Homeschool Leadership With Dani Dent-Breen

Summary:

Are you a homeschool leader facing challenges in managing your community while prioritizing your own family's needs? In this episode of Show Me Homeschool, host Erin and guest Dani Dent-Breen, an experienced homeschool mom and leader, discuss the unique struggles of homeschool leadership and provide valuable insights and advice for navigating the complexities of being in homeschool leadership positions.

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Transcript:

[0:00] Hello, this is Erin, and we are doing a little bit different podcasts today.

Joe and I really have a heart for leaders in the homeschool community.

That's kind of where we got our start volunteering with our local homeschool group, and that evolved into from planning field trips and activities to being the leader of the homeschool group that had about 300 members at the time, then moved on to volunteering with our state organization.

So now we've got our business, Show Me Homeschool, and coaching other homeschool parents.

But one of the big things on our heart is helping other leaders just to encourage them and talk through some of the pain points we've had in leadership and the things that we've struggled with and the things that we've found that have worked for us when we were struggling.

Struggling so today we've got a guest um Dani Dent-Breen she has been on an episode all about school choice i hope you've listened to that um and so Dani and I are just gonna have a little bit of a conversation today hitting on some of the things that we've encountered as leaders in the homeschool community and uh just hopefully it will be a time of encouragement and conversation that you will have the sparked a renewed interest in what you're doing to help your community or just, wow, yeah, that's me, that's happened to me. So hope you enjoy.

Purpose of the Show Me Homeschool Podcast

[1:30] I'm Erin. And I'm Joe. We're the hosts of the Show Me Homeschool podcast, where we guide parents through the wilderness of home education.

Each weekly episode will focus on supporting and encouraging homeschool moms and dads through conversational interviews with like-minded Christian leaders in the homeschool community.

In our experience, we've seen the lack of resources and support available for homeschool dads, so we want to address that by covering relevant topics concerning husbands and fathers as they lead their families through this lifestyle of home education.

We understand the need for creating connections and building authentic relationships to sustain a healthy homeschool environment for yourself and your children.

Our goal is not to show you how to replicate our homeschool, but to show you how you can you can create a home learning lifestyle that is sustainable for your family.

Show Me Homeschool is here to come alongside you.

Dani's involvement in the homeschool community begins

[2:26] Without further ado Dani hello hi how are you doing well i always love talking to Dani she's one of my bffs and we have had a lot of experience not just homeschooling but volunteering together you know it's just uh both of us have homeschooled for 12 years and we've been around the block a little bit so Dani do you want to talk a little bit about how um involved you are with the the homeschool community?

I just kind of shared a little bit of my history, but.

Sure. So I've been homeschooling for 12 years.

In that time, you know, in the beginning, I was just getting my feet wet and trying not to freak out too much at this undertaking.

And I found a fantastic community of moms who had more experience, had been down that road, and who could help guide me through those early years.

And honestly, I didn't have the bandwidth when my kids were small and we were in the minutia of trying to learn how to homeschool.

I didn't have the bandwidth like to plan a field trip or to plan a park date.

I just didn't have it. I was still working part-time at the time and it was just about all I could do.

[3:43] I had a puppy. That was stupid. I had a lot going on.

And I was so thankful to find that community.

And then as my kids grew and got older, those intentional meetups became so important to me.

[4:00] And the support I had, even when my nurse husband was working in night shift and my kids were too young for me to leave them home alone. And I couldn't make it to some of the monthly meetings and things.

Boy, the support that I had found in this community was so important to me.

So, yeah, over time, I just got more involved, more interested in supporting the homeschool community at large, not just those in our own support group, but across the region. region.

[4:31] And I did get involved with the state organization for a while and worked on building up the community in Kansas City.

I feel like that was a great time.

I got to know a lot of people from around the city, began to see that maybe I knew a thing or two, had learned a thing or two with my experience in homeschooling and could help those moms who were just starting now not freak freak out, figure out how to get their kids out of public school, figure out how do I even start to narrow down curriculum choices?

How do I even choose from these hundreds of homeschool co-ops around the city?

And how do I know what to do? And what do I do about high school?

I started to get more confident that I actually had something to offer to other people in the community.

And so I just kind of got involved that way. And then coming up in January, I guess, will be the one-year anniversary from when I became the president of Kansas City Homeschool Connection.

Dani becomes the president of Kansas City Homeschool Connection

[5:35] And we have been working on building that organization.

The organization existed before I took over under a different name and kind of.

[5:45] A similar mission statement, yes, but we sort of made the decision post-COVID to expand what we were doing and reach the larger Kansas City metro area and reach out to older kids, teens, really return back to our roots of being a support group, first of all, before we were a field trip group or anything like that, and really focusing on empowering the moms.

That's really where my heart is, is empowering the moms and dads in trusting themselves, trusting that God will lead them to the right decisions for their kids.

And we don't have to necessarily fret over every curriculum choice, every lesson plan, everything that God has given them, everything they need to homeschool their kids.

So I think that's kind of how I fell into this role, you know.

Yeah, who knows what's next?

[6:39] Yeah. And so having that role outside of just being a homeschool mom, and I don't say just being a homeschool mom, but there's a big difference in your time availability and the things and how you structure your homeschool day when you are reaching outside of your four walls into other people's homes and saying, hey, I want to encourage you.

You know, we're going to go on these field trips together, or maybe you're leading a co-op.

I've done that before where I was part of a handful of families that started a co-op together.

It's interesting because so many of us homeschool moms are fiercely independent.

We don't trust the government. We have idealistic goals for our family.

We have high standards and expectations for our own family and what we're doing with homeschooling because we believe in the power of it so much and how it can impact generations.

And so when we reach beyond our walls to start helping, we are heavily emotionally invested in the outcome of that. So when things go bad, like, You have to let someone go from your co-op or you have to have a hard conversation with another parent because they didn't pay on time for the field trip or, you know, whatever it could be.

How have you found that you work through those times of crisis when you're leading?

Wow, jump right to my pain point first.

Navigating difficult conversations and establishing boundaries in leadership roles

[8:04] That's what I do. do. Those are definitely difficult times because also, you know, generally speaking, those people we're talking about, they're not customers.

These are my friends, you know? And so that has on occasion, something like that has come up and it's something I'm still working on learning to be able to be direct and kind at the same time.

It's remembering, I guess, you know, remembering that But if you have to have that hard conversation with someone, it's not just because, you know, they ticked me off.

It's because it's for the good of the organization, the good of the group or whatever.

So, you know, we're all learning together. I think we proceed with a whole lot of grace and also try really hard to make our expectations clear from the start, you know. Right. Right.

So when you are in a leadership position and how do you establish boundaries with your friends when it isn't just a friendship situation?

It is you owe money for a field trip or I have to hold you accountable for not showing up or you committed to being an assistant teacher in this co-op that we're running and you flaked out on us.

How do you go about that?

[9:22] Again, I say we have to proceed carefully. We proceed with grace, understanding that all of us have complicated lives.

We have a lot going on. You know, we're all trying to manage our school, our marriages.

We're probably most of us volunteering at our church and we are taking care of our mom.

There's a million things that we're doing besides the co-op.

So I try to always bear that in mind. But I always also, yeah, you know, you have to be super clear that we're operating, you know, especially say if you're operating a co-op, you're operating in a covenant relationship.

[9:59] We're expecting this from each other. I want to give you what you're expecting and I need you to give me what I'm expecting as well.

And sometimes it's okay to let that go.

I've been in co-ops that didn't work out. You know, we just didn't, we just didn't connect.

Connect my kids didn't connect with the other kids there or I didn't connect with the parents there or maybe the expectations placed on me as a teacher were more than I was willing to do you know there's a lot there's a lot of things that can happen maybe it just doesn't meet your educational philosophy you know so there was a situation several years back where my kids and and I were involved in a certain group, and there were personality clashes, and there were just, I think, kind of some philosophical differences, which are okay.

They're okay. They're just different. Especially when my kids were young, I was super loosey-goosey with, you know, we just followed their delights and let that kind of direct our homeschool in a lot of ways.

Not everyone is cut out for that kind of crazy, and I don't blame them.

So, it was causing tears for were my kids the night before the co-op.

It was causing tears for me the night before the co-op.

And my husband, bless him, was kind enough.

[11:20] And reminded me, you know, you have to keep your focus first on where, what God's called us to do.

You know, there's a reason that we're homeschooling our kids so we can give them the best opportunities for them.

If this is not working, then it's okay. Let it go.

Not everything, you know, it's not a failure. You tried it and it didn't work.

So I think that that, yeah, it's really important to have someone who is kind of the uninvolved third party who you can, you know, talk things through once in a while.

I need to once I need to once in a while say, OK, is this me or is this, you know, something I need to address or.

Prioritizing homeschooling while serving the homeschool community

[11:58] Well, I think hearing what you're saying, and I love your husband's advice, and that's my husband's advice as well, is our primary role is homeschooling our children.

So if we're volunteering and that's making our homeschool suffer, if we are leading a co-op or volunteering at a co-op or leading a support group or whatever way that we are serving the community, if the community is being prioritized over our homeschool, there's no way that's ever going to feel right. right. That's going to stress us out.

Those are things that are going to, you know, our priorities are not in the right place.

And the only way that that can be rectified is by.

[12:41] Properly prioritizing our homeschools and our family's needs above those other things.

But like you said, it gets tricky when, yeah, I signed up for this one year long commitment to lead this co-op and I can't flake out. I'm the leader.

I can't just quit outside of very extraneous circumstances.

So trying to find ways to uphold the commitment in a way that is not detrimental to your family can be really challenging.

Importance of Doing a Co-op Discovery Day

[13:11] And I would say in those situations, I've also been in situations where I haven't left a co-op that I've been leading because I've not led one per se.

I've helped start them and been a part of the organization as it's gone on.

But I'm a huge fan before you sign up for a co-op to do a discovery day and tour and see how a day goes and the workload and the expectations on the children in the the classroom before you say, yeah, I'm going to sign up for this.

Because if you don't have that experience and you show up that day and you've committed to a year being there, that could be the worst year of your homeschool.

Yeah. So I'm also a fan too in those situations of, especially if you are leading in other ways, your co-op can actually be a detriment to your homeschool.

Sign Up for Co-op Sessions Instead of Committing for a Year

[14:00] I'm a fan of signing up for like a four-week session, a six-week session, a semester at a time, not committing your family for a whole year, especially if you've come off either a really rough year, you're dealing with grief or loss or whatever could be going on in your marriage or in your extended family.

So what other advice would you have parents as kind of a last thing before we wrap up?

If you are a homeschool mom in leadership, what is one piece of encouragement that you would give before we go?

[14:34] I'll say one of the things that I have been working really hard at, and I'm having some success.

I feel like there's still areas I could grow in this.

But one thing that I'm trying really hard to do is prioritize my home and my family first.

And that's difficult to do because I run run a support group, I get a lot of frantic text messages, emails, phone calls, you know, and believe it or not, most of those are not true emergencies, but it feels like it to the mom who thinks I can't, I'm going to put my kid in public school tomorrow because I can't do this another day. Okay.

I'm trying to learn to be discerning with what needs my immediate attention and what what I can politely but firmly put off until another day.

But one thing I'm doing as a homeschool leader is setting aside one morning every month where I am holding open office hours and I go to a coffee shop and I'm there to answer your questions, look over your records, talk to you about curriculum.

[15:45] Talk to you about whatever it is, whatever it is that you were gonna text me about.

You know, I'm trying to learn to redirect those conversations back to say, why don't you come and have coffee with me? I'll be at the coffee shop next Monday morning.

That has been really good for my family to know that I'm not always, you know, on my phone while we're eating dinner, answering somebody's questions.

You know also I'm taking Sundays off I just try try not to look at those email notifications try not to answer those text messages it really can wait until tomorrow you know yeah yeah but I'm I could get better at that so I could I could use encouragement there yeah those are great steps to take I mean essentially you're setting a time boundary you are not on call as the homeschool And I think that that's something that we think, like you said, everything's emergent and it's not.

It's just urgent and emergent to someone else.

And you do have to set those boundaries. I know my husband doesn't appreciate that either.

I've been guilty of that because I haven't always had good boundaries when it comes to helping other moms or families with homeschool.

And especially now having a business where that's what we're doing, we're making ourselves more available and balancing that time where these are work hours for my homeschool and these are work hours for my job.

[17:08] And, you know, anything else I'm doing over and above that has to fit in those places that are those little pockets of time when it benefits my family as well.

[17:19] I would encourage moms who, even if you're not in a leadership position in your co-op or you feel like, you know, you're just starting out, that advice for boundaries, let that settle into you.

And one thing that I did when I first started homeschooling was I set firm hours with my family.

And I said, these are the hours that we're going to be doing school.

School. And so please don't come knock on my door.

Please don't text me or call me because it will interrupt us and I need to be present with my kids.

You know, setting that boundary up front was huge for us.

You know, even now my kids, my kids are teenagers and they work at their own pace in their rooms.

But my mom is so conditioned now that when she sends a text to me during the week, she'll say, are you doing school or can you talk?

But I think that, I think that But that is so helpful to not, don't be afraid to legitimize what you're doing at home.

It is a job, you know, it's the most important job.

So don't be afraid to legitimize that with your family, with your friends, you know, and say, this is the time I really need for my kids. Right.

[18:35] That's lovely advice. I love that, Dani. Thanks again for being a guest on the Show Me Homeschool podcast.

I really appreciate you. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, so if you have any questions or would like to reach out to Joe or I, you can do that by emailing us at info at showmehomeschool.com.

[18:53] This episode was sponsored by Podcast with Faith, our favorite Christian podcast production company.

For more information, visit them at www.podcastwithfaith.com.

[19:06] To learn more about booking one-on-one or group homeschool coaching sessions with us, upcoming events, see our speaking schedule, or to get access to more resources, be sure to check out our website, www.showmehomeschool.com, and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

You can also follow us on Instagram at show.me.homeschool, on Pinterest at showmehomeschool, or email us at info at showmehomeschool.com.

[19:32] Music.