#144: Teacher Exposes School System 'Meat Grinder' | Homeschools 5 Kids on Sailboat Instead

What happens when you ditch the American Dream, move onto a boat with five kids, and homeschool while traveling the Caribbean? In this inspiring episode, former public school teacher Tanya shares her family's extraordinary journey of "boat schooling" for nearly a decade.

From their catamaran "Take Two" in Florida's 10,000 Islands, Tanya opens up about:

Why They Left Conventional Life Behind

• The "meat grinder" feeling of the traditional education system
• Moving from Atlanta suburbia to life on the open ocean
• How a childhood dream became reality with five young children

The Reality of Boat Schooling

• Managing seasickness, morning sickness, and life in close quarters
• Using the world as your classroom: from banana plantations in Belize to Christopher Columbus's landing sites in the Bahamas
• One-room schoolhouse methods that work with multiple ages (toddler to teen)

Honest Conversations About:

• Unschooling yourself as a former teacher
• The socialization question (spoiler: she's seen what socialization looks like in classrooms)
• Teaching five different kids to read five different ways
• Why the "hard parts" of their unconventional childhood made her kids tougher and more resilient
• Creating deep family bonds that last into adulthood

Mentioned Resources:

• Life of Fred math curriculum
• Teach Your Baby to Read (Doman method)
• A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz
• Tanya's book: "Leaving the Safe Harbor: The Risks and Rewards of Raising a Family on a Boat"
• Blog: https://www.taketwosailing.com/

📘 The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide
Thinking about homeschooling but don’t know where to start? Cheryl created this comprehensive guide, compiling insights from interviews with over 120 homeschooling families across the country. From navigating state laws to balancing work and home life — this eBook covers it all. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident on your homeschooling journey.

🚨 Let’s Talk, Emergencies!
The most important lessons we can teach our kids aren’t just reading, writing, and math — they’re how to keep themselves and others safe. Let’s Talk, Emergencies! helps children learn essential safety skills in a fun, approachable way — from dialing 911 on a locked phone to staying safe online, around water, and in case of fire. Give your kids the knowledge and confidence to handle real-world situations.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool
How-To.
I'm Cheryl and I invite you tojoin me on my quest to find out
why people are homeschooling?
How do you do it?
How does it differ from regionto region?
And should I homeschool mykids?
Stick with me as I interviewhomeschooling families across
the country to unfold theanswers to each of these

(00:26):
questions week by week.
Welcome, and with us today Ihave Tanya from a ship in
Florida.
Tanya, thank you for beinghere.

Speaker (00:38):
Yes, it is my great joy to join you.
I am in the 10,000 Islands areaof Florida aboard a sailing
catamaran called Take Two.
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Well, it sounds luxurious, but you did show me
your cabin before we hit record.
So I don't know.
Maybe well, first let's tellthe audience why are you on a
ship in Florida?

Speaker (01:00):
Well, actually, we're kind of stationary right now,
but we spent the better part ofa decade traveling aboard a
sailing vessel with our fivechildren, basically boat
schooling them.
And so we're currentlystationary at a dock, um, caring
for aging parents and launchinga couple of teenagers.
But we have done many, manytrips out on the open ocean and

(01:21):
island hopping.
And most recently, we took twoof my homeschooled nieces with
us on a trip to the Bahamas.
So we are an adventure travelfamily.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Now, is your husband in the military?
Is that how you got into this?

Speaker (01:33):
No, but my husband is sort of like that Jimmy Buffett
son, Buffett song, a son of ason of a sailor.
So he's from a long traditionof Florida sailors, and he grew
up sailing with his dad on theirvessel, sailing vessel.
Uh, and then it was a dreamthat we hatched as a young
couple.
We wanted to do it as more thanjust, you know, little trips.

(01:54):
We wanted to go whole hog.
So that's how we ended up onthe boat.
And he's a digital nomad.
So we were able to keep ourdream afloat while he was
working the whole time.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Wow.
Now you're the second personI've had on that has been on a
boat.
Like, is this a thing that Ijust don't know about?
Is it like Dungeons and Dragonswhere it's this whole life?
Yes.
And if you're not in it, youjust don't know about it.
Like a lot of people do this.

Speaker (02:19):
It's like, it's like RVing, but on the water with a
little bit, you know, more addeddanger than an RV.
But there's a whole, you know,homeschool community of people
who R V, or like it's like thehidden world of long hiking.
So like we have two boys thatcompleted a 1,000 mile hike and
they met all these people, andnow they have a trail name and

(02:40):
they discovered, you know, morethan the Appalachian Trail.
There's like four other reallybig trails, you know, in the
United States, and there's awhole community of people who
just hike on their time off.
So we're part of this sailingcommunity, and they're it's a
thing.
It's a whole thing.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
That's amazing.
Okay.
So did you decide to sail afteryou had you?
You have five children,correct?

Speaker (03:03):
Correct.
So when we started just thethinking, planning, dream phase,
we were in our 20s.
We were high school sweetheartswho dated long distance during
college and then got married at22.
By the time we were 23, we hadhad our first big trip with
Jay's dad and stepmom.
And on the way home from thattrip, we started talking about

(03:23):
ditching our jobs in Atlanta,moving out of the city.
You know, we started dreamingvery early on.
Then I taught for a few yearsinto Cap County schools.
Jay was building his career, itwas brick and mortar.
There was no, you know, escapein sight.
But we kept talking about itand dreaming about it.
And we had three kids in threeyears.

(03:44):
So our oldest three are now 24,23, and 21 and a half.
So then all of a sudden, wewere like living in toddler
town.
And then we decided tohomeschool them and we left the
city and we moved to Florida tosort of explore what it might be
like to move onto a boat.
Like we needed to be in a placethat had coasts, and so we kind

(04:05):
of uh we baby stepped towardthat dream.
And by the time we movedaboard, we had a seven, six, and
four-year-old, and then thebaby was, I think, 18 months,
and that was Sam.
And then we traveled for awhile and then came back and had
a baby.
So I traveled uh during theentire pregnancy with Rachel,
who is now a teenager.

(04:26):
So she spent her whole lifeafloat.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Now, did you have seasickness and morning sickness
together or neither?

Speaker (04:33):
So I am super lucky.
I get neither.
And I actually have done aninformal poll.
I think there's a link, and Ithink it may have something to
do with your inner ear.
Like the things that cause thesame things that cause morning
sickness seem to exacerbateseasickness.
So informally, I don't knowyou'd have to poll your
audience, but informally I'vediscovered that my friends who
get seasick also have severemorning sickness, and the ones

(04:56):
who sort of have very mildpregnancies also tend to have
very mild seasickness.
And I get neither.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
That's interesting.
My son, we've now discovered hegets motion sickness in the
car.
So I don't know.

Speaker (05:08):
Oh, it's terrible.
I know.
Oh, I know.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
One of ours is just for us.
I don't know.
Well, there's medication.

Speaker (05:14):
There's medication.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
He did a fishing charter.
He's done a couple fishingcharters, and he wasn't seasick
on those.
So I don't know.
Maybe it's just maybe it's justmy driving, but that could be
it.

Speaker (05:24):
Well, I have my seasick child says I'm a terrible
driver, and I make him sick inthe car too.
And so we do have varyinglevels of seasickness in our
family.
One of our kids is severe,which we didn't discover, of
course, till after we wereliving on the boat.
And when you move onto a boat,you know, at a marina, it's not
until you're really out on theopen ocean that you discover, oh
my gosh, this kid is likeseverely seasick and he never

(05:46):
gets over it.
And we tried all the naturalthings, all the ginger,
everything.
Ginger, everything.
And in the end, we startedmedicating him because, you
know, he was miserable everytime we untied the lines.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
And the medicine works.

Speaker (05:58):
Yes.
My husband uses studron.
So the captain of all people,the captain gets seasick as
well.
And always got seasick, even asa kid.
It's kind of a miracle that weended up on a boat, but the this
will tell you that for us, thegood parts definitely outweigh
the bad parts.
So we he obviously thought itwas worth it.
So he medicates with a drugcalled studron, and that seems
to work.

unknown (06:19):
Okay.

Speaker (06:19):
And works in smaller doses.
Yeah, works in smaller dosesfor smaller people.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
All right.
So what was your initial reasonto homeschool in the first
place?

Speaker (06:28):
So I was a public school teacher in Atlanta, and I
loved my job.
I adored my job.
It was for sure a calling.
I had always wanted to be ateacher.
I taught kindergarten forseveral years.
I loved teaching kids to read.
I love art and music andcreativity.
And that system was eating mealive.
And I was like, the teachingpart was fine.

(06:51):
The kid part was fine.
The administrative part wasterrible.
The feeling that you're in somesort of meat grinder, like the
Pink Floyd song, you know, likeanother brick in the wall.
Like that feeling.
I don't know if you've everseen their music video for
another brick in the wall, butthere's like a meat grinder and
the kids get thrown in and theycome out as these bricks.
Like it was away.
Yeah.
You'll have to go back andwatch that.

(07:12):
It kind of creeped my kids outwhen we showed them, you know,
hey, teachers, leave them kidsalone.
Like that, that one.
So I felt kind of crushed bythat system.
I didn't feel like from withinit that I could do what I had,
what I really dreamed of doing.
There was so littleflexibility.
And everything seemed to bepushing towards standardized
testing.
So all the teaching is so thatthe kids can pass a test.

(07:34):
Not for the joy of learning,not for life skills, just, you
know, to make the nextmilestone.
And then once you finishschool, you make the next
milestone, you get into college.
And then you make the nextmilestone, you get a job, and
you get married and you buy ahouse and you go into debt.
And then you get really old,and maybe you get to travel when
you're retired and then youdie.
And it's this whole system thatkind of freaked us out.

(07:57):
So we abandoned ship, so tospeak.
We really wanted out in a lotof different ways.
We were very boxed in in thislittle neighborhood in Atlanta.
We were boxed in in our jobs.
We just felt boxed in and wewanted out.
And so that led to ushomeschooling.
I already had the teachingdegree.
I felt like I had the comfortlevel with choosing curriculum

(08:18):
and teaching kids.
Turns out that homeschooling isso much harder than classroom
teaching.
And I had to like unschoolmyself in order to do that.
People are like, oh, you're solucky.
You came from a teachingbackground.
Actually, I had to reallyunlearn a lot of things in order
to homeschool my own children.
Very, very different, differentjob description.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
And it's interesting that you say it was harder, but
that's because you had tounschool yourself.
And so, yeah, walk us throughthat.
What does that unschooling looklike to you?

Speaker (08:48):
Okay, so the first day that I ever decided to like
officially start homeschooling,of course, you realize after you
homeschool that you've beenhomeschooling your children for
the first five years, and thenlike some system tells you that
you're not good enough to teachthem when they turn five.
Like it's so crazy.
So I had taught all my kids howto swim because we had a
swimming pool in our backyardand I didn't want them to drown.

(09:08):
So we had done a lot of thingsindependently, you know, and
read books and done puzzles anddone art projects with our kids
all the way till they turnedfive.
But on the first day of school,I rang a little bell and I had
a little flag and I made Elirepeat the Pledge of Allegiance
because that's what you do atschool, right?
And then he couldn't sit stillbecause I'm pretty sure he was

(09:31):
he's I'm gonna sayneurodivergent because that's
the fancy word now.
My oldest is definitelyneurodivergent and could not sit
still.
So I started teaching him hisalphabet on a little chalkboard,
like old school, while he satin a little rocking chair.

unknown (09:44):
Okay.

Speaker (09:45):
Because that's what he could do.
He needed to move while he waslearning and I could customize
our homeschool that way.
But what I was doing was schoolat home, which I think many
people will recognize from thepandemic because when schools
closed during COVID, a lot ofpeople did school at home.
And then they said, My gosh,homeschool is impossible.
This is so hard.

(10:06):
Well, of course it's hardbecause you just shoved this
whole thing into your livingroom or your kitchen and you
rang a little bell and said thePledge of Allegiance.
Like it doesn't mesh with yourlife.
So I think what happened afterthe first few days, after we
realized, well, this is kind ofsilly, or like if the kid can't
sit still for six hours a day,which is what they would be

(10:27):
doing at school, I basicallythrew it all out the window and
started from scratch.
Because you can't have your,you know, five or six-year-old
kid saying to you, Mommy, I hatereading, because the reading
lesson is, you know, miserable.
So he'd be sitting next to meon the couch and he would look
at me and be like, I hatereading.
And I'm like, stop, stop, stop.
You don't hate reading.
What you hate is the arduousprocess of decoding, you know,

(10:49):
these little squiggles on thepage.
He loved books, he loved words,he could recite things from
memory, but the actual sittingstill was really, really painful
for him.
So we would get to the like20-minute mark and he would
start squirming.
I'd feel irritated.
He'd feel irritated.
I'd be like, hey, go climb thetree.
And he would go climb the treein the front yard, and that was
homeschool.

(11:09):
And then we would try again thenext day.
And lo and behold, like rightaround seven or eight, something
magical happened and he put itall together.
I still don't know how ithappens because even though I've
taught lots and lots ofchildren how to read, you give
them all these little skills,and in the end, they have to
synthesize everything.
And that's sort of the lightbulb moment that teachers will
talk about.
And I got to experience thatwith all of my children because,

(11:32):
you know, that was the beautyof homeschooling.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
That is so beautiful too, that you just get to see
you're the one that gets to bethere for it, you know, like you
were the teacher there for theother kids, but their parents
missed out on that.
Right.
Yeah.
And and that you got to seethat for your kids is.

Speaker (11:50):
Yeah, that was that was the fun part.
That was the definitely the funpart.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, and I'm going through that now.
My son is seven, and we've beenworking for a couple of years
now on reading.
And well, of course, afive-year-old isn't gonna want
to sit there and learn theletters, and even now, I mean,
he still can't like read likehe's reading, it takes him a lot
a long time, and you know, sohe's sounding it out and he's
still getting things wrong, andso it's like, and he just turned

(12:16):
seven a couple months ago.
So, but you're right, it'slike, well, now is when the
brain is making thoseconnections that at five and six
he wasn't old enough to do, andat eight, it is probably gonna
be so much easier for him.
So like I'm pushing them, butso early.
And then as homeschoolers, youfeel like, well, I have to do it
early because everyone willthink I'm failing if if he's not

(12:37):
reading by seven.
So right.

Speaker (12:39):
I think there is some social pressure.
I do feel like that's alsorelaxed a little bit.
Now, on the flip side, I'lltell you the flip side.
I had two boys and then I had agirl, and I was like always
pregnant and nursingsimultaneously.
But by the time I had the girl,I had a little bit of breathing
space.
And so I had read a book byGary Doman, Glenn and Gary
Doman.

(12:59):
I can't remember the last nameis Doman, and it was teach your
baby to read.
And I was so lit up by thisbook.
And it was basically like, whynot teach your kid to read when
they're in their major languagelearning phase, which is before
five?
And they had this whole methodthat was not oppressive at all
and not like forcing somethingon your child.
Your child's brain is a spongebetween zero and four.

(13:20):
They're basically memorizinglanguage and all language is
symbolic.
So their principle was you'retelling a kid what a duck is,
for example.
You could be at the pond andsay, look, it's a duck.
Or you could show them theirrubber duck at bathtime and say,
look, duck.
And you're showing them apicture of a duck and saying,
duck.
They're learning the word duck,what a duck looks like, quacks
like a duck, walks like a duck.

(13:41):
And why not teach them what theword duck looks like?
It's okay.
You know what I'm saying?
So we did these flashcards withmy daughter.
Now, I won't know, I'll neverknow if it's because she was a
girl or because I was reallygood at teaching my baby to
read, but that girl readfluently by three and a half.
Like it was appalling.

(14:02):
Like we Jay, she was sitting onmy husband's lap and he was
reading some spy novel, and shelooks down.
She was four at the time, andshe goes, I can read your book,
daddy.
And he goes, You can't read mybook.
And she starts reading out loudand he quickly closes the book
because it's not like a G-ratedbook.
And he was like, Oh my gosh, myfour-year-old can read.

(14:24):
So I had the time and energywith her to put into the sort of
basically memorizing theEnglish language.
And she, her little brain didthe rest.
So for any parents out there,like, there's a million
different ways to homeschool.
My boys learned to read on adelayed schedule.
My daughter learned to read atfour.
My fourth son never was gonnaever learn to read, but I

(14:46):
motivated him with superherobooks, like easy readers.
And I we're super um cleaneaters.
And so he wanted Superman icecream.
Every time we would go to anice cream shop, and it's full of
like red dye and blue dye andyellow dye.
It's just vanilla ice cream,but looks like the Superman
logo.
And I said, if he finishedthese like eight superhero easy

(15:08):
readers, I would reward him witha Superman ice cream cone.
And that's all it took.
And then that kid learned toread.
So I mean, really, like younever get to be an expert at
homeschooling because everychild is different and presents
different challenges.
And that's from a mom of fivewho and I have now homeschooled
four kids kindergarten through,you know, college age.
So I'm still not an expert.

(15:29):
I don't know what to tell you.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
And just think about that.
Your kids all have thesedifferent experiences with
learning how to read.
So, how is a teacher supposedto sit in front of 30 students
and expect that they're allgonna get it the same time and
the same way presented to them?
And not even with theone-on-one attention, really.
I mean, there's just no way ateacher can sit one-on-one with

(15:52):
them.
I mean, it it is bizarre,right?
When you think of it, yourdaughter, if she were in daycare
and preschool and regularpublic school, that would have
just I mean, that's a talent.
Like I I don't think every babyis going to learn to read by
four with the method, butthere's something about her and
the way that method waspresented to her and it clicked,

(16:14):
and that would have totallybeen missed.
You know, it it is really wildto think like all the kids that
are in school that might be likethese geniuses in some area and
right, they're just fallingthrough the cracks because we
don't have enough one-on-oneattention.

Speaker (16:29):
Yeah, and it's true that so as an elementary school
teacher, I can tell you thatit's a lot like throwing mud on
the wall.
Like you throw everythingyou've got at it.
And if you're a dedicatedteacher, you'll try to get each
kid exactly what they need.
But like the first year Itaught kindergarten, I had
35-year-olds and one assistant.
And two of my kids in thatclassroom were special needs.
But in kindergarten, they'renot, it's there's no pull-out.

(16:51):
There's you're stillidentifying who needs what, you
know, and starting I the IEPprocess.
So the kids in the middle dofine.
They do fine.
But the kids who need extrahelp and the kids who are very,
very bright and bored andtroublemakers.
I was one of those inkindergarten myself.
Those kids fall through thecracks because you just can't
give them what they need.

(17:12):
So I knew that going into it.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
There's just no way.
There's not enough resources.
Wow.
Okay, so you're teaching thatnow.
This is something I thoughtabout today, since you were an
elementary school teacher.
Kids at that age, at five yearsold, they really need a
caregiver.
Like, you know, in their life,they don't need to know all
their colors at five.
They don't need in all theirshapes and numbers, but they do

(17:34):
need a caregiver, like allthrough the day.
And I guess I had never thoughtabout it before until I started
like writing an Instagram post.
And I'm like, you know, I Ilook at my kids and I'm like,
they really need me like allthroughout the day.
Like, I need a hug here, I needa little support here.
But did you like what do youthink that's doing to the kids?
Or what did you see?
What did you experience?
Like, are there these kids thatare just like, I I really want

(17:56):
my mom right now to be away frommy mom?
And now kindergarten is a fullday.
Uh back when I went to school,it was a half a day.
Now it's a full day.
So a five-year-old is inschool, and I think we even have
a preschool full day at theschool down the road from me.
So four years old, they're witha mom all day long.
And it just seems a little bitdifferent than daycare, too,
because it's like they're justshuffled off on this bus, and

(18:18):
um, maybe they're not in a home.
I don't know.
So what do you think that doesto the child's psyche, to their
emotional level?

Speaker (18:25):
Well, children were not made to be raised in litters.
So, like a cat or a dog mighthave 10 uh kittens or puppies,
and they're sort of biologicallygeared to have to be raised in
a litter, but human beings werenot made to be raised that way.
Like it takes 18 years ofdedication to raise a really

(18:46):
good human being.
So I can't even imagine.
Like, I had a litteressentially of 25 kids, some of
whom um would accidentally callme mom, and then I got reports
back from parents that theywould occasionally get called
Mrs.
Hackney.
So there's a little bit ofconfusion there between mom and
teacher because you spend somuch time with these kids.
And of course, I was bonded tothem, but imagine being a kid

(19:09):
and you're, you know, with yourmom and then you're torn away,
and then you're with yourteacher, and then that's only
for a year, and then you're withthe next teacher.
I think that we're we're gonnahave, I think we're having
serious attachment problems.
And I think it is creatingtrauma.
I really don't think humanbeings were made to be raised
that way.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
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The most important lessons wecan teach our kids are not
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(19:46):
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Speaker (19:57):
And also, if you think, I'm sure you've dealt with this
in lots of conversations withhomeschoolers, people will ask
you, but what aboutsocialization?
And you're like, good God.
So, first of all, we weren'tmeant to be socialized.
We were meant to be sociable.
If you've looked at a classroomfull of children, that's what
socialization looks like.
It looks like your kid in anartificial setting with 30 other

(20:20):
seven-year-olds or whatever,and that's who they're gonna be
like.
Whatever those kids are like,that's what your kid is gonna be
like.
That's socialization.
And so when people would say,What about socialization?
I would say, well, I've seenwhat socialization looks like
and I'm not that interested init.
I would rather my kid be raisedin a more natural setting where
they have the ability to have aconversation with someone

(20:40):
younger than them, someone olderthan them.
I want them to be able toconverse with adults and make
eye contact with strangers andmake friends with people from
all different walks of life.
And that doesn't really happenin the artificial setting of
school.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Right.
And, you know, my teachersalways told me, stop
socializing.
You're not talking.

Speaker (21:00):
Exactly.
And then lunch is 30 minutesnow.
And in the school that I taughtin, they had done away with a
recess.
Like there was no recess.
I was teaching five andsix-year-old boys.
I had a classroom one year with20 boys in it, and it was PE.
PE was the new recess, which isstill structured wiggle time,
right?
But it's not an unstructuredtime.
Imagine, like that, that's whywhen I said I had this sort of

(21:23):
meat grinder experience.
Why are we drugging children?
It's because that's the onlyway that you can get them to sit
still for six hours a day,shuffling them from one, you
know, from the music class backto the classroom, up to the
bathroom as a group and back, upto the lunchroom for 30 minutes
and back.
Like you're forcing them to dothis very artificial thing that
they were not meant to do.

(21:44):
And the only way to get them todo that, especially boys, is to
drug them.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah.

Speaker (21:49):
I know I'm very critical about this whole
system, but it's because I it'slike working in a restaurant
where you've had like the healthdepartment come in and there's
rats and roaches in the kitchen.
You don't eat there, right?
Like I've seen how things arehappening there, and I'm not
interested in throwing my kidsinto it.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Absolutely.
I mean we were just eatingdinner before I came down here
to record, and my seven-year-oldis sitting next to me, and he
is just moving, moving, hittingthe table, hitting the table.
I was like, Oh my gosh, Iremember that.
I'm going to send you down thedriveway and back three times
because we're on a big hill, sothat you can get that energy.
And he's been outside all day.
He hasn't even been in aclassroom.

(22:25):
He was outside working on thedirt bike, he was on the
tractor, and this is still a kidthat can't sit still for day.
And we don't even, we don't dosodas, we don't do any.
I don't know.

Speaker (22:35):
Can you imagine?
You know what?
I wish we could bottle it.
If I could just take all ofthat extra energy and then drink
it at about like two o'clock inthe afternoon, right when I'm
starting to like hit my energydip, I'd be like, hey, I'll tell
you what, you sit still andI'll drink your energy, and then
we're gonna be good to go.
It's crazy.
They have so much energy.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
He would definitely have issues if he were in
school.
I know it.
And you know, especially withthe sarcasm that he thinks is
funny, but it's really sarcasticand it's because he hangs out
with adults, right?

Speaker (23:05):
He has adopted some adult sense of humor and they
crack you up all day long, butyou're like, I might have ruined
this kid, and they cannot evergo to public school.
If I ever put this kid on abus, they're gonna be in so much
trouble.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
So, okay, so that brings me to a good point there.
How have your kids dealt withbeing on the boat, right?
Because that was a big fear ofmine in the beginning.
Are my kids going to resent mefor the lifestyle that I am
choosing, the childhood I'mgiving them?
How do your kids feel about it?
You have adults now,essentially.
So how did it go?

Speaker (23:34):
I do.
I know.
I like I I've kind of graduateda few, so I can kind of on the
other side of it.
I can I can look back over myshoulder and tell you what I've
learned.
So something interesting that Irealized pretty early on is
that I have the perspective tocompare my childhood with their
childhood, but they don't havethat perspective.
For them, I am defining normalfor them.

(23:54):
So people will always stopRachel, especially because she
was raised on the boat, likefrom the time she was in utero,
she was on our boat and hasnever lived in a house.
They'll say, Oh, that's soamazing that you had that
childhood.
What was that like?
And she'll be like, We didschool, we did chores, there was
no air conditioning sometimes,it was hot, sometimes I was

(24:15):
seasick, and I'm like, Okay.
And she goes, Oh, and sometimeswe climbed volcanoes and swam
with whale sharks and wentsnorkeling every afternoon.
And people are kind of amazedby that.
But for her, it is the mostnormal, boring thing on the
planet.
And she does not know how toanswer people because for her,
it's just normal.
It's normal that we moved fromplace to place.
It's normal that we would meetup with friends wherever we

(24:37):
went.
It was normal to swab the deck,you know, it was normal to it
was just normal.
That was her life.
And so I felt a lot less guiltyafter the first few kids of
like, oh, what are we doing toour kids?
We're ruining our kids.
And I thought, I'm gonna givethem the kind of childhood I
wish I had had.
And they won't know thedifference.
I mean, we changed the way wedid holidays, we changed just

(24:59):
everything.
I wanted really hard, I really,really wanted to break some of
the negative generationalpatterns that were in my family
and really start over.
And I don't think you can startover any more than cutting the
lines and like sailing away.
You're really making a cleanbreak, you know, literally and
figuratively.
You couldn't find me if youtried.

(25:20):
Exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
So the one uh how like what did friendships work?
I mean, did they do they havefriends that they've had for
years?

Speaker (25:31):
Yeah, so we had the best of both worlds.
I think part of it is becausewe were so successful at doing
it long term.
A lot of the sailing familiesare doing a sabbatical.
A lot of the RV families aredoing a sabbatical.
They're like, hey, why whydon't we save up some money and
do this for a year to have somereally good family adventures
and then go back to our regularlife?
Maybe they'll put their houseup for rent or, you know,
there's lots of different waysof funding it.

(25:52):
We wanted to do it forever.
Like we just we cut all ties.
We sold the house, we sold thecar, we sold 90% of our crap,
and we took off.
I always thought we wouldcircumnavigate, but with both
Jay's work and like with a kidwho gets really severely
seasick, I don't think that wasin the cards for us.
But we spent, you know, threeand a half years island hopping

(26:14):
in the Caribbean and in CentralAmerica.
It was amazing.
And there was an answer inthere somewhere.
I'm off on a tangent.
Friends.
And so what we discovered wasthere's this beautiful community
of people who are also doingthis.
And so during the cruisingseason, which is roughly winter
and spring, you're sort oftouching base with people on

(26:35):
different islands.
Like if you're in the Caribbeanor if you're in the Bahamas,
there'll be places where peoplecongregate and then every kind
everybody kind of splits up.
So you make a bunch of friends,and then everybody splits up a
little for a little while andgoes their own way.
And then hurricane season,everybody meets up in a safe
place.
So you'll run into the samepeople over and over again, year
after year after year, and youkeep in touch with these people

(26:57):
because they become your family,right?
You're far away from all thefamiliar things.
These people become yourfamily, and you get tight and
close really fast.
And then we would come back tothe same places.
So we had spent many seasons inthe Florida Keys, and there's a
really beautiful homeschoolcommunity there.
So our kids had long-termfriends in the Florida Keys, and

(27:18):
then they had these short-termfriends that we would touch base
with every time we weretraveling.
And then we would keep keep intouch and we would do road trips
in the US and then go visit allof our sailing friends who had
gone back to land.
Um, and then our teenagers,when we came back from the
Caribbean, our teenagers wantedto settle back in the Florida
Keys because that's where theirfriends or their long-term

(27:38):
friends had been.
So we did that for a few years.
We kind of just we werebasically stationary either on a
mooring ball or in a marina, sothat they could do the sort of
normal teenager thing.

unknown (27:48):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
So I'm just trying to picture it.
Like, so you you dock yourboat, you have to what pay rent
to keep it docked somewhere, butyou sleep on it every night,
even though it's not necessarilymoving for the season or
whatnot.
Like even in hurricane season,would you leave and go stay on
the So we've done a lot ofright?

Speaker (28:06):
We've been we've been doing this for 17 years.
So we've spent hurricaneseasons about everywhere you
can.
Usually, if we're not in thehurricane zone, we would just
stay on the boat.
Occasionally, if if there'slike a really big threat, we
could easily get off the boat.
I'm trying to think.
I don't think we've ever had toevacuate.
Um, we considered it a coupleof times.
One time we tied up in themangroves, so we enacted like a

(28:28):
hurricane plan where we wouldnot want to be near other boats
or near land or near buildingsthat, you know, or near big
trees where there could bedamage.
We would tie ourselves off inthe mangroves all by ourselves.
We've only had to do that once.
We've been in hurricane placeslike we've been up in the
Chesapeake during a hurricanewhere we didn't have to worry
about it because we were reallyfar inland, like up the Potomac

(28:50):
River for a hurricane season.
We did a hurricane season inGrenada, a hurricane season in
Panama, and that's far enoughsouth that you don't have to
worry about hurricanes.
And we did a hurricane seasonin Guatemala and found nine
other teenagers, amazingly boatkids that were teenagers, so our
kids had gobza friends forseveral months in the Rio Dulce,

(29:11):
which is way up this river, soyou don't have to worry about
storms.
We've weathered six, sevennamed storms on the boat, but
never seen more than like sixtyknots of of wind.
Anything more than like acategory one, I would not want
to be on the boat.
It would be terrifying.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah.
Wow.
So what are some of the placesthat you've traveled?
You've named a f a couplethere, but I did.

Speaker (29:33):
So we traveled up the East Coast.
So we've done the East Coast ofthe United States as a history
field trip.
Fabulous.
Like, you know, swapping theschool at home for homeschool
means that you can turneverything into a learning
opportunity.
You know, the oldest city isSt.
Augustine, you know, the oldoldest city in the United
States.
So that was like sort of thebeginning of our trip.

(29:55):
And then we were, we stopped inCharleston and up inside the
Chesapeake.
Of course, you can get to allof the old history places in the
Chesapeake and went all the wayup to Washington, D.C.
and did all of the museums.
It was a fabulous, fabulous.
I'm calling it a field trip,but it was a two-month field
trip where everything washands-on and on location.

(30:15):
Wonderful.
You don't even have to writelesson plans at that point.
You just go places and seethings and experience, you know,
the places firsthand.
And then we spent many seasonsin the Bahamas because our kids
love to be underwater.
So spearfishing and freedivingand snorkeling.
There's just no playground likethat.

(30:36):
You know, the underwaterplayground in the Bahamas.
And then we spent three and ahalf years in the Caribbean.
We went down the EasternCaribbean, island hopping, and
then you're getting old worldculture in the new world, right?
You're getting French and Dutchand Spanish, all of those
colonial places that are nowindependent.
The the leftovers are languageand culture and food and music,

(30:58):
and it's it's like touring theworld by island hopping.

unknown (31:03):
Wow.

Speaker (31:03):
And then uh we spent a season in Grenada and we loved
it, and there were tons of kidsthere, and we made really good
friends and just loved thatisland.
And then we went west toBonaire, which is in the Dutch
Caribbean, and then we spentsome time in Colombia, which is
South America.
I just had to pinch myself.
Like we sailed all the way toSouth America.

(31:24):
It was amazing.
And we started to learnSpanish, and then we spent a
year in Panama.
And so even though we werethere for a whole year, we were
also exploring inland, overland,several different ports, spent
a lot of time uh in thearchipelago of Bocas del Toro,
but also explored the canal zoneand San Blas, which is a very

(31:44):
idyllic little island group.
And then we went north to SanAndres and Providencia, which
belong to Colombia again, theBay Islands of Honduras, Belize,
which has the I think thirdbiggest barrier reef in the
world.
So we got to explore that,which was really cool.
And then we spent a longseason, like 10 months in

(32:05):
Guatemala.
And then when we left, we wentto Belize, then Mexico, and then
completed our Caribbean circle.
And then we've been in prettymuch in Florida since then.

unknown (32:15):
Okay.

Speaker (32:16):
Wow.
I think we have 20 stamps.
I think what we we counted itup recently, and Rachel has 20
stamps in her passport.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
So amazing.
Oh my goodness.
Where do we begin?
Okay, so how did you preparethem with their high school
years and uh like what are theydoing now?
Or did they do they want to goto college?
Do they realize that's probablya scam?

Speaker (32:36):
Yes.
Um, so that was the hardestpart for me.
I think I spent some timefeeling both like this weird,
the weirdest feeling when wecame back from that Caribbean
travel.
Rachel was only eight.
So I was still kind of like inthis stage where you are with
homeschooling in elementaryschool.
And simultaneously, her oldestbrother was 18.
So we were like trying toprepare him for independence.

(32:57):
And he had spent his whole highschool years homeschooling in
the islands, which was a veryunique experience.
Academically, we were doing alot of book and pencil
old-fashioned, I mean, likeone-room schoolhouse stuff.
So all the kids would dohistory and science together,
and then they would sort ofbreak off to do their own
whatever level of math they weredoing.
Um, I had gone to thehomeschool convention in Florida

(33:19):
right before Eli and Aaronstarted high school because I
wanted to make sure I had thematerials and kind of a clear
idea of where we were going incase they wanted to go to
college.
I didn't want them to becrippled by their weird
childhood.
So I wanted to make sure thatif they wanted to go to college,
that I was giving them thetools to do that while
simultaneously raising them insuch an unconventional

(33:40):
atmosphere that when they gotback, they were like, why would
we want to do that?
So you are right, they realizedthat it was a scam.
We had saved up, had a hugeeducation fund that no one is
using.
They're using it.
Like we do not have to pay forfour-year, you know, university
educations for any of thesekids.
When we came back to theFlorida Keys, the three
teenagers signed up for Floridadual enrollment, which in

(34:03):
Florida is free.
So it's two years of college.
It's basically an AA degreethat they can get for free if
they apply themselves.
And so my oldest son aged outat 19, but he finished like he
only had a couple of credits.
So he has an A.
And then he went to work for mybrother's commercial painting
business and he saved a ton ofmoney because he was trying to

(34:24):
figure out what he wanted to do.
And in the meantime, he figuredhe might as well get a skill
and make some money.
And um, and he ended up wantingto go back to school and he
went and got his EMT and works.
He just got a job withemergency services, which is
super cool.
So he's done a couple of shiftson an ambulance and he's
getting his paramedic.
And he would ultimately, hethinks he would like to do

(34:45):
disaster relief, which would bevery cool.
And he's got a very cool head,so I can totally imagine him
doing that.
And then our second son, whowas the one who was Mr.
Fix It on the boat, he wasalways tinkering with the dinghy
engine or the helping MJ with aproject on the boat.
He didn't like jumping throughother people's hoops.
So after a year of college, hedecided he wanted to get a

(35:06):
technical education.
So he ended up with a Bachelorof Science, the equivalent of a
Bachelor of Science, and he isworking uh for Mercedes-Benz as
a technician, and he's like 80%of the way done with a master
mechanic at age 23, which isamazing.
And he really loves his job andhe loves to tinker with, he's
got a couple of old cars and heloves to tinker with his cars.

(35:27):
Yep.
So he's a car guy.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
And then I have a daughter who uh got her AA a car
guy that never spent like a dayin the car in his whole right.

Speaker (35:37):
Well, he was the one that he was the one who got
seasick, and so he was like, I'mgonna be on land now.
I do not need a boat, I'm notgonna tinker with boat engines
anymore, not interested in boatengines at all.
And then my daughter, who gotshe got an AA in high school at
her graduation, she graduatedfrom high school with an AA,
which was amazing.
And she did a stint at a um ata dude ranch in Colorado.

(36:02):
And I thought she was gonna endup like being like this
mountain woman because she lovedhorses.
And she ended up, she came backfrom that, she had, you know,
grown some independence and shesigned up for the Coast Guard.
So she went back to boats.
She's working on boats.
Yeah, she's not on a boat,she's actually stationed at a
station, but she is the she'sworking on a 29 foot and a

(36:23):
47-foot boat, and they go outand they do search and rescues,
and she sends us pictures ofthese really uncomfortable sea
conditions, and she getsseasick.
So I'm like, this does not Ican't believe you did this.
Like, why did you why did youchoose this career?
But she's super happy, shereally loves it.
Oh, yeah, she loves it.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Did she get the medication?

Speaker (36:43):
So if you get a call in the middle of the night because
there's some strandedfisherman, there's no time for
it to take effect.
So she just toughs it out.
But I think that's one of thethings you learn in basic
training is how to tough it out.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah.

Speaker (36:55):
She's very tough, she's a tough girl.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Wow, that's amazing.
I mean, the just the fact thatthey are doing things that they
really like doing.
And you know, none of thosejobs none of them that they're
really pigeonholed.
Like, correct.
Correct.
Okay, well, I did however manyyears in the Coast Guard, now I
can take those skills and I cancontinue to go.
I can start my own business.
You know, so it's it's that'sthe thing, you know, where like

(37:19):
I got out of college and it waslike, what am I gonna do with a
communication degree?
Right.
Yeah.
So yeah, I worked for thegovernment for 16 years, and it
was like, yeah, this is justwhere I am.
Not getting really any skillsthat would help me later on in
life.
So that is so important.

Speaker (37:39):
Well, and here here's a something that we never even
thought about.
We're riding the crest of thiswave and not being crushed by
it.
But like all these jobs thatare going to be taken over by
AI, our kids have chosen jobs cocoincidentally that a robot
can't do.
Yeah.
So I think that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Anything in the trades like that, you know, my
husband does the commercialHVAC, so it's like Yeah, high
demand.

Speaker (38:03):
Yeah, very high demand right now, and shortage of
labor.
So, I mean, I think it's anamazing opportunity for young
people to get back into trades.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah, and trades look so much different than they did
20 years ago, you know, when hewas getting into it then.
It, you know, it was, I I wouldimagine, even more hands-on.
Like he's super hands-on witheverything that he does, but
there's also so much that thecomputer can do too.
For instance, like, okay, writethis report, you know, and

(38:32):
here's you're telling it whatyou did, and it regurgitates a
report for you.
Or, you know, so it's like someof the little things that AI
has helped a little bit with.

Speaker (38:41):
Yeah, well, I mean, I have a kid who's a technician,
he's not a mechanic, he's atechnician, and at Mercedes-Benz
you wear gloves, so he doesn'thave the black fingernails of a
mechanic, but he's got thisfancy computer because it
interfaces with the car andgives him all the error codes.
So I understand what you'resaying about it looking a little
bit different.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
That's what I'm yeah, I couldn't think of a good, but
you're right, yes, because myhusband works on cars too.
He built a Camaro, and yes, sohe's got a laptop in the Camaro,
and he's like fussing with thethat where back in, you know,
the 80s and 90s, we wouldn'treally have had it hooked up to
a computer.
You know, you just got in therewith your tools and switch it.

(39:20):
But yes, you can programthings.
I won't be but yeah, so it itis very different.
And that's kind of hard toprepare your kids for that.
When you were kind of creatingtheir lesson plans in their high
school years, did you I knowthey had the dual enrollment, so
at least you didn't really haveto worry about what they were
learning through the colleges.
How did you supplement or whatdid you feel that you had to

(39:40):
make up for to get that highschool diploma part?
And so that they were ready forthis ever-changing world of
technology.

Speaker (39:47):
Right.
So I had taken, um, I had takena seminar when I went to the
Florida Homeschool conventionabout writing high school
transcripts.
And it was another mom who hadfigured out how to make them
look official, and I bought herbook.
And so I just would look atlike the Florida state standards
and look at what was requiredfor a Florida diploma.
And then I would somehow try tomush what we had done into that

(40:10):
formula.
It doesn't work really well,like you have to make things up
sometimes.
So if you're traveling throughthe Caribbean, you're studying
history, like the colonialhistory of the New World, like
we were getting French historyand you know, the Spanish
conquistadors and we're walkingin their footsteps and we're
interfacing with all of thesefirst peoples, like super

(40:32):
interesting.
But how do you write that as ahistory curriculum?
So, you know, like I was givingmy courses a name, but the
coursework, I mean, like we wentto a banana plantation and
learned how they grow bananas.
That's not in the Florida statestandards for 10th grade.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
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(41:10):
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(41:30):
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Speaker (41:42):
So it was very hard to make what we did fit the Florida
curriculum, but you know, youhave to a certain number of
language arts credits and acertain number of math credits.
Math is easy because like wedid Life of Fred, which was
great because that I don't knowif you know Life of Fred.
It's like a ridiculouscurriculum where it's like uh
like story-based, but everythingis like a real world problem.

unknown (42:04):
Okay.

Speaker (42:05):
And then we supplemented with sort of
old-fashioned curriculum whenyou know, when Fred wasn't quite
enough, but it was book andpencil, and it was like I spent
$700 and homeschooled fivechildren, you know, K through
12.
So because it's not consumable,it's just book and pencil.
You read the chapter, youanswer the questions, you read
the chapter, you answer thequestions, you take a quiz at

(42:27):
the end, and voila, you knowmath.
So we loved Life of Fred upuntil about high school, and
then the kids were kind of tiredof the like storybook problems.
And so then we would go withsome like boring book and pencil
or workbook for algebra.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Did you notice in there like in the one curriculum
jumping to another?

Speaker (42:47):
Just that the he calls it kill and drill.
Most math programs are kill anddrill.
Like you learn the skill andthen they give you a hundred
practice problems and you do ituntil it's so you know it so
well that it's boring.
If I had a kid who wasstruggling with something like
like they would learn how tomultiply, and then before you
can move on, you really need tohave it mechanized.
You know, it needs to be likeautomatic.

(43:08):
So if I noticed that there wasa gap, I would like stop doing
Life of Fred and we would makeflashcards and we would work
really hard on that skill untilthey were ready to move on.
But when you're homeschooling,you can do that, you can fill in
all the gaps.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
And we were just talking about that this morning,
actually.
My son was doing his, he'sdoing Matthew C right now.

Speaker (43:27):
And well, I love Matthew C and I love all those
manipulatives.
What a great program.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, I I do like and he seems to like it.
I mean, it's dry, it's not anystorybook, that's for sure.

Speaker (43:39):
But a lot of people use Life of Fred as a supplement to
another math program becauselike my kids would beg me to
read another chapter, and I'd belike, It's a math book.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Are you sure?
So that happens next.
Yeah, and so he's doing thecarrying over.
So, you know, he was havinglike he would get it, and then
the next one he would kind offorget what he did.
And you know, I said to him, orlike we he did a whole page
while I was in the shower, and Icame back, I was like, I didn't
really do this right, buddy.
So we uh slowly went through,and normally he does two lessons

(44:11):
a day.
And um I was like, Hey, thisweek, this one's a little
tougher.
Let's just do one lesson a day.
Don't overwhelm yourself.
You let it sink in.
And I said to him, you know,this is the beauty of
homeschooling, like it's hard,so let's not get too frustrated
with it.
You don't need to do four pagesof it just because that's what
you did when it was easier.
Take your time and you know, Ithat is really the beauty of it.

(44:34):
And like you said, you canlet's make some flashcards
because you need a little extrapractice.
How many times in school didyou feel like oh they just move
on?

Speaker (44:44):
Like they just move on and leave you behind.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah, I don't really have this.
I'm embarrassed to speak upbecause all my friends seem to
have it, and I don't really wantto stay after class because I
have you know a sport after cafter school, so I I can't.
Yeah, and then you're just youyou miss one thing and it
snowballs, you don't understandanything for the rest of the
year.

Speaker (45:05):
Because if you can't do multiplication, then you can't
do division, and if you can't dodivision, then you don't
understand fractions, andeverything sort of builds.
So you have the opportunitywhen you're homeschooling to
slow down, make sure youunderstand one skill before you
move on.
And I I do love that that's theindividualized portion of
homeschooling.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah.
And you brought up a good pointearlier, too, which I kind of
forget to talk about now thatI'm, you know, two and a half,
three years into this podcast.
But in the beginning, it reallyshocked me to learn like, wait,
you can do science and historywith your five-year-old,
eight-year-old, 12-year-old, and16-year-old.
Like you can do it all withthose ages.

(45:44):
That's crazy.
But, you know, you had kind oftouched on that.
Why don't you tell people,especially who are new to
homeschooling or want tohomeschool, how that works and
what it looks like.

Speaker (45:53):
So there are a lot of curriculums that kind of take a
one-room schoolhouse approach.
I'm trying to think what whatmy sister-in-law uses.
So my brother homeschools hiskids and my sister homeschools
her kids.
I think it's crazy that ourwhole generation is like doing
this, but so I have two siblingsand they both homeschool their
kids.
My brother homeschools,homeschooled 10 children, five
boys and five girls, with goatsand chickens and a little garden

(46:16):
in a suburban house, like 30minutes from where I am right
now.
And so she took the approach,it's a curriculum where you can
either download it or you canbuy the consumables.
And so you would do it at, theydo it as unit studies.
So I think this year they'redoing like the history of
Florida or something like that.
And she does the read aloudportion, and then there's
individual lessons where, youknow, the kindergartner might be

(46:40):
coloring a picture, but thehigh schooler might be writing
an essay.
But it's all around the samesubject matter.
So we essentially did the samething.
Um, a lot of it wasgeographically based because of
where we were in the world.
So we take all five kids to thebanana plantation, for example,
when we were in Belize, and welearn how bananas are grown and
sort of the history of the fruitcompanies in Central America,

(47:03):
and we learn all the sorts ofthings around this subject
matter.
Obviously, my five-year-oldisn't learning the same things
that the high schoolers arelearning.
We're studying the same subjectmatter at each kid's level.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yeah.
And it's what a way to bring afamily together, too.
You know, like you are makingthese little inside jokes that
when you're in the school systemand you know, the little ones
off at preschool all day ordaycare, and the older ones are
off at high school, and they'rejust not even connected at all.
And it is all part of a granddesign to tear apart the family

(47:39):
unit, go down that road any day.

Speaker (47:42):
We we could, and I would probably agree with
everything that you say.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Yeah, but how beautiful is that?
I mean, were you able to youwent to school as a child?

Speaker (47:52):
Yes, I did, and I loved school and I excelled at
school.
And so back when I robbed mychildren of the opportunity to
go to school, I had that sameguilt of like, am I screwing my
kids up?
I loved school.
School was a wonderfulexperience, and now I'm keeping
my kids from this, you know,happy memory that I had.
But I also had had theexperience of being a teacher in

(48:14):
that system.
And I saw that the I think thatthe system for sure changed
from when I was in kindergartento when I was teaching
kindergarten to then when mykids would have been going to
kindergarten.
So I struggled a little bitwith that.
But I also look at theeducation that I got, and I got
a very good education, and Iwent to Middlebury College in
Vermont, which is a very sort ofhigh-end private four-year

(48:36):
college.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Are you in Vermont?
We are right next toBennington.
Uh, but I'm in New York.

Speaker (48:42):
Okay.
Okay, on the other side.
Yeah.
Yeah wonderful.
Yes.
So I went to Middlebury andvery prestigious and got this,
you know, amazing education.
And then I startedhomeschooling, and I'm like, oh
good, I can bequeath to mychildren all these things that
I've learned, and we can readShakespeare together, and I can,
you know, like give them thisvery expensive education for
free because I have all of thisstuff that I can.

(49:04):
And we did, you know, readShakespeare and we did make a
little model of the globetheater and thatched the roof
and, you know, had some reallycool experiences that I was able
to give them because I'd had agood education on the one hand.
On the other hand, as we starttrekking through history and
literature and science, Irealized that my education had

(49:26):
so many gaps in it.
And there were things that Ihad never learned.
The best education I ever gotwas in homeschooling my
children.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yes.

Speaker (49:35):
That's how I it's like, how did I I had like a very
good experience at school?
I wasn't even one of those kidsthat fell through the cracks,
right?
How did I not have a goodeducation?
If anyone would have had one,it would have been me.
And yet all of this stuff thatI did not know, or at any depth,
you know, maybe they scrapedthe surface, maybe, or skimmed

(49:55):
the surface.
But until I startedhomeschooling and going, you
know, doing these deep diveswith unit studies or traveling,
of course, traveling is the besteducation.
But until we started doingthat, I didn't realize how poor
my education was.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Well, you know, and it's all like who wrote that
curriculum, right?
Like, I mean, what was theiragenda?
And, you know, what even justwhen you talk about Christopher
Columbus, I mean, they don'teven tell us the truth about
that.
And we have a whole holiday forthe guy, you know, like did he
even touch land in NorthAmerica?
I don't know.

Speaker (50:29):
Well, he did.
He didn't touch where we live,but he landed in San Salvador,
which is in the Bahamas.
And so when you're when we werein the Bahamas, we we love to
do, you know, source text.
So we don't like social studiesbooks because it just, you
know, it's revisionist historyand you can boil everything down
into one paragraph and missevery nuance, right?

(50:49):
Yeah.
So we actually read thetranslated journals of
Christopher Columbus while wewere in the islands where
Christopher Columbus kind offirst landed in the New World.
And it was astounding.
And my view of ChristopherColumbus is very different, you
know, than sort of thecriticisms that I hear.
I think we're not getting afull picture of history at all.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
But it is but so, but if he landed in Bahamas, did he
really discover North America?
Sort of.

Speaker (51:18):
Like he didn't, he didn't like land at Plymouth
Rock or anything.
Okay, yeah.
No, I mean, yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
That's what we feel like when we celebrate Columbus
Day.
We think like, oh, he's thefirst one that found this, and
you know, where we live,America.

Speaker (51:33):
Well, right.
Well, and America is named forAmerico Vespucci, and very
Amerigoves Pucci never landed inSouth and North America either.
He explored a little bit inSouth America, but I didn't know
that.
Yeah.
He was more like a novelistthan an explorer.
He came back from hisexploratory trip and wrote these
fantastic stories, and that'show we ended up getting referred
to as America.

(51:54):
Isn't that funny?

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Our name was from him, but I didn't know it.
He also never touched NorthAmerica.
Meanwhile, the like, hello.

Speaker (52:05):
Right, and the Vikings were here like a thousand years
before Columbus.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Okay.
So what happened to them?
Why didn't they stick around?

Speaker (52:11):
Well, as my eighth-grade history teacher
would say, they didn't take goodnotes.
He said that a lot of thingshad been discovered and
forgotten because it wasn'twritten down.
So I guess the history iswritten by the victors and the
ones who take good notes.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
So that's interesting.
So, like, where did the but hadthen did the Native Americans
take over and leave?

Speaker (52:30):
So I have a really good book rec recommendation.
I don't want to like commandeerthe conversation onto the early
history of America, but one ofthe books I read aloud with my
kids was A Voyage Long andStrange by Tony Horwitz.
Okay.
And you start to learn likethere's this huge gap in our
education from like whathappened between when Columbus
landed in quote unquote NorthAmerica, when he landed in the

(52:52):
New World, and you know, when weestablished our country.
There's a massive gap.
But um, he talks a lot aboutthe Native Americans.
He actually, it's a it's parttravel memoir, part history, and
it's very, very comedic.
There were some like slightlyinappropriate parts that I kind
of would like skip over.
You know, you're reading likeone sentence ahead if it has bad

(53:13):
language, but it was one of thebest history books that I ever
read with the kids because itreally gave a much bigger,
better picture of like what washappening in America between
1500 and you know, 1776.
Like that's a long time.
That's 200 and something years.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
Yeah, I'm reading that right now with the Tuttle
twins.
They have the Tuttle Twins.
Perfect history.
Yes.
What's awesome is I I'mlistening on audio with my son.
Like when we're in the car.
Perfect.
So we miss some of the some ofthe pictures, but he's only
seven.
So I'm like, we'll probably dothis every year.
For sure.
And but it's so cool becausenow, so I'm up by Middlebury and

(53:53):
I'm over in New York, but we'reright by the Hudson River.
We're right by anyone thatlistens to my podcast now is
probably like, oh my god, shutup about this Hudson River
because I like it.
I never they never taught meanything about it in school.
I'm like so mad.
Like you didn't teach me athing about it.
I've been going over this watera million times in my life, and
you've never taught me onething about it.
And then I start looking intolike homeschooling stuff, and

(54:15):
I'm like, there's so muchhistory right here.
So in the Tidal Twins book,it's talking about um first
world war, and they're like, oh,World War I.
And he goes, No, no, no, therewas a war before that, and it's
the French and Indian War.
And I'm 41 years old, and I'mlike, I don't know who fought in
that.
Like, why would the French andthe Indians be fighting each
other?
Well, then the book, TidalTwins book, goes to explain, no,

(54:38):
it's from the Britishperspective.
So Indians and French werefighting the British, and they
were on you know, US territoryor whatever it was at the time,
fighting each other for thatterritory.
And I'm like, that's even morehistory.
So then there happens to be ahomeschool day next week at the
Fort William Henry up in LakeGeorge.

Speaker (54:57):
That's so exciting.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
Let's go.
Yes, that's what I'm talkingabout.
Like hands-on history.
My whole life I thought thatthe Fort Henry well, I can't
even say my whole life because Iprobably didn't even think
about the American Revolutionuntil the musical Hamilton,
right?
Right.
I wouldn't have even been ableto tell you what that war was.

Speaker (55:16):
Well, that's great.
I've been to the birthplace ofHamilton in the Caribbean.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Yes.

Speaker (55:20):
Yep.
We visited his house.
Yep.
Well, we we learned aboutHamilton because we were at his
at the island where he was born.
And so that was our littleentry into that part of history.
But there are touch points allover the place, and the world is
small.
So you've got this reallyexciting homeschool history
thing coming up.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
And it's more like I'm hopefully you can see how
excited I am about it, you know.
Because I'm like, I didn't, Ithought that that was the
American Revolution, that theFort William Henry, you know,
that's more the stuff like theBattle of Benningfield
Bennington.
Right, right, right.
But it predates the AmericanRevolution.
So it predates was learningabout that because we just
camped in Woodford, Vermont acouple weeks ago.
Yeah.

(56:00):
Yeah.
We um I can honestly say I havelearned more in a a year and a
half of homeschool, two years ofhomeschooling my son than I
ever did in 1340, 17 years ofschool.

Speaker (56:14):
Yes, I had that same experience.
So sad.
Yeah.
I mean, we learned otherthings.
Some were good and some werebad.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Yeah.

Speaker (56:23):
Now tell me about you wrote a book, right?
I did.
I did.

Speaker 1 (56:26):
I wrote a book that before we wrap up and forget.

Speaker (56:29):
Sure, absolutely.
So I was I've always been awriter um just forever and um
did creative writing atMiddlebury.
And then I wrote a blog.
So our blog is at umwww.taket2sailing.com.
And if you wanted to go all theway back to 2008, like when we
were even just thinking aboutbuying a boat, I think the first

(56:50):
blog post is from 2007.
You can see like our wholethought process when we were
doing this big scary thing andhow scared we were and how
hesitant we were to like ditchthe American dream and go, you
know, sailing with our kids,because that is a big scary
thing.
So that blog goes all the wayback.
And we wrote both Jay and Iwrote for that.
And then later on, our kidswould contribute.

(57:11):
Our son Sam, after he did his,you know, thousand-mile hike of
the Florida Trail, he's actuallygetting ready to write a really
good blog post to kind of likekeep the blog up and let people
know what the kids are up to.
So that part is free.
And then when I wrote my book,I didn't want to simply like
write down the blog and publishit.
This I wanted to do somethingdifferent.

(57:32):
So the book has a little bitmore, a little wider appeal than
like if you want to go sailingwith your family.
It was more the philosophicaljourneys that that went
alongside the the physicaljourneys.
So anybody who was interestedin trying something new, in
doing something big and bold, inbreaking the mold, in getting

(57:54):
out of the house with a whitepicket fence mentality, would be
interested in a book like this.
So it's called Leaving the SafeHarbor: The Risks and Rewards
of Raising a Family on a Boat.
And each chapter is named foran nautical idiom that people
use every day, like in closequarters or rocking the boat.
Like these things that we sayall the time have a very deep

(58:15):
meaning for me.
So I took these nautical idiomsand wrote a chapter about each
one.
And each one kind of explores adifferent aspect of our lives
and a different aspect of risktaking and mitigating risk and
trying to live your life and notjust sit on the sidelines.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, not just go through it, but really Right.

Speaker (58:35):
Not survive, but to live, to really live.
So it was something I wanted toencourage other people, not
like you should, you know, gosailing with your kids.
It was more like if twosuburbanites that were raised in
middle class America can ditcheverything and move on to a boat
with their five kids andhomeschool them while traveling

(58:56):
and working, then any otherthing that you can possibly
dream of is possible.
So I really wanted to encouragepeople not to follow my dream
of like moving onto a boat withtheir kids, but follow your
dreams and know what's possible.
So there was a lot ofphilosophy that I wanted to
write in that maybe the blog.
The blog was much more likewhere we were going and what we

(59:18):
were doing, and definitely somethoughtful episodes, but um, but
the book is different.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Yeah, that sounds awesome.
I will put a link to that inthe show's description.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, so people can just checkthat out.
And um, coming from working ina cubicle for 16 years and
taking that leap to leave thatand homeschool the kids and like
stay at home and bake sourdoughbread.
It's like yay, sourdough.
Never would have thought thatwould have been me, but it is so

(59:47):
just living alongside yourkids, it's just so nice.
And they drive me nuts, but itis so nice.

Speaker (59:54):
It's very rewarding, and very much like what I say in
the book about living on aboat, everything is really hard.
Hard.
Like we chose a really hard wayof living, but the lows might
be lower, but the highs arehigher.
So yes, we're all crammed intothis boat, and sometimes it was
really, really hard.
And sometimes there were stormsat sea, and sometimes things

(01:00:14):
were breaking.
But sometimes we were, I thinkI mentioned earlier, like
climbing volcanoes and swimmingwith whale sharks and having
these incredible, intense,beautiful experiences with our
family that made all the hardthings worth it.
My oldest son, we were sittingaround a fire one Christmas with
my brother's family, andsomebody asked him a question,
and the way he answered, it justmade me cry.

(01:00:36):
He was saying that living onthe boat, he said, even though
he loved the nice parts, he saidthat now that he's an adult,
he's actually really thankfulfor the hard parts because it
shaped who he is as a person andmade him tougher.
And he looks around and some ofhis peers are kind of sissies,
like they just can't deal withdifficult things.
And he's like, we lived in theFlorida Keys without air

(01:00:57):
conditioning for a whole year,or we've been in storms at sea,
or we, you know, like atewhatever we could find under the
floorboards if we hadn't beento a store for a really long
time.
Like we got really creative.
It made him a tougher person.
So all this time I've beenhoping, like, I hope they
remember the good parts.
I hope they remember the goodparts and forget the bad parts.
It turns out that even the badparts are the good parts.

(01:01:21):
This was very good news for me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Yeah.
That's something I think abouttoo.
Like, are we making their lifeso comfortable because they
don't have to wait for theschool bus or you know, deal
with that bad teacher all year.
But you're right, they learn itin different ways.

Speaker (01:01:36):
Sure.
They don't always get what theywant.
I assume that you have somesystem, like you can't live with
your children if you don't likethem.
So there have to be rules andconsequences, right?
That maybe if you if you sendyour kids off to school, you can
get away with gentle parenting.
But if you live with your kidsday in, day out, you want them
to be lovable people, not justbecause you spend time with

(01:01:57):
them, because you want to sendthem out into the world and you
want other people to love andaccept them.
So it behooves us to, I guess,do the do the hard thing now so
that we can enjoy the fruits ofour labor later.
And now I have these beautifuladult relationships with my
kids.
And I was always worried, likeI was the mean teacher.
I was also the nice teacher.

(01:02:18):
I was the only teacher.
And I'm like, are they gonna bebitter or angry or have to go
to therapy because of what wedid to them?
And it turns out that we'refriends and it's wonderful.
And my two oldest boys who wehappen to be living near them
right now, where uh where we'redocked, and they come back for
pizza night every now and thenon take two, and we all sit

(01:02:38):
around and have pizza and playboard games, and I'm like, this
is what I always dreamed of.
And I'm sort of have to pinchmyself that we accidentally
achieved it by doing hardthings.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Oh my god, that's so beautiful.
Well, I think that's the noteto end on.
This was such a good one.
Tanya, thank you so much forsharing your journey.
I hope people check out yourbook.
I will put that link in theshow's description.
Thank you for being here today.

Speaker (01:03:05):
Well, thank you, and good luck to you because you're
in the part that I now look backso fondly on and wish that I
could go back and like relivethe days when my kids were
little, even those days thatthey were driving me crazy.
Those are the days you'll lookback on with nostalgia.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the
Homeschool How To.
If you've enjoyed what youheard and you'd like to
contribute to the show, pleaseconsider leaving a small tip
using the link in my show'sdescription.
Or if you'd rather, please usethe link in the description to
share this podcast with a friendor on your favorite homeschool
group Facebook page.
Any effort to help us keep thepodcast going is greatly

(01:03:42):
appreciated.
Thank you for tuning in and foryour love of the next
generation.