And, you know, my oldest son took off a couple of semesters of college to go work in construction, so that he could pay for the next semester. That worked for him, and that's...

C -

Well, and what's not being taught in schools now either is entrepreneurship. And my husband has been self-employed probably since he was 30. And that all came from...that was the goal, ultimately. He worked for somebody else, gained some skills for a few years after high school, went to mechanics school, ultimately determined that was not exactly what he wanted to do, but that he still wanted something in like the outdoors realm. He ended up in pest control in California for seven or eight years, maybe ten years. It was a long time. Got certified in all kinds of things. Made really, really good money. People don't have a clue how much exterminators make. Especially in Southern California. And then we moved to Colorado and he started a business as an auto detailer and he supported our family of seven for seventeen years as an auto detailer. And as a seasonal part-time ski-season restauranteur in our airport. And all of that started in high school with clubs like Decka and you know, the business clubs and things like that. And he got a taste for that. His dad was self-employed and he said, yeah, that's what I wanna do someday. And it took him a few years to get there, but, you know, that's what we're doing today. Self-employment. And where do kids get those skills? They're not being taught those in high school either. And self-employment, mom and pop businesses are a really great road to have a decent living as you grow older. College often doesn't pay as much as some of these other routes were, but no one's offering those opportunities to kids to think about. And it's a shame.

J -

The downside of a lot of the college jobs, and we talked about this a little bit before we started the recording, is the fact that with a trade job, or with your own business, you can choose. You know, with a trade, you go in at eight and you're out by five. You are, you don't have to think of it outside the work hours unless you happen to be on call as an electrician or plumber or something like that. But, normally, you're in there nine to five or eight to five, or whatever, and it's a life that is very uncluttered. You have a chance to focus on your family when you're away from work. You have the chance to run a small business, a little micro business on the side, whatever. All of those skills can translate into a much happier, more balanced life than you might necessarily get if your job is one that requires you to be emailing at nine o'clock at night and you know, doing all this weekend stuff, and it's just...

C -

What if you move into the entrepreneurship piece, you can also control your own schedule that way too. Yes, sometimes, you have to put in a lot more hours. We're not pretending that. You knew that yourself. But also, you can schedule that and, for example, if my husband had worked for another company when we did our adoption trips, one trip we ended up accidentally, cause it wasn't planned, ended up being stuck there for two and a half months. Because he had employees, and he owned his own business, he got over there, he had to come home once in between, but, he could say, this is the way it is, you guys gotta cover for me. And I'll be back when I'm back. And I can't...he'd have been fired someplace else. There's no way he coulda done that. Each of our trips was, the minimum was two weeks, that was fine. But we were there a month and a month and a half on another one. So, you know, they were, that's the kind of flexibility that you can often create for yourself through self-employment. And often, self-employment comes through trades. It's a little hard to be a biochemist and be self-employed. Or a lot of the careers these days, you're going to go in for a big law firm or you're gonna go, you know...sure, you can sometimes do it. But an awful lot of college career jobs now are actually going to make you working as an employee for somebody else, even as a doctor. There are gonna be very few private practices anymore because it just can't be afforded. And so, you know, our whole world is shifting at this point, I think, in all kinda ways that are gonna be pretty major. It lends itself to different options and to thinking differently.

J -

Yeah, we've had...we are in a very rich time in some ways.

C -

Oh, I think so.

J -

Resources. And you know, you mentioned a couple things like EdEx and Coursera. What other kinds of resources have you been able to find that helps you educate towards this sort of a creative...

C -

Oh, gosh, well, you know, we have done...I can't even think of all the things we've done. My husband, or my son, for example, also has done CompTIA certification. There are classes out there you can take that you can do a subscription service on Linda.com, for training for CompTIA certification. Also, ITpro.tv is a website for all kinds of web development jobs and training in Microsoft backend cloud servers, everything you can imagine. Video courses. It's a subscription service. I think it's somewhere around three hundred dollars a year. Trained my son, he passed everything after having taken those that he took. So the courses are quite good. A lot of people don't realize that Amazon web services is a possibility for training to get certification for cloud-based services. And it's free. And you pay to go take the test. And my son has two certifications through them, and many people don't realize Amazon makes a ton of money from renting out their servers and if you know how to use their servers and software and can collaborate with an employer, or with a company, you can help them use Amazon as a host. The last I heard, Netflix uses Amazon servers as a host. I mean this is big business, and small and big and in between.

For our kids with business, we...there's classes for anything. We literally found scoop school online. They own pizza and ice cream. We made it learn about ice cream and the basics of ice cream. There's a lot to know about it. Believe it or not. It's not just you buy a tub and you scoop it. You learn about the quality, you learn about serving, you learn about marketing. So, we found online scoop school, did the free courses, learned that, learned a lot about pizza from people who are putting online courses about...and YouTube videos about how to sell pizza and how to own a pizza business. That was all free. We also used textbooks for entrepreneurship. And, I mean, honestly, there's anything you wanna learn and our group, Blue Collar Homeschool, has...I discovered that you can find a course on just about anything from...there are in person courses that you can take for horseshoeing. There are...you can do... chiropractic courses are a big thing in our group, as you can imagine. You can become...learn, like, chiropractic treatment for horses and horse massage. We found online courses for math for welders.

Anything you're...if you're...if you Google it, you can pretty much find it. And get yourself prepared to learn something new. And sometimes, you have to go to trade school, sure. There are a lot of trade type classes that you can take beginning classes online. Get yourself prepared to start for some of the heavier learning. There are two places for career training that can get your feet wet or prepare you to take tests such as Stratford Career Institute. And then Penn Foster, an oldie but goodie, it's been around for a long time for high school. I would also mention that is, I'm not super familiar with it myself in terms of my children didn't take it, but many members of our group are using it for high school to come up with a broad general education that isn't focused on college prep. In other words, it's just that notch down.

A lot of high school classes today are really more like junior college classes, and they're...and not only that, they try to cram too much into a semester. Because, you know, we gotta check the state testing boxes, right? Penn Foster's classes sound more like the high school classes of old. And our...a more general broad-based, not high-level class for high school, and some people are using Penn Foster for high school, but they also have a career education classes as well. You can do vet tech, small engine repair, all kinds of things. Drafting. So, there's...and they're both the Stratford Career Institute and Penn Foster's career certificate courses, are quite good. I have experience in both of them. A daughter took interior design through Penn Foster. Didn't end up doing it as a career, but loved it. And she took just that and she got a certificate in that. She could have gone out and used it if she wanted to. I know someone who is taking a vet tech course and passed the Colorado state vet assistant test for that. Just through that study, so these are quite good, you know, directions to take a look at, just to get a sense of...maybe there's something as elective for high school to explore a career? And then, you know, maybe get on as an intern someplace and learn a little more. But, sometimes there are ways to explore careers before you actually jump in and you know, trade school isn't cheap either. It's not nearly the cost of college, but some of the programs can be a little expensive. It's a way to test out and test the waters and see if a child's truly interested in going further with it. But there are all kinds of things out there for kids that aren't gonna go to college.

Seeing that you're not gonna go to college doesn't mean you stop learning. And I really wanna emphasize that. In our tagline at Blue Collar Homeschool, is a different kind of homeschooling excellence. It doesn't mean that your child doesn't learn. It doesn't mean that you don't teach them to the level that they can learn. You always teach as much as they can learn. This isn't about taking the easy way out. It's about meeting them where they're at, moving them forward to the best of your ability, and listening to who they really are. Don't try and cram them, like you said earlier, the square peg into the round hole. Who is your child? And help them become the best that they can be in whatever direction that they go.

J -

Yeah, I've seen it in our family, you know, we had...we have some who've done more schooling than others. More college than others. And learning never stops. When we get together, all the boys talk about what they've been reading, you know, ideas they're listening to and talking about and so, it's an ongoing process that is coming from different sources, but homeschooling is the foundation that starts them. The additional learning that you're talking about, and all those resources and the information you've gathered at Blue Collar Homeschool, tell us a little bit more about Blue Collar Homeschool and what you do there. CAuse that's such a huge resource for families who are not into this way of thinking yet, and haven't even considered it.

C -

Yeah. Blue Collar Homeschool was literally, four or five years ago, was my favorite ??? from my Google Chrome tabs. I thought, well someone might need some of these resources like that, so I threw together...there ya go, learning happens ongoing, right? I thought I'd like to learn how to put together a little website. Maybe I'll put together a Weebly site and I'll put all these tabs up there. Somebody else out there has to be like us. I know that there are kids out there who are struggling, and families are struggling, maybe this would help somebody. And I created it, and I spent a weekend playing around with it, and then I promptly forgot about it. And it sat there for three years. Just out there, nothing happening. Then I...three years later I get a couple of emails from somebody saying, hey I saw this and do you have anything else? And can you help me find, you know, this such and such? And I thought, I totally, literally, totally forgot I had created this thing. I never went back and visited it... And so, I thought, huh, let me revamp this and update it.

And I did it. And answered a couple of questions that had come in. Somebody had mentioned it, I guess, in a group and wanted to know what was going on with this thing. And it created a Facebook group, thinking, you know, maybe there are thirty or forty families out there like us with kids who all struggle and trying to figure out, you know, what's next if I'm not going to college? And knowing that those conversations don't happen very easily in the traditional homeschooling groups online. Because parents are afraid to admit what their child can't do. Because other parents will jump on them and sadly, we seem to think that we can judge the need for other families and their education and what they need to do. That's not appropriate but it does happen, because our way's the right way, right? And, so we needed a place and so I created it, and we're not quite at three years and we have nine thousand members. And I was a little shocked at the response and I haven't advertised it once anywhere. It has all been word of mouth, because there literally are thousands and thousands and thousands of kids who...and families who need help. And they're not gonna go to college. And maybe they are not.

We don't ever wanna admit this. There are people who are not college material. You know, it used to be sort of, and I'm very generalizing here, and I get this, but, it used to be about the top third knew for sure, they probably should go to college in high school, right? The top third. Then there was the middle third who could kinda go either direction, and some chose, maybe to follow in their parent's footsteps, or you know, go straight to a career, but they could have done college if they wanted to. And then, what do you do about that, though we don't wanna call it that, but it is, what about the bottom third of learners who struggle? The ones who can't academically handle it but have all kinds of gifts and talents that are not resources and they're not, like, lifted up in the world? What do we do with them, and basically we've just told them you aren't worth it. And I'm tired of it. It's not right, and a lot of these kids have so much to offer, but no one is steering and guiding them and resourcing them so that they can succeed in the world and really live happy productive great lives.

We basically, you know, the term hamburger flipper comes from denigrating those who aren't gonna go to college. Yet we are leaving about a third of our society behind. That's not good for any of us. And it's not good not to value human beings like that. And when you look at, you know, we have nine thousand members. How many kids does that actually represent? We all know homeschool families can sometimes be pretty big, right? You know, I figure that, even if we look at an average of three, you're talking almost thirty thousand kids. And sure, some of those kids are gonna go on to college, and we're not saying, at all, this is not an anti-college group. This is a, you know, you can do other things as well. This isn't war. This is another option, not like, you know, throw college away. There are many kids for whom college is appropriate. And they should be going. Especially if they have career aspirations that lead them that way. But we don't wanna leave the others behind. Our society should not wanna be leaving others behind. Everybody should get the appropriate education for who they are, where they are in the world, and what they wanna become. And we've pretty much ignored them.

J -

Yes, and that's, you know, I don't...it's not possible at this point for us, as parents, to revamp the public-school systems.

C -

No. We can't do it.

J -

But we have all these resources at our fingertips, and I'm willing to guess that within the communities that we all live in, our community groups, our churches, other things, you're going to find people who work in many of these trades who would delighted to talk to your kids, delighted to let your kid tag along, you know, sometimes that's appropriate. So many of these jobs are jobs and things that can't be offshored. They're not, you know, if you need...

C -

Yes!

J -

...a plumber, you're not going to be calling to another country. You are going to want somebody to show up right away. And so, there's a lot of security in these kind of jobs, too...

C -

Well, and some of them are recession-proof, because, for example, when your toilet is clogged, you aren't going to wait. You need to have it fixed. Sure, lots of people talk about construction, but it's...but man, there are so many other blue-collar jobs out there besides that. And there are things that you don't even think of as careers. Yet, they make a really good living. You know, like, something...many people talk about, you know, beautician school and cosmetology. But you know what? I don't care whether you got money or not, when you need a haircut to look presentable, you're gonna pay for it. And you need barber, you're gonna need a barber. And you're...and people will always be growing hair, for goodness sakes. I mean, you know, these careers make good money. And people are surprised sometimes to learn what a good barber can earn.

By the time you pay equally in college debt for some people, going to school and paying off that loan for the next thirty years of their life, which is not unheard of at all. That's actually normal for people. When you take that outta your income, sometimes people end up back down to where some of these trades, if you're too serious about them, actually earn without the debt.

J -

And then you're... you've got a good start on life, especially if you've been able to start some of these things, start learning about these things while you're still in high school, because I completely advocate getting some kind of a jump start on your learning for the future. Obviously, you're giving your general education foundation in high school, but you're also gaining those life skills and gaining those other additional things. And it's such a delight, such an empowering thing for the kids who don't feel like they're equipped for college, but they realize, they start finding those gifts, those talents, the skills. And I don't know if you found it useful at all to go through some of the career book options like that with your kids. I have the...couple of, like, library disc card...what is it, the occupational handbook? From the government. That huge old...I had a couple of those and I would just put them out and we, you know, flip through, and look at some of the things that were available, because there are jobs that we've never heard of. And...

C -

Oh, tons of them. Tons of them.

J -

People are hired for them all the time. Like heating and air conditioning, but there're subskills and subsets to any of these jobs, and so there's incredible amount of variety. Are there any books in...

C -

Well, you know it's funny, it's funny you bring this up because, the...we went through what color is your parachute for teens and what it did was it took my one son, my youngest, away from trades to college. It was a super helpful resource, he really thought...he's a more of a physically oriented guy. He really thought that he followed his dad's footsteps, and you know, we...but he's also on the gifted scale. And I wasn't quite sure where he was gonna fall, and, you know, we went through that last year and the first part of his junior year, we did some online career tests and talked about all kinds of things, but one thing that we found really helpful, Janice, was the idea through the what color is your parachute for teens, was the thought of, don't look at careers first. Looks at skills and gifts and what you enjoy doing everyday. Broken down into components. And then, look at what all data is telling you, and then look at careers that match that.

Often, I think, we do it backwards. We look for the career and then see if we fit it. And this got our thinking differently and I had sort of had the sneaking suspicion he was more of a college type kid. He also really loves learning. And yet, he was not there. And what this did is he looked at this and matched everything up. He began to see a picture become kind of alive in front of him. And as we talked about, yeah, but you could do this. Yeah, but I don't think I'd enjoy that. I might find that a little dull. Or, nah, maybe not. It actually led him the opposite direction. It led him to college. So it really really worked. Yeah. Yeah. But, what did...what really did it for him was breaking down...he saw across the board, I like learning something new every day. And sure, there are trades that are like that. He likes working with kids. He likes...he's heading to school to be a teacher. At least today. We know how that changes. But, he knew he wanted a quality of life in terms of more time home with his family. And then it was like, so what professional career would head you there if you're really looking at, you know, maybe something a little more in a professional white collar.

But talking about what were his strengths, his weaknesses, his interests, and as well as the things that he wasn't as good at, or the things he didn't want to do as much. He was really concerned about breaking his body down. Which can be a problem with some trades. Not all of them. People always use that as a reason to steer their kids away from trades. We were talking trades. We're not talking just physical work. You know, there are all kinds of careers that, you know, you could work with pets, you could be a vet tech, you can, you know...there are a million things you could do. Some things do involve physical work, and some things aren't. They're just not college career things.

But, helping your child truly think about who they are and not just start talking career to start with was enormously helpful. And we looked, with our three that struggle, we looked at more for them. So, what are their gifts and strength and talents, and then it turned out, we looked at...the three of them together work really well together. They each have weaknesses and strengths that complement one another, so we thought, we threw the idea out there, well you guys could have a business of your own and work together. And cover for each other when, you know, you have a tough day or when you're in an area you can't succeed at. And kinda creatively thought, well, we had had a restaurant. They had worked in it. They thought, well, we know we could handle that. We've done that before. We're familiar. We already have, like, a baseline understanding of some things, and so we sort of took off from there.

But, it's using everything at your disposal to help your kids imagine a future. And not just titles of careers. Because we get hung up on doctor, lawyer, nurse, fireman, policeman. You know, the tendency that we adults can rattle off. That's not even a drop in the bucket to everything that's out there, you know? Like, you said, there are tons of careers that we don't even know exist.

J -

Exactly. A lot of times, you know, you think, I have learned, over time, that a lot of times there's something called...labeled with tech, right underneath the career that we think about, so you can have a pharmacy tech. You can have a surgery tech. You can have an x-ray tech. You can have different things that are not...an optician is not an optometrist. So you're training differently...

C -

Yes! There's like subs, subspecialties about specialties that don't require the same amount of education...

J -

But they're skilled. They're skilled. They're...usually, there's an element of creativity. There's often, you know, some element...there's an expertise. It's not just, roll out of bed, you know, when you're fifty, and walk into a job. You get... you have to train, but you still...you still have a good solid job when you're through with that.

C -

Yeah, and when we talk about blue-collar, we are...and we're talking about kids that aren't college-bound. We're talking about kids that are traditional four-year university-bound. We are fully aware that there are tons of two-year programs out there and associates degree programs, that lot of kids are more suited for that than the full four years, maybe six-year or eight-year college experience, you know, if you're talking masters or doctorate. But, a lot of the things that you just mentioned, like x-ray tech, ultrasound tech, and those things, are a year or two-year program and it, you know, at a local community college, or a trade school. You know, sometimes it depends on what it is, where it's taught. So, we're not, you know, we're not talking about no extra training past high school. But we're talking about things that people often don't look at as really good solid career choices. Dental hygienists make very good money, and they have a good solid career that probably always have the job. You know, a lot of these things are better options.

J -

Like, a nice clean atmosphere. Things, some things are really important to some people. You know, they don't wanna work in dirty jobs, you know. Mike Rowe talks about dirty jobs, but honestly, his profoundly disconnected website is a really fun resource. There are so many of these skilled trades that you're working in air conditioning all day, you're working safely. You know, you're not always going to be a lineman for the power company. You make good money and it's a kind of an exciting job. But, my husband is a machinist, you know, you think of machines, a lot of people who aren't familiar with the whole machine shop stuff, they think of it as being, you know, like, sort of a....

C -

Greasy garage mechanic.

J -

Greasy, yes, exactly, and...

C -

And it's not that at all.

J -

You have white walls and a sanitary thing, and very computerized machines and half their job is programming those machines. And it's, you know, it's completely different experience, but it's...

C -

Well, as my son was looking at and decided on the college route, for now, one of the things he looked at was... and then you go, there, we're talking about the subspecialties. So, you know, heating and air, and then you think, oh, refrigeration. And then he was thinking commercial refrigeration, another subspeciality because, in our area, there's almost no one for a three-hundred-mile radius, that does commercial refrigeration repair. And, my husband has had to call people numerous times, and he had to wait days, and you know, so he thought about that and thought, that puts you indoors a lot, repairing refrigerators and freezers. you know, there you go. Another one that's not all that dirty. You know, yeah, maybe you have to get on your hands and knees some, but it's something that he probably could have done his whole life if he wanted to.

There are just so many different things, and particularly, you know, in the tech arena, there are many, many jobs with programming that you could really learn online. And go ahead and start working immediately. Design, graphic design, graphic design is gonna be more needed than ever the more we move online. Videography. there are millions things that don't necessarily require a college degree. Do require you to be eager to learn. Apprenticeships. A lot of unions now are desperately seeking kids who wanna go into the trades. And the training is free, oftentimes, tools are provided too, in many, you know, because of the state of the union. And how desperate the area is. And you can get your training and you know, and go from a journeyman and an apprentice into the full line and not pay a dime, and get paid while you train at twenty, twenty-five, thirty dollars an hour. Sometimes it's fifteen. Yeah, well fifteen dollars an hour on high school isn't bad. If you don't know anything and you're learning, that's pretty good, knowing that a year or two later, you could be up to twenty or twenty-two, you know. Are these huge, big earning jobs? Sometimes they can be eventually. Not in the first few years, but it isn't anywhere. You know, we forget that. Everybody starts at lower wages everywhere.

J -

Right. And the thing is, you have almost any of these options...jobs have the option of turning it into a business of your own. Or doing side work. I mean, if you're an arborist, for example, there's gonna be a whole lot tree people in your circle that know you do that, and so you've got side work, you know, wherever you want it, usually.

C -

Well, my dad did the same thing. My dad was trained in the air force as a flight mechanic and that's all he ever wanted to do, was be an airplane mechanic. He went to work eventually for ??? craft, and he was there his entire career. And yet he had this little side business, it wasn't like an official full-time business, but he did side work repairing small aircraft for people at the local little airport and he did that the whole time I was growing up. And made a lot of extra side money when he felt like taking on a little extra work. And yeah, that's a whole nother point to it that I hadn't even really thought about, Janice, is the opportunity to take that skill outside of your employer and earn a little cash on the side. Lots of guys will construct a friend's room on the side or do repair work on their house and make a little extra money. So. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of avenues there.

J -

Yeah. It's...I just...I think that opening up this whole avenue of thought for people is such a valuable thing. I'm so glad you started Blue Collar Homeschool even if you did forget about it.

C -

I had no idea that the need was as big as it was. You know, oftentimes, in many homeschool circles, you feel very alone if your child isn't one of the super high performers.

J -

Yes.

C -

And, even if they're decent academically, if they simply just aren't built for those other directions, you feel like, somehow, you're a failure. And our group tends to really encourage parents to meet their kids where they're at, and to not feel like a failure and just succeed. And we get that for example, I personally print and laminate certificates for kids. And the parents can ask in the group, we do it two or three times a year. And, they can ask in the group for a certificate for a child who struggles in reading who mastered phonics. Or who built a barn with their dad. Or who has...we've had several that have got cars and refurbished cars and put in new engines and things like that. And our group celebrates that. And we help parents think differently. So, say you have a kid who's interested in...I'm trying to think of something that would be a little odd. Maybe drones. Well, you can put a question, pose a question to our group about, hey, I've got a kid who's interested in drones. What would...what career would work for that? Where could I steer them to? How could we use that interest? And you know, two hours later, you come back and you have thirty-five responses that are all very creative and different, because a lot of these parents are working to think differently and some of them have kids they've done it for and now working on their younger kids. And they figured it out. They've gotten, how do you think this way? How do you think outside that college box?

And it's a place for parents to feel like they're serving their child's best interest by teaching what they can handle. Not trying to moralize their child by telling them they're not good enough because they aren't doing algebra 2 today. They're not gonna master pre-calc before they graduate high school. Well, okay, so not everybody's going to. That's really okay. But it's not always okay in a lot of homeschool groups, and I get that. You know, there's a need for the, you know, the help for kids going to college too. Big time. There's really a need for that. But there's also a need for this other kind of segment, not to be left behind. Cause they don't need to be, but there's no place, really, to go, maybe other than our group they get to talk about those things.

And then be supported in the fact that, if your child's really struggling, let's look at some other options. Let's do consumer math. Let's do business math. Let's not drop math. It's not about that. Again, it's about a different kind of homeschooling excellence. Teach them accounting if they're gonna possibly own their own business. High school's a great time to learn some basics about accounting. It's about teaching differently, not less. It's teaching different subjects. We often, we categorize certain subjects as less. And as somehow lower level. Sometimes, they're not, they're just different. And it's hitting it from a different angle.

J -

I love that. it's about teaching differently, not less.

C -

Yeah.

J -

Makes that mindset, that attitude, makes all the difference. And, you know, I've noticed how supportive and kind the Blue Collar Homeschool group is, and recommended it too.

C -

Oh, thank you.

J -

A number of people. I think it's a wonderful resource. So, as we wrap up today, there's...I have one question I tend to ask everybody a book question right at the end. And, is there one book you think every child should own?

C -

Okay, I'm sure you probably have tons of people who say this, and I'm thinking children, I'm thinking younger. For us, in my family, I Love You Forever. The book that, the little book when you're kids. Particularly, for us, as an adoptive family, all five of my children are adopted. The heart of homeschooling is relationship. You hear that many places, but, I don't know that we always internalize it to the degree that it really should be. And if we expand it to our topic, if you lose your relationship because you're pushing your child in a direction that makes you look good as a homeschool educator, you've lost. This isn't about you. This is not about you succeeding as a homeschool educator. This is about you helping your child succeed. And if you lose the relationship because you're insistent on them doing something that either is not who they are or is not who they can be, because they literally don't have the gift, and you're afraid of looking bad. The problem is you, it's not your learner.

But I think the relationship is the heart of all of it. But then I have to throw in, oh my gosh, it's gotta be The Little House series of books. My kids have enjoyed those and there's a sense of independence in Laura. You know, the main character in the Little House books. That I think also in an, I think, in showing her journey to be a young teacher, of kids, and the kinds of, like, ways in which people learned back then. There's sort of nothing better to teach independence and self-reliance and that you can do it. You know, you can really do it. There was an awful lot of trials throughout this series of books that her and her family went through. And they still came out ahead and they made it. And nothing promising is going to be easy, but I think that that book does a lot to teach about resilience and responsibility. That series of books, actually, not just part of it. So, those would be good too.

There's a, you know, my goodness, you can come up with three thousand of 'em couldn't ya? Great question.

J -

And you know, it's funny, that whole era of books, like the Little House series and books from that era, were such an inspiration to me when I was young that I kept them. I shared them with my boys, and they also inspired. And I think there's a huge amount of that stick-to it-iveness, the qualities it takes to think creatively and outside the box in reading old books like that. And so that's a huge part of any education. Your kids. You give them that foundation. you give them the acceptance. And, you offer the acceptance to other families and you...that you seek for yourself. And it starts to become something amazing, even if, for those listeners who don't have a supportive community, there is a lot to be said for working on building that for expanding your reach, finding people in your community, that do support those choices and, as we mentioned before, those people in your community, your church, your neighborhood, or whatever, that are just delighted. Because those people will connect you with other people.

C -

Absolutely. Yeah, and that's how you end up finding those opportunities for your kids too.

J -

Yeah. So, thank you so much for being with us today. I've loved talking with you.

C -

Thank you.

J -

Yeah, so much fun to hear about your journey as a unexpected homeschooler.

C -

Totally unexpected. Not what I imagined. And so very glad that we did.

J -

Oh, I bet your children are very glad that you did. It sounds like you had some very special kids, and had a lot of fun doing it, so...

C -

We did. We did.

J -

I wish you joy in the rest of that homeschooling journey.

C -

Thanks. I have no idea how much longer it's gonna go, but, who knows. I'm enjoying teaching my new students some. We'll see how that goes. But thank you so much, Janice, I appreciate the chance to be here with you.

J -

Thank you. And listeners, you can connect with Cindy at BlueCollarHomeschool.com, and you can connect with me, Janice Campbell, at EverydayEducation.com. We both hope you'll stop for visits, and we thank you for listening to us. So, bye for now.




Wendy -

Thank you for joining us this week on the Homeschool Solutions Show. As always, you can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at homeschooling.mom. I hope you'll take a moment to subscribe to the podcast, and, if it was especially meaningful to you, share it with your friends via email or social media. This is just another way we can all encourage and love and support one another.

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