Home Education & Practical Suggestions for Parents this Fall :: with Abby Wahl and Sarah Little

Especially in light of the pandemic, many parents are wondering how to supplement or replace traditional schooling for their children this fall. In this episode of Ventures, we explore the landscape of home education and practical opportunities for both parents and startups to approach the space. 

You can watch this episode via video here. 

My guests this week are experienced home educators Abby Wahl and Sarah Little, and we cover the following topics: 

2:10 - Sarah intro, journey into homeschooling three children, teaching overseas, co-founding an elementary school, etc.. 

9:55 - Abby intro and her path into homeschooling five children, exploring approaches/curricula, navigating four cases of dyslexia, and discovering the setup that works for her family. 

22:20 - How did Sarah approach the different homeschooling approaches/curricula when she first began?

26:20 - How have children been educated throughout history? What changed in the 19th and early 20th century? 

33:25 - Noting the unfortunate differences and inequality between how wealthy people educate their children differently than the rest of humanity.

35:50 - How did Abby approach the different homeschooling approaches/curricula when she first began? What does it look like today? 

41:50 - Noting the book Range by David Epstein.

43:45 - Why/how did Abby incorporate Charlotte Mason approaches into her homeschooling practices? What did/does that look like?

47:20 - What Sarah’s journey into Charlotte Mason philosophies looked like.

57:10 - Will’s mental model of education (1) base subjects (reading, writing, athematic, logic, and computer science), (2) subject studies (from history, geography, botany, algebra, etc..), and (3) reading tons of biographies, historical accounts, non-fiction, fiction, etc… to explore the stories and glue everything together. 

59:00 - the “read, digest/meditate, then create” approach

1:00:00 - commentary on the neo-classical philosophy of scoping grammar school years to primarily teaching facts/memorization/etc… 

1:01:56 - commentary on the challenges of (and need for) logic as a part of education today

1:04:45 - What should people considering homeschooling for the fall in light of the pandemic be thinking about? What resources do Sarah/Abby recommend? What are some gotchas to watch out for? What sorts of things do they recommend specifically for grade school, middle school, and high school? 

1:21:30 - How do you ensure homeschooled kids are socially well-adjusted, have high emotional intelligence, etc… ?

1:25:30 - The “elephant in the room” regarding the anti-social (and mentally unhealthy) nature of most teenagers these days being addicted to their phones and social media. 

1:25:50 - How do deal with screen time, and whether to worry about kids not being up to speed on all the various cultural references. 

1:26:40 - What tech startups out there are noteworthy from Abby’s perspective in the homeschooling space? What tech startup(s) should be built? (see below links)

1:31:05 - Encouragement for parents considering jumping into homeschooling either temporarily or more for the long haul. 

1:34:11 - Find out more about classical homeschooling education by checking out a podcast that Abby is a co-host of called Scholé Sisters

For links to the full list of resources, visit https://satchel.works/@wclittle/ventures-episode-4