Rebecca: Welcome listeners to the Sequoia Breeze Podcast, a breath of fresh air for your homeschool. I am your host, Rebecca La Savio. Thank you for joining me today.
I am excited to be talking to you about lifelong learning.
If you've been in the homeschool world for very long, you might have heard about this idea.
Basically, it's the desire to not just stuff our kids full of facts, but to teach them to learn and even more teaching them to want to learn.
I've been rolling this idea and this topic around in my head for quite a while now, and I'm feeling more and more enthusiastic about it the longer I think about it and research.
We're going to hear from several interesting people today, so stick around to the end because you'll even get to meet my dad.
I think my high schoolers have a pretty good handle on ancient times and American history,
but we probably didn't cover the Middle Ages very well. I'm not sure why,
but I suspect that they'll discover a few holes there in that topic through the years.
Did I fail them? Did I mess up their education?
I certainly wish we'd done a better job.
But they are both readers, they are curious and if they realize that they want or need to know more about the Middle Ages, I'm confident that they can and will search it out.
I'm confident because I've watched one learn all that she needs to know to raise multiple animals and the other is teaching herself to sew.
They had a desire or were curious about something and had the space to explore that knowledge, and so they learned.
Our kids one day will need to learn many new skills and knowledge in their lives,
whether for college projects or job skills or simply because they want to do something new.
We as parents cannot teach them all that they need to know by the time they graduate,
but what we can give them is the gift of knowing how to learn.
Really been giving this idea some thought lately and yes, I'm thinking about how to be effective in giving this gift to my kiddos.
But even more, I've been thinking about how we need to model this idea, not just tell our kids to do it. This isn't a concept that can be taught with simply a verbal lesson, rather it's a way of life.
So we encourage our students curiosity and interests, but it's also being lifelong learners ourselves and allowing our children to watch us pursue what interests us or what we are curious about.
It's also about letting them watch us make mistakes and actually go through the learning process in an effort to grow and make as much of our own food as possible, I have been learning a lot over the past couple of years.
The first couple of batches of homemade yogurt were mediocre. But I practiced, I learned. I kept making more.
And then one night, I left the slow cooker on and I cooked the yogurt instead of culturing it.
The weird brown substance that we found in the morning was garbage. I didn't even want to give it to the chickens, but the kids and I laughed about it. We groaned together over the wasted milk and how hard the crock was to clean.
And then they watched me start over and try again.
To start learning something new, we all have to either be curious or have a need to fill.
But that isn't necessarily enough to take us all the way to actual learning.
We also have to stick with it. And we have to learn to have grit in the face of our mistakes.
We can't collapse at failure, but instead we've got to evaluate what went wrong and try again.
I asked our associate executive director, Shannon Breckenridge, what she's been learning lately.
She talks specifically about this type of tenacity.
Shannon: Hello,
my name is Shannon Breckenridge,
and I decided that 2026 would be the year I would learn ceramics.
So I called up my local studio here in Auburn and signed up for a wheel throwing class.
My teacher was a quirky man with some of the best playlists I've ever heard. And I was notoriously bad at first at ceramics. I spent a lot of time near the discard barrel.
But every mistake I made, I was learning what not to do and how to be better. And I think that was really good for me to, to do something that I just wasn't very good at initially.
So I've learned a lot from my mistakes and have enjoyed it. It's something that gets me out of my brain and is. Is really calming when I'm not making mistakes.
But I'm enjoying that and learning a lot.
I think it helps me empathize with students that are learning new things all the time. So that's my, that's my growth for the year.
Rebecca: When our kids see us fail or make mistakes but pick back up and try again,
they know it's safe to learn. When we make mistakes and try again,
it reminds us that it's okay to be patient with our kids while they make mistakes and try again.
Last month I got to interview the incredible Laura Vandercam, and while we were talking,
she said, everyone deserves to be interested in their own lives.
I was already working on this episode and I knew that quote was gold.
As parents with school age children, we might not have time for every hobby or interest that we have,
but we can certainly still be learning alongside of our kids.
Listen to a couple of great examples of what that might look like. First, from one of our Sequoia Grove parents.
Sarah: I'm Sarah I am learning how to sew. It is a skill that I've always wanted to learn. I've tried a few times but never stuck with it. But but now I'm showing my daughter that I can stick with it and that you can learn a new skill anytime you want.
It's also allowing me to enhance her learning experience and making it more personal and I feel like the connection really helps her want to learn.
Rebecca: Curriculum specialist Erica Barish has also been learning alongside her daughter and she doesn't always enjoy it.
However, she's begun to see the fruit of her efforts and definitely demonstrating that something worth doing isn't always fun at first.
Erika: I've always identified as someone who struggles with science and who is not artistic.
Both of these subjects routinely frustrated me when I was growing up. There were tears much later in life than I would like to admit.
Of course, now that I'm homeschooling my own daughter, Clara, she is fascinated by science.
I don't want my own hang ups to stand in the way of her excitement for learning. So I've had to take a deep breath and decide to get excited by science.
A colleague, Linda Martin, shared the free resource the Nature Journal Connection webpage by naturalist John Muir Laws.
He created a series of short videos teaching specific nature journaling skills, followed by a take home task to try it yourself.
So I found a few blank notebooks and some colored pencils, stuck them in a bag, and cued the first video up for Clara and I during lunch one day.
Then we took our supplies outside and got to work.
It was clunky. I found myself harshly judging the artwork I produced.
Clara rushed through the task, so I had to set my frustration with myself aside and try to fake enthusiasm to coax her into going back to journaling.
What was she noticing? What did she wonder about?
What did it remind her of?
Good thing I took acting classes as a kid.
We stuck with it. It got better over time.
Yesterday we completed our eighth journaling activity and we were both impressed with what we had produced.
I've come to look forward to this special time sharing the learning and growth experience with my daughter and grappling with subjects that have always stymied me.
Trying new things and revisiting challenges with a positive attitude is something we probably all hope to teach our kids. And it starts with giving them a good example, which is sometimes easier said than done.
In this case, though, I'm really glad that I did.
Rebecca: One of our Sequoia Grove homeschooling dads, Keith, has been exploring whether or not AI is something that's worthwhile to learn and is it something we can apply to homeschool lessons? He is learning a lot.
Keith: Lately I've been totally immersed in learning how to leverage AI.
I worked in tech, so I wasn't new to AI tools, but I always saw them as a tech thing, something software engineers, data scientists use,
not something that, you know, normal people use in their normal life.
When I started homeschooling my son, that completely change. One of my biggest goals from the start was to get away from relying on screens, worksheets, and kind of replace it with hands on, you know, tactile learning.
So the idea is, you know, they actually work on something instead of just reading or, you know, doing a worksheet.
I wanted him to do things he could actually touch, build, experiment with. So I started using AI to pull together a STEAM curriculum around that idea.
Along the way, I thought, could this be something other parents would be interested in? So for someone like me, who my entire life I've been a W2 employee,
the idea of starting a business was pretty intimidating.
I never formed an llc,
never dealt with licensing,
I never managed accounting or payroll, didn't know anything about commercial real estate.
I didn't even know what I didn't know when I started working through it with AI primarily Claude, Cowork and I used also some Gemini and Super Grok filling in, you know, some supporting roles.
It was like having a coach always ready to jump in.
So, you know, I started off getting help developing curriculum,
navigate, then navigating business formation, choosing and configuring the right technology platforms,
understanding my commercial, you know, real estate lease.
I even used it to design and build custom furniture for my classroom space.
And that's the part I really want to scream from the rooftop sometimes is AI isn't a fancy search engine anymore. It's more like a, you know, a partner that kind of meets you where you are and lends a hand.
You don't need a tech background.
You just need to be willing to have a conversation and kind of follow the thread.
And once you get comfortable around how these tools work,
the list of things you can't tackle gets Very short and very fast. And that's been the biggest thing for me.
So it's not about AI being smart. I mean, it's about you being more capable because of it.
Once you get used to it,
you can basically use it to extend what you can do almost limitlessly.
And for homeschool parents specifically, I think this is genuinely a game changer. I mean, it's, it's going to be a game changer for education in general.
For homeschool, we're already doing something really hard. You know,
you have to be part teacher, part scheduler, part curriculum developer and the parent all at once.
And AI doesn't replace any of that. But it can be the resource you didn't even know you were missing.
If you need to build a unit around a topic your kid's obsessed with, Done.
You want to find a hands on project that connects math to something real right there.
Trying to figure out how to explain a concept in a way that finally clicks. Just ask.
You want to build a custom web application, no coding experience required,
so the tool really meets you where you are. You're kind of at your level and it grows with you as you get more comfortable using it.
Rebecca: As I pondered lifelong learning, I realized that my parents have actually given me quite a gift. They both are very interesting people.
They pursue interests and hobbies, they travel and they read.
My mom has ants in her pants, as we've always said, and loves to go and see new places.
She is less apt to start new hobbies than my dad and I,
but instead she's really great at sticking with her music, her knitting and her quilting,
never shying away from a new difficult stitch or learning a new song.
I invited my dad to come and talk to me because he is determined not to give in to age and has been steadily working through a bucket list of new things that he's always wanted to know more about but didn't necessarily have the time or means to pursue.
Hi, dad.
Tom: Hey.
Rebecca: I brought my dad in today because he's had a lot of different life experiences. He's been a pastor and a teacher and a principal and I don't know, lots of things,
firemen and.
Rebecca: Yeah, I think I counted up 19 jobs I've had since I was 16.
Rebecca: Well, and the fireman wasn't a job that was volunteer.
Rebecca: So I got $2 a month.
Rebecca: Dad is not. Is no longer of the spring chicken category. No, but we're still going.
Rebecca: Oh, yeah. Long as possible.
Rebecca: So you have a quote that. Who was it that said it was it an actor about the, about the old man.
Rebecca: Oh, yeah. Actually, it's from a song by Toby Keith, Don't Let the Old man in.
Rebecca: Okay. One of the ways that you are doing this, besides double knee replacements,
is you have a bucket list of sorts that you started fairly recently. Right. Like within two or three years.
Rebecca: Yeah, consciously. I think I've always had some kind of a bucket list. I don't think I ever thought of it that way until recently. But.
Rebecca: But when you started to consciously think about it, you also started to consciously knock things off.
Rebecca: Well, yeah, I. What happened was I. I got to a. A point in my life where it suddenly dawned on me that all the things that I wished I could do when I was younger but didn't have the money or the time,
now I have the money and the time because, you know, I'm 75 years old and retired.
So I, I got. I got what I need to be able to go out and do some of these things that I've always dreamed about.
Rebecca: So what are some of those things that you have been learning to do in the last few years?
Rebecca: Well, probably the.
What, what started this off was I've always. As a kid, I was. I grew up in an era when cowboy movies were these thing. Everybody got. Every kid got cowboy boots or cowboy hats or guns or sun vests or whatever for Christmas.
And every Saturday morning you could go down to the local movie theater and watch a double feature of cowboy movies.
They were always on TV. Of course, the TV was only 6 inches square, but.
But, you know, so it was every place. And I, I've always kind of admired that, that cowboy lifestyle. And finally it dawned on me a couple of years ago because of somebody that I know in church,
she gives riding lessons. And I thought,
I.
I've always wanted to ride a horse.
So I took lessons from her for about a.
Almost a year and a half.
I told her I wanted to be competent.
And so once I got reached that level where she would feel comfortable leaving me alone with a horse from the beginning of, you know, getting, getting the tack on and all that to putting it away.
And so when I reached that point, I said, okay, I'll move on to something else.
Rebecca: Did you feel a little like John Wayne sometimes?
Rebecca: Uh, John Wayne actually didn't like horses that much, but.
But yeah, it was fun.
It was a good learning experience. A lot of things I didn't know, a lot of things I thought I knew were wrong.
Rebecca: Yeah, they don't really ride horses correctly in the movies, do they?
Rebecca: Well, you know, it's funny because now I. I watch those movies with a more critical eye, and there's a lot of things they do that,
yeah, we wouldn't approve of today.
Rebecca: What comes after horseback riding?
Rebecca: I think the next big thing. There's always a lot of little things, but the next big thing. I want to learn how to ride a motorcycle.
Rebecca: You're going to buy a motorcycle?
Rebecca: Yeah. I don't even want to get a license, I don't think. I just want to. I just want to learn.
Rebecca: Know how to do it.
Rebecca: Yeah, I just want to know how to do it.
Rebecca: What are some of the little things?
Rebecca: Well, I really enjoy woodworking. I don't have a big enough shop. You know, it's just an old garage,
and I don't have,
you know, real expensive tools, but I enjoy trying to knock out a few things. And I recently made a pantry cupboard, I guess you'd call it, with some drawers and things.
And that turned out pretty well.
So I like doing that. So let's just. I like doing a little woodworking.
I was hunting. That's another thing I'd always wanted to do as a kid, and I never lived any place or knew anybody.
But when I moved to, I own Amador County,
I started kind of rubbing shoulders with people who were doing that. So I finally asked a friend.
He was more than willing,
teach me, you know, help me. Help me buy my first rifle and help me go out and hunt.
Still haven't gotten a deer,
but I did get a bear, and I got a boar, and I get turkeys. So I'm. I'm to the point where I'm not too comfortable going out and sitting in a blind and that kind of thing anymore.
Like you said, I got two artificial knees. Makes it a little bit difficult.
Rebecca: So after the motorcycle, is there anything else we should be worried about? Horseback riding and motorcycles are a little bit scary.
Rebecca: I want to write a novel.
Rebecca: Oh, yeah.
Rebecca: I don't have any imagination in the area of publishing.
I just want to write it because I want to write it because I want to know if I can do it. I think I can.
I've written a lot of other little things over the years,
different types of writing, and I'd like to. I'd like to do that. So I've started on a novel, but I just don't have the time. Every time I sit down to do it, somebody's knocking at the door or calling me on the phone, so.
So I. I want to do that. I. I'd like to be On a jury.
I know that sounds weird to people, but for decades, I have wanted to be on a jury, and I. I got real close. I was right up there, the last person to be questioned, and they decided they didn't need me anyway.
But I would like to be on a jury just because I'd like to know how it's done, what happens, what are the feelings you get?
What's the thought processes and the interactions and that kind of thing.
I. I took up baking.
Rebecca: Oh, that's right. That's right. You're making your way through an entire baking book, right?
Rebecca: Yes.
And this was, you know, I don't know how many millions of people took up baking during COVID but during COVID I had lots of time. I was going to have time anyway, because just as the COVID lockdown happened in California,
two days before they locked down, I had my knee surgery.
So I was going to be laid up anyway.
So. Yeah, so I learned how to. I started learning how to bake bread and pizzas. And I. That's another thing I did. I built a pizza oven, a brick and concrete pizza oven in the patio.
Little. Another little Covid project after my knee started healing.
Rebecca: But as soon as your knee starts healing, she'll start hauling bricks. Is that.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Yeah.
So I.
Yeah. So I'm trying to. I'm trying to bake my way through a book that my wife gave me,
what, two, three years ago. So it's a. It's a British book. So it's. It's a little difficult because there's a lot of terms in there that we don't use. Some.
I always have to make substitutions and things.
Rebecca: You. You make yummy stuff. Cinnamon rolls.
Rebecca: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Rebecca: Pastries.
Rebecca: I don't think they call them cinnamon rolls, but yeah,
same idea. And there's thing. You know, he throws a lot of French stuff in there, that kind of thing. So let's see, what else did I do? Oh, I built a shed in my backyard.
Rebecca: Oh, yeah.
Rebecca: That was fun.
Rebecca: Pretty fancy shed.
Rebecca: That's when I really learned how useful YouTube was,
because every step of the way, I was on YouTube figuring out how to do that,
and it came out pretty well. I made a couple of little mistakes, but nothing that, you know, the shed's not going to fall down.
Rebecca: And we were all impressed. You kept all your fingers while you did that.
Rebecca: I have a healthy respect for saws.
Rebecca: Why do you keep doing these things instead of settling in with. I know enough.
Rebecca: It's partially survival.
I just know that if I Keep moving.
Then I'll be able to keep moving.
The strange thing about arthritis, you know, which is why my knees were so bad.
And I'm. I'm still struggling with some arthritis in my thumbs, but I don't have it nearly as bad as a lot of people.
But one of the things I keep hearing from doctors is counterintuitive.
If you want to keep your arthritis from hurting, you need to move the thumb or the knee or whatever it is. You have to. You have to keep blood flowing to it.
So part of it is survival. I just want to keep. Be able to keep moving so that in order to do that, I have to keep moving.
Part of it is I was. Even as a kid,
I was always curious about stuff. I was a horrible student.
I think if you would. If you could track down any of my teachers when I was in elementary school,
you know, they would. They all wrote the same thing on the report cards. You know, Tommy could do better. You know, Tommy's not doing as well as he could, and,
you know, that kind of thing. And I. And I know I wasn't for a lot of different reasons. My mind was not on school.
My mind was on seeing how far I could tease somebody,
you know, before I stepped over the line or my. My mind was on,
you know, trying to work out how to take the top off the desk or something. You know, it's just I was always curious about that kind of stuff.
Even into college.
I have a terrible attitude about education. When I was in college.
My goal in college was to get a degree and get out of there.
So I really wasn't taking in a whole lot of information until postgraduate, when I started going to seminary.
Then I was in it to learn. But even then, kind of in the back of my mind,
I was thinking, what I really need to learn is how to learn.
So I don't have to memorize all this stuff now. I just have to know how to. How to find it when I need it.
And so as a result,
I probably don't have the best attitude about learning.
I've.
You know, you've heard the expression jack of all trades, master of none.
I'm not sure I'm a master of anything in all of these hobbies that I've done.
Kind of my attitude with horseback riding, you know, I just wanted to be competent. And then I'm done.
I don't need to keep perfecting it.
Rebecca: So one of the things that we are talking about on this episode is helping our kids be lifelong learners,
encouraging them to,
like you said they're going to have holes in their education,
whether that's from a subject we didn't cover or they weren't paying attention that day.
But that's okay if they know how to learn it and they're willing to go find it.
Rebecca: Yeah.
One of the things I. I've done in one of my jobs was I was a teacher, a fourth and fifth, sixth grade teacher. And I remember almost every year I would say someplace along the line, I would tell the kids,
today, I'm going to teach you how to think. And they would all laugh like somebody had to teach them how to think.
And so then I would explain to them that thinking is deliberate. I mean, yeah, yeah, you can just think. You can while away the day thinking about stuff,
but you need to concentrate on what it is you want to learn and how you're going to learn it.
And I would try to apply it to things, you know, after I'd gotten to know them a little bit and what kinds of interests they had and that kind of thing.
I would like to.
To apply it to things that interested them and explain to them why it was important for them to not just take in information that everybody can get off of all kinds of stuff.
We didn't have the TikTok and all that back then, but there were other ways that people could get bad information.
And so my goal was to teach them,
you need to think critically. That's what I was trying. I didn't use that word, but I was trying to teach them to think critically,
filter stuff that came in and think about whether or not that's true and whether or not it's beneficial.
Before you adopt it,
Rebecca: would you say that you were teaching them to ask themselves questions?
Rebecca: Oh, absolutely.
And others.
I wanted them to ask other others questions. I was always after them to ask me questions.
And of course,
there's certain kids that will never do that.
Not in public.
Somehow they've got to figure out somebody that they can ask questions to.
Rebecca: I remember when we were little, you told us to yell at the tv.
Rebecca: Oh, absolutely.
Yeah. I remember sitting with your brother watching Dukes of Hazzard.
And every time the Dukes of Hazzard, any car would crash and they'd get out, you know, they crawl out of the car and walk away unscathed.
We had a discussion about,
do you think that's really the way it works?
Do you think people can just crash a car and walk away?
Yeah. So that's. Anytime we had any kind of a program like that, and there were things that's how you, that's how kids learn things.
And, and they don't think they're learning it.
So that's why I want them to consciously ask,
is that, is that real? Is that possible?
And think about the,
the future we have now with kids.
I mean, I have to ask myself every time I see a reel,
is that AI or is that real? How am I going to know if that politician's telling me the truth? Well, of course, usually they're not. Right. But how am I going to know if, if that person is,
is correctly telling me what happened and showing me or if it's not even him,
if it's somebody else,
some made up Persona?
So yeah, I, I think it's going to be even more important in years to come for kids to ask questions and be critical.
Rebecca: So help me make that connection because it makes sense in my head. But we went from horseback riding to questioning politicians.
Rebecca: Well,
the horseback riding is, is I was curious about how something worked.
I am curious today about how AI works. I'm not sure I'm curious enough to really immerse myself in it.
I think I know enough about it to know that I need to question every single thing I hear and see because I've seen examples of what's looked like to most people,
real things, real people saying things that they never said.
And so I think there needs to be at least a curiosity, if not
Rebecca: a
Rebecca: fervor to find out the truth about every situation.
So what did I find out about horseback riding?
I found out that it's not the way I kept seeing it on tv.
It doesn't work that way.
It's, I mean, a lot of it's based on truth, obviously, but the way they treated the horses, I don't think in most cases in those days was the right way to treat horses.
Rebecca: So learning that things aren't what you think in something as simple as horseback riding can apply to, then seeing that something else you don't know about is worth maybe being curious.
And you're not, you're not even talking about being distrustful. You're just talking about being curious.
You can learn more.
Rebecca: I am distrustful. I mean, that's, I think I was born distrustful. I, I, yeah, I'm kind of a critic. I, but I think that's a good thing.
Rebecca: Curiosity seems to come more naturally to some than others.
Rebecca: Yes. Yeah. Some are just happy just to be around, you know.
Rebecca: Thank you. I appreciate you coming and talking to us.
Rebecca: Anytime.
Rebecca: You're an inspiring guy.
Rebecca: Well, I hope so. I don't know if I if I am that often, but I'd like to be.
Rebecca: Listeners, My goal with this episode is not to overwhelm you. As homeschoolers, when we hear good ideas, we tend to think maybe we have to do all of them.
Find your thing. Are you a reader? That's so much learning.
Keep it up.
Do you play tennis?
Carve yourself an hour a week to keep going?
Do you love to hike and find new vistas?
Take your kids along or don't and keep exploring.
Keep learning. Show your students that life is full of wonder.
There's a whole world out there to explore, and you've got a whole life to learn about it.
Thank you for joining me today, listeners, for this episode of the Sequoia Breeze Podcast, A breath of fresh air for your home school.
I hope you have a wonderful summer. This is our last episode for the 2526 school year, and I look forward to seeing you back here again in the fall.
In the meantime, if you have any ideas, questions, if you want to tell me about things you've been learning about,
please email me at podcastsoquoiagrove.org.