Ep. 82 Zooming In On Home Schooling with Dr. Claire Honeycutt
Make sure to listen to my first episode with Claire, Zooming in on Group Work with Dr. Claire Honeycutt and read her guest blog post about psychology based strategies in the classroom here.
How to reach Dr. Claire Honeycutt PhD
Transcript
Melissa Milner 0:09
Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. I'm your host Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever changing. And I hope with each season, you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the fourth season of The Teacher As... and it's exciting to see the growth in how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy The Teacher As... please rate it on Apple podcast and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. Thanks for listening.
Melissa Milner 0:42
What you're about to hear is the first 30 minutes of my chat with Dr. Claire Honeycutt. The remainder of our talk was in Episode 79: Zooming In on Group Work with Dr. Claire Honeycutt. Claire also wrote a guest blog post for me about psychology based strategies in the classroom. So make sure to check that out on theteacher as.com. So in this part of our conversation, we talked about the pandemic and how it has affected our students, and Claire shares her approach to homeschooling her two daughters. So, this was the very beginning of our conversation, it was the first 30ish minutes. So, it has a kind of a strange ending to it. But that's just because the next part is that Episode 79. Enjoy.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 1:27
I am a professor at a large research university, and I also homeschool my kids and people find that unusual to be both of those things. But I've been studying education research for quite some time, my, my background is actually in neuroscience, so I actually study, mostly individuals who've had a stroke and trying to help them work through rehabilitation stuff. So that's kind of my research jam, but then I'm moving more and more into educational research. There's talking about like K through 12 education, and there's talking about the university system, in terms of K through 12. You know, in terms of my children, I guess, backing up so, you know, my my background was that I, I started when I started my postdoc, so I got my degree, my PhD is in biomedical engineering. And I went on to do a postdoc. And while I was doing my postdoc, I was able, I was lucky enough to get this award from NIH, it's a K 12 funding mechanism. So you basically get, designate time to do teaching, and learn about teaching.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 2:30
And it was this time period where they kind of really opened up my, my mind to what real teaching was, and it was funny, because I never liked I didn't like school. And everyone's like, well, you spend a lot of time and to not like it, but it's true, I didn't like it much. And mostly it's because I was sitting in boring lectures all the time. And, you know, certainly I wanted to be a hands on learner. And so when I went to these, you know, seminars that were basically telling me that it turns out lecture is not great and direct instruction, you need a little bit of it, but you know, just completely spending your whole time doing direct instruction is just really terrible for students. And, you know, they don't really enjoy it. But also you're only getting, you know, very low level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Remember, can you remember this? Can you understand this? You're not thinking about? How do you connect these ideas? How do you synthesize these things? You're certainly not thinking about how do you create new ideas, which is where we want students to be, right? And so you know, spending...
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 3:19
And so it was really great to go to these seminars and these workshops, and they're just like, yeah, so everything that you felt inside, that's true. Here's the data that actually says that, that you were right all that time. Or that those feelings that you were having were valid, more or less. And so you know, that kind of opened up my mind to, you know, what education could be like, and what it should be like. And it's interesting that you still, despite having this kind of groundbreaking, I remember when I was thinking about putting my kids into school, and it'd be like, I remember, we got really excited about Montessori schools, because you know, they have a lot of student directed education, it's a lot of hands on manipulation, and those kinds of things. And I thought that that was great. And yet still, when it happened, I was like, Yeah, but how do we know that they're gonna learn all the things. So even when you've had your mind opened to the right, that like these other alternative and better methodologies, you still have something inside of you're like, Yeah, but that's not how I did it.
Melissa Milner 4:11
Right, because you went through traditional education. Exactly, exactly.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 4:15
So you really have to almost kind of almost have to fight with yourself about a lot of these things. And so I went through that whole process. You know, and then in terms of my children coming home, you know, COVID kind of showed us, you know, what I was able to kind of take on, I kind of took on the teaching role myself, and it was clear that my kids were really struggling in school, and they didn't really recognize how strong how much they were struggling until they were home.
Melissa Milner 4:38
What were the ages?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 4:39
My oldest was five Amanda was three and a half so they were in daycare, the little one but the oldest was in kindergarten and had been nine months old. And you know, she we were having these really age inappropriate behavioral issues just like loud you know, screaming and all these kinds of things and just having a really hard time and and she came home from COVID and just disappeared. And she was just this other little child and I, you know, I, you know, sort of what was going on with school. And you know, you know, a teacher doesn't have time, you know, I, you know, I know there's a lot of people that like to bash the, you know, the teachers I don't I don't like that I said, you know, the teachers are working within a flawed system and they're having a really hard time. You know, it's a really tough, tough thing. And you've got, you know, 25 I don't know what it is in other states, but in my state, so it's 25 kindergarteners to one teacher, and if the how on earth are they able to, to meet the individual needs of all those children? I just don't think it's a reasonable thing to do. So anyway, so we, we learned all those things, and that's spun me down a whole hole in terms of, you know, what else are they not learning? And then seeing the students that are coming out of this system. Because I'm on the university side, right. And so then I'm seeing that the students that are coming out, and what are they struggling with? And what are they having troubles with? And they're really they really have a hard time.
Melissa Milner 4:40
With writing?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 4:42
Oh, yeah, they can't write. Yeah, but for me, it's even more than that. Like, some of them don't know how to study. Some of they don't know how to. They don't know how to study, they don't know how to think through things. They don't know how to go beyond. Like, sometimes they don't even know how don't even know where to start with, but they don't understand it. So they don't want to they'll say I don't understand, like, what do you not understand? Like, what, what part of this do you not like what's like, you know, do we just start from the beginning again? Where are we getting? Where are we struggling? So I teach physiology, it's one of my main courses. And so we have a laboratory component to that, and I do a very big, like, semester long students record project. And I just, you know, ask the students, you know, with some bounds on it, you know, run your own project, and a lot of them just look at me like, What do you mean? I was like, Well, what are you into?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 6:43
Too open ended. Too open... Yeah.
Melissa Milner 6:45
What are you into? Like, let's, let's talk about it, let's figure it out, what are you into, and we'll and we'll craft it, we'll make it fun. And we'll, you know, and some of them just don't even know how to, you know, and I think a lot of that has to do with just feeling really overwhelmed. I have some research ongoing, that's about kind of mental health situation for our undergraduates. So anyway, I think that the big picture of what happened was that it was clear that my, my kids weren't getting the depth that I wanted, they weren't getting the care that I wanted. And and then I see are, you know, I don't think any of our students are really able to get that out of most of the system. I do know that there are some great teachers out there. And you think there's some great schools out there, and people are working really hard on those things. And I just hope that everyone can get the messaging of, of these alternative styles.
Melissa Milner 7:32
Yeah, and I just had a episode with Miriam Plotinski. So she talks about high school, and how she thinks elementary strategies and what some of the things that are center work or cent, you know, choice, all that should be brought into middle school, high school, maybe even college. So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of people doing research about this, like right now. But also, but also just go to go back. I know, in kindergarten, it's really a very academic kindergarten now. And I think I get that, but then after COVID, to just be like, Alright, we're back in academic kindergarten. And these kids need to play these kids, they need to socialize. And now you know, we're seeing it, the effect of that, you know, when we're getting them in third, fourth, fifth grade, that it's just, it's a very different kind of group of kids than what we usually are used to.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 8:32
A hundred percent. And what's interesting, you say that, I would actually love to hear your thoughts on what's happening with the K through 12 students, in terms of, you know, post COVID because... It's interesting about the university level, you know, during COVID itself, I think that's when everyone expected there to be all these trouble and the university and I think the university students were struggling, you know, probably in their personal lives, but in terms of academic, they were fine. In my students, they were doing fine. In fact, actually, I had an uptick, like, they were doing better. And then something happened last semester, they my student, they just were a mess, I, you know, I do a lot of mastery based grading, so we let them to their exams more than once, you know, and these kinds of behaviors, and I'd have students just not even take it, and I'd have to reach out to them and be like, Hey, you didn't didn't even take the exam. Would you like to do that? You know, what can we what's happening? Are we working on things, we had lots of unusual, you know, it's not unusual to have us, you know, have large classes, you know, 70 or 80 students and it's not unusual to have one of them have, you know, an illness or have a car accident or something like this, and we had several, just really unusual health issues and these kinds of things. And the classroom itself, you know, I had to I had to go actually talk to them halfway through and I was like, Alright, guys, I don't know what's happening, you know, what can we do to try to restructure class, you know, I've been teaching the class, you know, for nine years now, eight years. And, and so it seemed to me like there's something about this last semester or this With his more than his more recent period that the students seem to be kind of having more trouble, as opposed to right off the bat.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 10:06
Yes. So, you know, the students I was working with, and my co teacher we were working with, during the pandemic, and when I was home, she was at school, we were hybrid, we were not, we were hybrid, you know, that period of time, we killed ourselves to provide the most amazing instruction. And they, you know, they were at fourth grade level, they were old enough that they could, you know, the younger kids, it's really hard to do online learning, but they learned a lot that year. And that, you know, I was able to stay on with kids at the end of the day, who are stuck and do tutoring with them on Zoom. They seemed to do okay, it's... for us, it's the kids that were in preschool, kindergarten, that we're about to be getting in fourth grade. So the fundamental, like foundations of socialization and grit, and all of it. So those young, those pandemic hit 2020, they're in preschool and kindergarten. So that's those kids are coming up, and we're just seeing, okay, you know, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of behaviors. So when you talk about this year, those kids, I don't know were they high school?
Melissa Milner 10:06
So they would have been most of them because I teach sophomores going, it's some of them are juniors, most of them are sophomores. And so it's possible that so a lot of them, in fact, one of the students, he said, he's like, Well, it kind of happened our senior year. So we just kind of kept having senioritis like, forever.
Melissa Milner 11:48
Yeah.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 11:48
So I don't know, in an odd way, it's a similar time window. Right. So it's like this transition in the college. And, you know, I think that those those years in terms of brain development, you know, 1819 20 are, are really important. So, you know, it's an interesting match. I just find it fascinating that you're seeing something in you're attributing it to the age, but I'm wondering if it's just like, you know, how many years of this kind of back and forth renewal usual thing?
Melissa Milner 12:15
Yeah, it was trauma. It was really trauma for everybody. Yeah.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 12:19
It really was a trauma. And I, I find that I think it's hard that people have aren't really talking about that, you know, it's like, there's this big thing that happened to all of us. And we're just now I guess, we're just supposed to pretend it didn't happen. But it did. And I think the student and I think the students need to hear that and have, at least you know, I mean, I don't know what it's like for fourth grade. But I think, you know, my students we're trying we talk about it, we talk about things that are happening and working through things and at least being acknowledged that these things are hard, you know, because they are my background is neurophysiology. Neuroscience is a broader field, most people have heard of the word neuroscience and neurophysiology at a smaller sector within the neuroscience realm. It's basically how does you know the brain interact to create movement in the body. So I was you know, studying like whole body postural control and balance, and then I moved moved into more working with patients directly. So working with people who have had a stroke is mostly my work have worked with people with POA and your osteoarthritis, things like that. So speech dysfunction following stroke, so yeah, so and, you know, it's kind of fun neuroscience, you know, I think people kind of like to think it's kind of not super related, but understanding how the brain works as it relates to you know, how does you know, how do you learn best and what are under what circumstances and there's you know, linking that into the psychology of everything, you know, what's happening in it because when you think when you talk about learning, you talk about engaging learning, you also need to think about what what is engaging and why is it engaging and the psychology of all of that background right so I you know, I love I love I can I go down lots of deep, deep places with with science, but I'd say it was I was definitely more of a scientist. And then I've fallen in love with education and now I'm trying to do educational science.
Melissa Milner 14:11
So it's so, it's so funny, because almost every conversation I have, it always comes around to the pandemic was horrible, the pandemic was just awful. But here's some things that came from it you know, and one is like you totally the homeschooling started right?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 14:28
Never considered it.
Melissa Milner 14:29
Before the pandemic right? Okay, so let's move into that now. Because I want to hear all about that because you're you just have these young you have young young yet when you started doing this homeschooling, right, so never never taught that age. So but you know, your kids obviously you probably know what they're interested in. Did you do more like we call it like a Genius Hour. Did you like let them choose the topics so like, one of the things I see what the system is You know, these people on high are saying what the content should be? And like, why not? Why does that have to happen? At all? That's just me, you know, Sabretooth curriculum and all that.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 15:12
I love that. I'm with you.
Melissa Milner 15:13
Yeah. So that's where I come from. So, from day one, when I was in college learning about it, I'm like, but who says that's the most important thing to learn?
Melissa Milner 15:18
Why does everybody have to know the exact thing? I mean, there's something that we can all agree on, that people should know how to do. Yeah, meeting, and so on and so forth. But you know, at a certain point, like, right skill,
Melissa Milner 15:31
Gil? Yes, there's skills, and then there's the content to learn the skills. Could be anything. So that's where
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 15:37
I present with. Okay, cool.
Melissa Milner 15:40
So, how did you approach it with your two kids?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 15:45
When it started? It was just kind of like, what are we going to do? You don't know what we're doing? Right? So I think we did you know, you kind of I forget you said content, our we were doing a lot of that kind of stuff. Like I remember my finding, like, you know, I knew the Brain Rules, like let's print out coloring sheets about the brain and the different parts of the brain and see which things do and, you know, we, I think we did one on we actually did one on like how your immune system works, because that seemed relevant. And we were, and we get this cute little things were like, and then when there's a German there, what does your body do or like, calls the pizza, and we were doing these cute little, you know, things. So, you know, and I, and, you know, my husband found worksheets, like, you know, so I think at the beginning, there wasn't a strategy, the strategy was just to kind of keep them learning and try to figure things out. And it became very quickly, though, that I found out that I really, I just loved teaching them and coming up with different strategies, and they had been in a more traditional Montessori school. So we were like, making our own Montessori materials at home and cutting out little squares and things and, and really loving on that. So I would say, you know, that was kind of the beginning. But that's not where we stayed. I spent a lot of time so it might actually put my kids back in school, because schools reopened for us in in August, and I put them back in for a couple of months. And then I turned to my husband, and I said, I can't, I can't do it. Like, I like, we have to take them out. And I said, you know, there's never been a better time to try this. You know, because, you know, my, my university was still had the option to work remotely, or at least part time remotely. And it was like, you know, it's just let's just dry. See what happened? Actually, my husband asked me what I wanted for my 40th birthday. And I told him, I wanted to homeschool my kids. So yeah, so I actually got a little bit, I got it before my 40s because I pulled them out before that.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 17:33
But anyway, so we pulled the kids out. And I you know, and I, I feel lucky, because I had already had a new some basic vertigo to write a new student record learning, active learning, I knew a lot of this stuff, right. And I had been a teacher, but a very different age group. Teaching to learn learning to read is a completely different thing than then doing that, yes. Then really, really to learn. And I think that I definitely spent, you know, the summer before I decided to pull them, I was like, I'm not qualified to do this, like teachers go to school for this, you know, I can't do that. You know, so I definitely had a lot of that to get started. And but you know, I think that that's good, I think it's good to to worry about those things. Because then then you do you do the you do the research, you do that you do your job, and you and you dive deep and you learn about it. Suppose phonetics, the best for teaching, you know, like and you learn, and you make sure that you, you get the right resources, you put things together, and you know, kids are luckily resilient and can go through a lot of different things, as you as you kind of figure out your pace. I wish that I had known earlier. But in any case, I'd say what we do now is much more, it's hard to describe what we do. It's this kind of I really I like the unschooling community in the sense that they I don't know if you know much about them, but they there's various levels of this, but it's very much about student directed, self directed, like, you know, movement. So it's like, you know, letting the kids kind of pick the direction that they want to go. But I also recognize that there's, you know, my six year old, you know, doesn't go into, like, she's not going to just randomly come across, you know, Egypt, you know, or Chinese culture or, like, Mesopotamia, right, it's just, it's not going to just like, oh, just, you know, talking to my friend, and, you know, so So you know, or are really interested in. So, you know, putting these things in their path and making sure that they're, you know, put in put in their path in a way that's, it's interesting and engaging. And that uses, you know, and I'm also a big believer, and I'm sure, you know, you would feel this, but like giving them multiple modalities, it's like, well, this is multiplication this way, or this way, or this way, or here's these different, you know, and sometimes, you know, if you get one way they get it like, Oh, got it, and then sometimes they're like, they look at you and you're like okay, we we still aren't really here. Like let's, let's do this again, let's use a different set of of tools to show you the same concept.
Melissa Milner 19:58
Right, and you want to build... and it's tough, it's tough because you don't want to do tricks you want to do the actual concept because as they go up, because that concept is then used a different way in the upper grades and so on. So you need they need to know the, the concept, not just the trick. Yeah. What you were just talking about before that I just want to say it sounds like, like, if I were to homeschool, I don't have kids, If I were to homeschool my cats. No. It really would be integration. So, you know, they're really psyched about learning about space. So we're gonna learn place value and big numbers using space, you know, like, you could integrate math, integrate the history of the space program, and integrate biographies about astronauts. I mean, it just choice and integration.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 20:49
Yes. A hundred percent. If you want to read about this, yeah, well, we go to the library, and it's like, you know, what books do you want to read? Like, I want to read, you know, and then I pick out some other books that are, you know, you want to read, you want to read to them above grade level, right? But then you want them reading at or below grade level, you know, so them to get really comfortable at reading, right? So we so you know, but I'll read to them above grade level, and we can talk on, you know, when there's vocabulary words that we get confused. And so...so I pick those books, if they decide, you know, we'll start one and, and they're just like, I'm like, Okay, well, let's do a different one, you know, and we'll pick a different one. And we'll do that one, you know, so there's, I mean, thousands of books are there. And really, really wonderful books out there from all over the world, you know.
Melissa Milner 21:33
And it's so important to teach that you can abandon books, because adults abandon books, if they aren't enjoying books, they abandon it.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 21:41
Or they can probably lend it to somebody else.
Melissa Milner 21:43
Or they put it, they put it to the side. Because their friend just told them about another book, and they want to read that first. So they put it to the side.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 21:48
And that's okay. They can always come back to it.
Melissa Milner 21:49
It's on hold, you know. Yeah. So are your kids... are they reading? Are they excited readers? Do they love books?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 21:53
They love books. If we've done something one thing, right, you know, and I always I love they just, I was one of my big things. I wanted them to love reading. And they love reading, we go to the I mean, we are sometimes we're at the library more than once a week because we run through our books too fast. That's more true of my little one because she was kind of doing the easy readers. But then, and I, you know, I've been letting them do the graphic novels, which for my for my little one in particular, because she can kind of figure out some words that way. And I know people get fussy about that. As long as she knows she can. She does. She's got her phonics too, but she can read above, she can read higher, higher grade that she's got other things to be able to pick it up and figure it out. But...
Melissa Milner 22:34
Yeah, and when they when they get into older grades, so like Dogman. The vocabulary in that is fantastic. It's it's, it's there's pawns, as there's a lot of figurative language, there's a lot of vocab. And I've never been one who's been like, No, you can't read them. Now, this might not be the time to read them. So we have different times where there's free read, you read whatever you want, magazines, whatever. And then there's a time where actually we're working on this right now. So you need to be in a book that's in this genre, for instance, you know, so there's a little bit of directed so they can be applying what they're learning about the genre.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 23:16
And we do Yeah, we okay. Like for like the same person? Yeah. So my goal is we take them to the end, but just today, actually, my little one said, she said, she says, I'm really tired of the comic book, she calls. I'm really tired of the comic books. And I was like, Do you want a chapter book? She's like, Yeah, I want a chapter book. And I was like, All right, let's do this, let's find. And then of course, you picked up this chapter book, like, you know, they're like, two inches thick. And I'm like, Um, how about this one instead? Let's read the first page. But if you really want that one, you can take it and that, you know, that's, you know, what's the worst that happens? She takes it out of the library, and then she doesn't like it. It's, you know, it's fine. So little one is safe. So she's technically in kindergarten. But the one thing kindergarten guard third grade now during the date.
Melissa Milner 24:08
Yeah. So if she's really, I mean, is she reading at like probably highern than her grade.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 24:12
Yeah. So she can, I would say that when she goes to the library, she picks out she's picking third grade ish, books, third or fourth grade. But she can read higher than that she just tends to kind of depends on her mood, to be honest. But so for example, a lot of the books that we'll read at night, we just finished this beautiful book called Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. I don't know what that was. Oh, it's beautiful. I haven't read I just love it so much. It has
Melissa Milner 24:38
been it's been out for a while. And The cover looks gorgeous.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 24:42
And so my husband's from India. And so we'd love to have, you know, kind of Eastern influences and some of the things and so there's this beautiful, you know, being at peace with yourself and contentment messaging within the book, too. It's just a beautiful book. In any case, you know, but so we'll read that to her. And then she but then you know, the little one goes to sleep, but then she'll, she'll stay up reading, you know the chapters, right? So she can do it, you know, so don't necessarily, that's great.
Melissa Milner 25:10
Well, when she gets a little older knowing about your husband, when she gets a little older, you need to read Save Me a Seat, or you could read save me a seat to her probable. Save Me a seat. Yeah, it's excellent. And then you can teach about point of view? Because, yeah, because there's, there's two different. There's two authors, one wrote the point of view of one kid and the other wrote the point of view of the other kid, it's really good for point of view. And also, of course, Wonder is excellent for teaching point of view,
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 25:42
See, I love talking to teachers, I always learn so much, that's is my favorite.
Melissa Milner 25:45
Yeah. But, um, Save Me a Seat is so good. It's so good. Because one has a learning disability. One is from India, the families from India, he talks differently, whatever. But, you know, the way the teachers like, oh, he needs to go into the resource room, but he's, like, really smart. It's, it's good. So social studies and science, I mean, are you like, each day I have to have these core, or are you more really integrated?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 26:13
Just stay, we were supposed to do some writing. And writing, of course, links a language arts, so kind of a broader category. And math, we have to do that more or less every day on some form. But then, in terms of, you know, history is where, you know, I like the classical style, I don't if you've ever read the well trained mind, it's about kind of classical education. And what they do for history is they do this series of four years. So they'll start with ancients, they'll do ancients. And then they'll move up to, you know, a different time period. And the time periods gets shorter as time goes, because there's, you know, the kind of more history packed into the last couple 100 years. So and then what's nice is that you and you read literature of those areas, too, right. So if you're an ancient, you know, you're reading kind of, you know, somewhat like Egyptian mythology, or Greek mythology, or these kinds of things. And then as you move forward in time, you're reading the literature the same time period. And so I would say we do a little bit more expanded version of the traditional classical education, because we try to do the entire, like, as much of the world as we can do. A lot of times, it's kind of very focused on Western, and we want to make sure we're getting the whole global reading out, you know, all of the different civilizations to the best of our ability. So we're running all the way around, you know, it's, it's been recovering, I feel like I'm learning a ton, trying to find these really cool things to do for my kids. And then in terms of science, it was my husband and I are scientist. So you know, we just kind of find this constant, you know, and then it's because, you know, they ask a question, and then we'll dive into a conversation about light and photons. You know, it's just, you know, we're just, we kind of talk science constantly, we don't have to, we have, we don't have a precise curriculum, but the science is such a, like, if you let the kids ask questions, they just ask natural question. I mean, you know, science, K through K through five is a lot of just, you know, it's like plants and animals, and it's things that are in your physical world. And so, you know, we just let them ask questions, and we just kind of run them around and do experiments. And we love we love doing that constant experiment.
Melissa Milner 28:23
Yeah, well, I can imagine homeschooling is so much easier now that there's the internet.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 28:28
I don't know how people did it before. Like, everything about it is that the world is amazing, like, so. We were doing, you can go on tours of, you know, we went on when we were doing Egypt, we went to we went on a tour of you know, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Luxor Palace, and a lot of times, it's just people doing their own videos or whatever. When we were down in Central America, we went we went to Tecal and we were China. There weren't super great ones on that. But we could we could do like the Great Wall of China, which is technically in the same right window we did anyway. And, you know, we actually, we did the tour of Babylon, which I mean, we'll probably never get there. I mean, that's that was an it's Iraq. And so it was beautiful to get to see, you know, all of the amazing leftovers of Babylon. It's really cool. You know, so the world is amazing. And you can go on tours, museums during COVID. They opened up all of that and had all this great content. It was so I think it's amazing. And you know, I remember learning history from like, there's this like, pretty little picture, you know, and now it's like, let's take a tour of Babylon. Like...
Melissa Milner 29:36
Yeah, I remember having to outline chapters.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 29:40
History is so cool if you let it be.
Melissa Milner 29:45
Yeah. It was painful.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 29:47
Well, the other thing is that I feel like all I learned was I learned so much like, memorize this person's name. And when they lived and this was this war, and this was those people. And for me, I want to be like, well, let's learn history through learning like other Best of humanity like What? What? What is their art? Let's look at their art, what was their music? Let's listen to their music. Let's listen to you know, let's, you know, explore the building that they built.
Melissa Milner 30:10
And the geography. Why did they live there? What what?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 30:14
Kids are always like, just one another one by the river? Do we have to? Like, yeah, it's another one by the river. They're always by rivers, why are they always by rivers? Well, and then the other thing is that, like, all of the rivers were always overflowing that was causing constant problems. And that was a problem for, you know, the people, you know, the Egyptians, but as well as the changes in the ancient Chinese and so it's like, it's like, well, why are they living next to the rivers and they're always flooding? Well, it turns out to be a good thing. Like, why don't the reverse split anymore? Well, that's, let's talk some science. You know, so. And then I love you know, we, when we did Greece, we did, like solar clocks. And you know, it's awesome. And they, you know, they were one of the first civilizations to kind of figure out that the earth was round, right. And they did it based on the shadows on different parts of the earth. And so we did that experiment, right. And, you know, so that's a cool place. So I just, I want them to love learning, I want them to love being alive, and you know, in the world and people of the world, and so it's just kind of it helps, it helps us get there as well.
Melissa Milner 31:19
Yeah, and then, at some point, are you putting them back into school, or you're gonna be doing this through middle school, high school...
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 31:26
You know, I think that it'll be a little bit of a conversation with them, you know, and we're going to say, I'm not going to dictate that they have to stay home. Right now, if I asked them to really want to go back, neither one of them wants to go back. My oldest in particular has a very strong memory of what it was like and really doesn't want to do it. My youngest right now kind of does what the oldest does, so I'm interested to see how she changes over the years. But neither one of them wants that. So I think it'll be interesting to see how they how they get older. You know, and I think I'm very interested in doing I think that particularly as we move into middle school time period, you want to start having more discussion based stuff and we'd love for them to be able to do that more with with you know, kids their own age and or similar ages, not exactly precisely their same age. I love mixed mixed age and mixed ability learning. There's lots of studies that demonstrate how effective that is. In an...
Melissa Milner 32:16
But you can zoom with other homeschooled kids.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 32:19
I mean, there's lots of opportunity,
Melissa Milner 32:20
Right?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 32:21
Yeah.
Melissa Milner 32:21
Like if you chose to if you choose Yeah.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 32:23
I might even just start my own little cottage school, so...
Melissa Milner 32:28
Yeah, there you go. Do they play sports?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 32:30
They're in dance and gymnastics and Ninja kid really good daily Ninja Warrior things are they climb on all this stuff there and all that. So they do that and that's awesome. So yeah, they're into all the things.
Melissa Milner 32:46
So they're getting because I know a lot of people are, you know, think when they think homeschooling, but how will the kids socialize? Yeah, how will the kids have that experience?
Dr. Claire Honeycutt 32:54
You know it's funny I experience right that was probably one of my biggest worries when I first started homeschooling was like, but then now having even even after a year of homeschooling I thought I was actually started to worry more that the kids in school weren't getting enough socialization, because my kids when they go play with kids, they play for hours, not 30 minutes on the recess, you know, it's hours of play.
Melissa Milner 33:18
For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacher as.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.