The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
114. Breaking Barriers: Adriana Zoder’s Countercultural Homeschooling Journey
Discover the transformative journey of Adriana Zoder, a remarkable homeschooling mom, author, blogger, and newspaper columnist, as she reveals how she navigated her path from skepticism to advocacy in the world of homeschooling. Initially intrigued by the impressive peers she met during her college years, Adriana found herself guided by educational pioneer Dr. Raymond Moore. In this episode of the Radiant Mission Podcast, Adriana shares the intimate details of her decision-making process, the profound impact homeschooling has had on her family life, and how she and her husband came to embrace this educational path for their children.
Journey back to Romania in the 80s and 90s, where Adriana's passion for languages defied societal norms focused heavily on STEM fields. Despite growing up under the shadow of the Iron Curtain, her love for languages, bolstered by her supportive teachers, was unstoppable. The fall of the Berlin Wall opened new vistas, leading her to a fulfilling career in linguistics. Adriana's fascinating story of learning languages like Swedish while living abroad and raising multilingual children offers unique insights into the rewards and complexities of navigating a multicultural and multilingual world.
This episode also touches on the broader international homeschooling landscape, exploring challenges faced by families across different cultures and legal systems. Adriana candidly discusses her experiences of managing a small business while educating her children and addresses the misconceptions about socialization in homeschooling. As the conversation wraps up, Adriana reflects on her faith journey and the reassurance she draws from Philippians 1:3. Join us for an enlightening discussion that blends education, cultural exploration, and personal growth, providing listeners with a rich tapestry of insights and inspiration.
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Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Twomey and we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Christ. We just finished our story or series, I should say on homeschooling. We've begun a transition into kind of talking about more countercultural topics in the secular world that we live in, but today's guest really merges between both of those because she is a homeschooling mom and is kind of bridging the gap between these discussions that we've been having.
Rebecca Twomey:So today we are welcoming Adriana Zoder, and she is an author, a blogger, a newspaper columnist and a polyglot, which I'll let her explain more about that, but she lives in Gatlinburg and she's been homeschooling her two children since 2013, when her oldest started kindergarten. Zora blogs at homeschoolwayscom, has published 15 books and has been a writing and lifestyle column for the Mountain Press since 2011. Also a TEDx UTK speaker on the topic of multilingualism which is awesome and also speaks several languages and is passionate about communication. I'm so excited to learn from you today and hear more about your story, adriana. Thank you so much for being here.
Adriana Zoder:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to give back to the homeschool community. When I got started 11 years ago and even longer because I did I did research for two years before I officially got started in 2013 a lot of homeschool moms helped me oh I love that.
Rebecca Twomey:I love that. That's so awesome to be giving back to those moms that are where you were at that time. I'm'm sure you know. I know that we all have a lot of questions and then have questions as we're going along in our path, as things change. So thank you for giving back and our kind of segue into the conversation is that homeschooling is really still today, even seen as kind of a countercultural choice. Most kids are going to some form of school public school, private school and homeschooling is kind of considered outside of that in today's secular environment. So tell us about what led you to this path and how has homeschooling impacted your family life.
Adriana Zoder:So I never knew about homeschooling until I went to college. And I went to college in Virginia and some of my friends were homeschool graduates and they were impressive. So I first was introduced to the product of homeschooling. But I laughed. I laughed at the whole idea of homeschooling, like what mom in her right mind would give a B to her own child, right? So it's unfair. It's unfair because everybody's going to get an A and I didn't realize that a lot of moms would be responsible enough to make the child earn the A. That was a new concept.
Adriana Zoder:Fast forward a few years, I had to read a book by Raymond Moore for my minor in education and it was one of his homeschool books Raymond Moore, dr Raymond Moore, the grandfather of homeschooling in America. I think it was the book about readiness, school readiness. I think it's called the better late than early. Better late than early. Okay, and then I met him when I worked after graduation.
Adriana Zoder:I worked in Sweden for a homeschool, for a non-profit, for a nonprofit educational foundation, and he came to give one of our modules and I met him and we talked and then a year later, long story short, he invited me to work for him in Washington State at his foundation, the Moore Foundation, which is still around, and so we worked together a little bit so I got to know him. I understood homeschooling as a theory. I understood the background, the objections to it, how to meet them, how these parents were actually doing it, and then I also saw the product. So I saw the theory, I learned the theory, I saw the product, and so I had the whole circle of understanding what homeschooling is. I was still single.
Adriana Zoder:I was not a mom. So again, we move up to 2007. I become a mom. My husband and I talked about if we have kids, what's going to happen. Where do we school choice? And we said, well, you know, we are in Gatlinburg. You, my husband, are from Gatlinburg. You graduated from these local schools. They're okay. When you look at their school cards online, they're okay. The local high school where he graduated from produces National Merit Scholars at least one every year. So we thought, okay, with our involvement we're gonna be fine. Well then I became a mom. You know, this was a conversation in premarital counseling.
Adriana Zoder:Yeah, when you become a mom, you become a whole new person absolutely I think we are chemically wired to protect our children, to to guide them, to care for them, to feed them. And then, all of a sudden, you become aware of dangers all around them Intellectual dangers, physical dangers, emotional dangers. And then my child, now, my son is three, my daughter is one, the year is 2011. And I'm finding myself thinking more and more about homeschooling. And I went to my husband. I said I think I want to homeschool the kids and he said no. We had several conversations and finally I went to him and I started doing. I found myself doing research at night. I would put them to bed at 7 pm PM and then I would do research, you know. And I found out that my local homeschool moms would take them to the zoo in Knoxville or to the aquarium, because they actually have homeschool classes at both the zoo and the aquarium. And I would tell my husband the next day the zoo and the aquarium. And I would tell my husband the next day hey, guess what? These moms take their kids to the zoo. And he would say to me of course they take them there. Where else would they take them? No-transcript. And but homeschooling kept coming back to me and back to me and I was like what is this? This has got to be God's voice. I finally went to my husband I said listen, I really want to homeschool. And he said no, that's it. This is the end of our conversation. We're done talking about this. So I said no, that's it, this is the end of our conversation. We're done talking about this. So I said okay. So I cried and I said don't worry about my tears, let me just. I feel like I'm losing a dream. I feel like God put something in my heart and I have to give it up. And I'm okay with it, because I'm raising these children with you and God gave you to me and me to you. And so we're making this decision as a family. And maybe it's not for us, maybe that was just some crazy idea I had. But I said let me recover from this. And he's like okay.
Adriana Zoder:A few hours later he comes back to me and says all right, you can homeschool, but I've got three conditions. One, we test them every year outside the home. I want to make sure that, academically, they're making progress. Two, if I see anything funny in their social skills, we're putting them back in school. In school, we're putting them in school. And three, if we're just going to take this one year at a time, okay, so you can homeschool this year or whenever we start, but then at the end of the year we make a decision based on what we say.
Adriana Zoder:Okay, and I, and I said thank you very much, I was very happy. But I said what changed your mind? And he said, when he walked away from our conversation he had this bad feeling about him and he thought why should I be the big bad wolf that's keeping my wife from her desire? Here's my wife and I trust her and she wants to do this one thing. Why should I be the one stopping her? She's going to stop herself soon enough. She's going to burn out. This is crazy. This homeschooling is crazy. It's hard. She's going to burn out, so let her be the one saying I'm done, we tried. He did not want to take responsibility for for my. You know. He didn't want to make a decision for me if I wanted to pursue this.
Adriana Zoder:He said one year at a time, let's go sure after that one first year he was so happy he never looked back. He is an advocate yeah, he's an advocate for homeschool. Our children score. I don't want to brag too much and somebody told me a long time ago don't say, don't put your children's scores on the internet because they'll always be there, but let's just say that they score above the 90th percentile in nationally standardized tests. We've been doing that since first grade. They get compliments all the time from people about their conversational skills, about their people skills. They're doing great.
Rebecca Twomey:There's no better person to teach a child than their mother, and you are a very well-spoken, educated woman. Of course, your children are going to be smart and well-spoken and they're reflecting what you're teaching them, and I think that's such a beautiful thing. I'm glad he came around. I can relate to that, though, because I was actually homeschooled as a child and I, like you said, when you encountered people in college, I started college at 16 because I was homeschooled and we do that and my husband went to he actually went to private school his whole life and he just was like homeschool, this is like how well, how are you going to? What are you going to do? He wanted me to almost show him the curriculum and I'm talking about for preschool here.
Rebecca Twomey:So I can very much relate that there's a skepticism behind homeschooling. When you haven't done it before, when you don't know people that have been homeschooled you just see things on TV or you hear things, or you know the kids that struggle socially it can be hard to fully understand what homeschooling really is, can be hard to fully understand what homeschooling really is, but it's a beautiful thing, and I just wanted to ask you where are you from originally? I know that multilingualism is a big thing. So what is your first language?
Adriana Zoder:So Romanian. I grew up in Romania, I was born in Romania and I've always had this inclination, this natural talent, this natural propensity towards languages. So in school in Romania everybody learns two languages. I had French and English.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay, oh well in addition to Romanian.
Adriana Zoder:Oh yeah.
Rebecca Twomey:So you learn. You know Romanian because that's the language that you're speaking with your family. Then you learn French and English.
Adriana Zoder:And we started French in fifth grade and English in sixth grade, so all the way through the 12th grade I had eight years of French and seven years of English. Of course it's Europe, so I'm surrounded by songs and movies in Italian and Spanish and French and English, all the time with captions on the screen. They weren't doing voiceovers back then. Right now, I understand in Romania there's a lot of voiceovers going on in movies, but back then I grew up hearing the language and seeing the Romanian captioning and that taught me a lot of expressions in a lot of languages. So I just naturally felt myself attracted to linguistics Romanian grammar, romanian literature and then French and English. So naturally I love it.
Adriana Zoder:But I grew up in the 80s, before the Berlin Wall fell, so it was behind the Iron Curtain, as Americans say. Our borders were closed and everybody was directing me towards STEM fields like math and physics and chemistry, and you know, computers were coming around and they're like forget languages, you're not going to go anywhere, you cannot travel anywhere, no foreigners can come in, you can't do anything with languages other than become a language teacher. And we know what happens to all our French and foreign language teachers they have a file with the Romanian secret police, the Romanian KGB, because they're able to speak with the outside world. So they're being surveyed, they're under surveillance more than the regular folks, because if any foreigner comes in they're going to need a translator. And so all these teachers that spoke different languages were under more surveillance than the usual people, the average Joe, so to speak. So they said just go into math and physics. And so another detail about Romania is that we have majors in high school. So when you get to seventh grade, eighth grade, you already have to orient yourself. Where do I go? I go.
Adriana Zoder:So everybody said math and physics, of course. So I got really good at romanian, french and english because I liked it and I got really good on. And we took latin also for a couple years in romania. Um, our language is romance, is a romance language, so it's latin based. So we're very proud of that, and so we learned Latin, everybody learned Latin.
Adriana Zoder:So and then I learned math and physics and chemistry, because I had to, because I was going. That was my major in high school. It was math and physics. And then I get into the 11th grade and my French teacher loved me, my English teacher loved me. I was like the only kid in that math and physics classroom that learned their language. You know they would come in and they would have conversations with me and everybody would just sit there, and you know. So the English teacher was very good friends with a chemistry teacher and one day the chemistry teacher when I was a junior, 11th grade, she asked, asked me a question, she was testing me orally in front of everybody. I was at the blackboard back then and then finally she said uh, hey, timsha, where you're going to college. Timsha was my maiden name, my last name.
Adriana Zoder:I said I'm gonna go into physics and chemistry. I want to be a teacher of physics and chemistry. I didn't like math as much. I mean, I like math, I was good at it, but physics and chemistry made I want to be a teacher of physics and chemistry. I didn't like math as much. I mean, I liked math, I was good at it, but physics and chemistry made more sense. And she goes you're not a chemist, I talked to your English teacher, you're a linguist. What are you doing? By then it was 1991.
Adriana Zoder:The Berlin wall fell in 89. We got freedom and democracy in Romania, also December of 1989. The Berlin Wall fell in November. We got our freedom in December and everything opened up. We had all kinds of foreign programming. We had foreign investors invading the country.
Adriana Zoder:She's like listen up, you're going to have a career as a translator. All these opportunities are coming into the country. All the Europeans, all the Americans, everybody's coming in. You need and I talked to my friend your English teacher. It's your stuff, you're a linguist. Thank God for teachers who you know she could have claimed me as her little trophy. Oh, she's going to be a chemistry major. She's going to the. Oh, she's going to be a chemistry major. She's going to the university and she's going to see my professors that you know. Now I'm sending them a good student and she goes uh-uh, you're not a chemist, you're a linguist Switch.
Adriana Zoder:So at the last minute spring of junior year in high school, I'm telling my French and English teacher by the way, I'm going to major in that and the admissions exam in Europe, not just in Romania, is not like an SAT or an ACT, like here. You're going to be tested on the things that you're going to study. So I needed to prepare heavily in French, english and Romanian grammar, and so I started some private tutoring for Romanian grammar, which I hadn't done in a long time. We are doing a heavy load on literature, but not so much grammar, and grammar is very specific. And anyway.
Adriana Zoder:And then French and English. They just gave me the literary commentaries for free, both teachers, you know. I told them my parents can't afford private tutoring. They just gave me these pages and pages of commentaries that I had to memorize. So when they said you know, I had three different exams Romanian, french and English. Before even you could go in there to study to do a written exam, you had an oral exam in French which was pass or fail. Read this passage, translate this passage from Romanian to French and translate this passage from French to Romanian.
Adriana Zoder:So if you couldn't do that, then they wouldn't even let you go into the writing thing and it was the same thing if you went to law or to economics or to math or you had to be tested in those things. So all of a sudden, I'm switching gears and and I'm saying so I went to the University of Bucharest. I got in, thank god. Um, there was like 200 of us with 40 seats, and so five people for one seat and I was, lucky, number 13 on the list, the number one girl, just so you know who I was competing against. She was the daughter of the ambassador of the Republic of Moldova and her father used to be their ambassador in Paris and to France when she was growing up. So she went to school in France, okay, so she was number one on the list, I mean she just spoke like a native.
Adriana Zoder:Yeah, anyway. So I got in and then I loved it. It was very tough but I finished my freshman year and that's when I met some people. I was volunteering at a Christian radio station as a translator. They got a lot of international mail, french English, so I was there to translate but they started training me on how to put stuff together for radio, on how to put stuff together for radio. And then I met some people from a college in Virginia who were visiting and they said hey, you want to come translate for us in Transylvania this summer for three weeks. We've got an extension school. I said, sure, they're like we need translators.
Adriana Zoder:And while I was there I just had this conviction to drop what I was doing and go attend this Bible college in Virginia, which was kind of crazy. But yeah, yeah, I approached one of the professors and he's like I was going to ask you what it would take for you to come to the United States. And so we applied, we faxed my application in at the last minute from a little remote village in Transylvania and I say village, americans think you know African villages with huts, and it was a small town. Okay, okay, okay. And I got accepted, I got a scholarship and I went to Virginia and I did four years in Christian publications management.
Rebecca Twomey:Amazing and I have a feeling that was probably a bit of a culture change for you, going from living in Europe to living in Virginia. I mean, it's a pretty big change and, I'm sure, a lot of differences. Now you have learned English but now you're being exposed to dialects and accents and things like that. How was that transition?
Adriana Zoder:other Romanians or other international students. We had a lot of international students who struggled because their level of English was not as advanced as mine. But banana split I had no idea what that is. Cafeteria I had no idea what that is. So there were specific things like knob, a door knob. I didn't know what that was. Hanger what's a hanger? You know you don't read that in Dickens.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, it's the little things. And now, if we think about America today, every different place in America they'll havegy instead of shopping cart, or we're pretty close to the border of being soda versus pop and things like that Just cultural differences that I find to be interesting. So I'll tell you, I actually went to college for English, the English language and went to grad school and my graduate degree is in English and the hardest class that I ever took was the history of the English language. It was the hardest grad school class because you're learning English from the history, the etymology of how English came to be what it is, and it's not the easiest of languages.
Rebecca Twomey:There's a lot of things about English that don't make sense, as I'm sure you have experienced, but I am just. I think it's so cool that you know and understand and speak multiple languages. I've been trying to learn Spanish, for I don't know my whole life and I know little things here and there, but I struggle to. It doesn't connect for me. I think that it sounds like the way that it connects for you, so I'd love to hear a little bit more. Your TEDx talk was on multilingualism. Tell me a little bit about that.
Adriana Zoder:So after I graduated from college, I accepted a job in Sweden for a nonprofit organization and the language spoken on campus was English. The director and his wife were French. So it was perfect. I spoke French to them. They loved it.
Adriana Zoder:You know, we all spoke English to the students and to each other in in official capacities. But then you sort of learn Swedish because you're there. You know, the advantage with living in Sweden is that everybody speaks English over there. So we would walk into a store and if we had a question we would just blah, blah, blah in English, you know, and everybody responded to you in English. They didn't have any questions, they not offended. Like if you go to France and you start speaking to them in English, they'll be offended, you know, but I've heard that with it. So, um, and because I was, um, the administrative assistant, they said you kind of have to know Swedish cause you get all these letters in the office, so we're going to put you to school. So the thing is the Swedish government has these free evening classes for Swedish for anybody that lives in Sweden. So I would take the bus and learn First. I learned with a tape, a cassette tape, I kid you, not cassette tape, with a book. So I got myself pretty advanced in Sweden. Advanced I was still a beginner, but pretty, you know. I wasn't anymore at the level of I have no idea that you just said hello to me or good morning. And then I went to school, you know, for Swedish.
Adriana Zoder:And then two years later I moved to Stockholm. I took another job, so this was in rural Sweden, working for the nonprofit. And then I got another job working to Stockholm. I took another job, so this was in rural Sweden, working for the nonprofit. And then I got another job working in Stockholm for a telecom. I switched the for-profit sector. I was a little burnt out of nonprofits.
Adriana Zoder:So when I was there I got really immersed in Swedish. So I would wake up in the morning, listen to Swedish news while I was getting ready, on the radio, on the Metro, the underground, subway, um, I would read a newspaper in Swedish. And of course I didn't understand anything in the beginning, just the word here and there. But over time I just immersed myself in it. At work I would ask my colleagues to speak to me in Swedish. My roommate was a Swedish teacher from Hungary and she said to me for the first three months I'll speak to you in English, but as you get better we're going to switch to Swedish. So she would drill me in the morning and evening when we saw each other, and then of course, on the way back I would stop by the evening. Swedish class. I would. I would take that class and in in. So I was there in August of 2000 is when I took that job in Stockholm and by January I was pretty fluent in Swedish and I would solve, you know, any kind of errands I would run. I would do them in Swedish. Now I wasn't doing them in English anymore.
Adriana Zoder:So Swedish is quite simple to learn as far as grammar. But their vocabulary is tricky and they don't have genders Like in German. You have masculine, feminine, neutral nouns. In English you don't have that right. A squirrel is a squirrel. In Romanian a squirrel is a feminine noun, a chair is a neutral noun, a boy is a masculine noun. In Swedish they have en and et words, words that end in en and words that end in et, and it's like how, how do you decide that? And it's all about memorization. That's the tricky part about swedish. But their grammar is very easy.
Rebecca Twomey:That's interesting.
Adriana Zoder:Wow, I didn't know that about swedish, but I uh assumed that it's not the easiest language to learn, because a lot of the words seem complicated oh it's, and it's interesting to move from like it sounds like chinese, to finally understanding oh, he said water I heard the word water, you know and then to oh, he asked me if I want another glass of water and you move from nothing to that in like six months, you know. So it's pretty spacey.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, I bet. Now do your children speak multiple languages.
Adriana Zoder:So now into multilingualism. I tried. The answer is yes, they speak Romanian Because when I was raising them I spoke Romanian to them. I tried hard with French and I failed. They don't like it, they don't understand it, they don't want to learn it, they want nothing to do with French. So that's one big failure that's kind of funny yeah, their American dad, of course, speaks English to them. They were raised in America.
Rebecca Twomey:That's what my other question was going to be was does he speak multiple languages?
Adriana Zoder:No no.
Rebecca Twomey:No, okay.
Adriana Zoder:No, he was born and raised in Tennessee, so he's got a beautiful southern accent and I think he took French a little bit in middle school and then he took some Spanish in high school or maybe still French, but he remembers little things like mademoiselle.
Rebecca Twomey:Sure, yeah, french is not the easiest language to speak. I did take reading for research in French when I was in grad school and I did fine because I was just reading and translating, but we never had to speak it. I would say the, the speaking part of it and the conversational part of it when you speak English, is probably a little it's, there's, there's a lot of, uh, linguistic changes that occur, kind of like with Spanish too, though I mean a lot of languages. There's the, the tongue part that we have to adapt to well, that's the hardest part, even for an advanced speaker.
Adriana Zoder:Um, I came here, like I said, with advanced knowledge of english and I would still make simple grammar mistakes in speaking, because you're not used to speaking so much. So that's like the highest level in having a command of a language to have conversations, not to write in that language, but to actually have conversations at a higher level where you can, you know, express yourself with no grammar mistakes, with no weird pronunciation and so on. What?
Rebecca Twomey:advice would you give a homeschooling mom that might want to teach her child another language? Are there any tricks to it? Start them when they're young, wait till they're a certain age? Because it was interesting, you said you were about sixth grade when you started learning other languages, so was that a good time for you to start learning? Or I mean, obviously, if you already speak another language. Speaking to your children in that language from the time they're born is going to help. But, yeah, any advice that you could give to other homeschool moms?
Adriana Zoder:Does the mom in your question know the target language?
Rebecca Twomey:I would say no, because I would be an example of that right. I would love to teach, because I would be an example of that right, like I would love to teach my children other languages. I took Spanish when I was homeschooled from a native Spanish speaker externally. You know, we would go to her house once a week and have our lessons and then in between we'd work on things. That was how my mom chose to do it, because she couldn't speak Spanish, and so I can understand. I grew up in Florida, so kind of understanding Spanish was important because it's a big cultural thing down there. And again, I can understand certain things, but I am still not to the point of being able to hold a full conversation.
Adriana Zoder:So if you speak the language, absolutely speak to them from birth. Children are wired. Their brains are wired to speak. As a baby they hear you know you adopt the baby from China, you bring them here, you speak to them in English. They will never speak Chinese, sure, okay.
Adriana Zoder:So if you have, have the language. If you don't have the language, then you're limited to youtube videos of dvds that you can get with that language and definitely get them the books in those languages. Try to learn a little bit alongside them. But immersion if you can hire somebody that speaks that language as a tutor that comes to your house two or three times a week and has conversations with the kid, if your nanny can speak that language, that would be great. If you can travel to that country and immerse them for two weeks at least at a time once a year, two weeks in that country where. Immerse them for two weeks at least at a time once a year, two weeks in that country where they are just surrounded by that culture in the language, then it would make more sense and they will have it. Otherwise it's not going to stick.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, it's tough, it's not an easy thing. So I'd also love to hear a little bit about I know you've written a lot of books. You have the blog. Tell us a little bit about your passion for writing, how that has incorporated into your life now as a homeschool mom and just kind of what you're up to.
Adriana Zoder:I guess Okay. So when I became a mom, I started a blog about being a mom and it didn't really go anywhere and I didn't really have a direction. Then, when I became a homeschooling mom, I thought this is it. I'm going to document what we're doing, the curriculum we're taking, not just for me but also for my skeptical family members. Um, I I was a little bit afraid also of the authorities, even though I was doing everything by the book and the laws pretty relaxed in Tennessee. But I was just like let me just put something out there. We're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this just to cover all my bases. I had some family members who yelled at me okay, about homeschooling. And then I had others who were quietly, politely accepting my choice. But you could just tell they didn't like it. I had everything in between. So I did it for them, I did it for me, I did it for the authorities. Now I look back on it and I think I don't remember doing this curriculum. There are things that we did in 11 years of homeschooling I don't even remember. I'm so glad I kept documented it.
Adriana Zoder:Yeah, documentation about it, writing, you know, when you are naturally a lover of words. You just, I don't know for me, things just ooze out of me Like I think about things all the time and I read a lot and I make connections and I hear things in my head and I'm thinking, oh, that would make a good column, oh, that would make a good blog post. That would be a great idea for a book. You know, things come to me. Good column. Oh, that would make a good blog post. That would be a great idea for a book. Things come to me.
Adriana Zoder:I don't know how to explain my creative process but, having said all that, all my books are nonfiction. Most of them are about homeschooling. One of the books is a collection of my columns from the newspaper for the first, I think, five years, because I started with that in 2011, before I even homeschooled. So I just kind of gathered all my columns and put them in a volume for the first five years of homeschooling, of writing for the paper and writing for the paper. I don't know.
Adriana Zoder:One day my kids were one and three and I ironing and I was crying because I was exhausted. The hardest time for a mom, I think, is when you go from one child to two and then if you have like a two-year difference, like I did more than two years for me. But my son was three, my daughter was one and I was exhausted. I don't know what possessed me. I was ironing like who irons these days right? And I thought I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna reach out to the local newspaper editor and start a column. It just made me feel like a human being again. It made me feel like a productive member of society. I wasn't just somebody who provided meals and clean clothes for my children and my husband. I grew up in a culture where moms worked. Mommyhood was not celebrated in Romania. Being a stay-at-home mom was not a badge of honor. It wasn't like a status symbol oh, my husband makes enough money, I can stay home with the kids. No, that did not exist growing up under communism.
Adriana Zoder:Everybody went to work. Everybody went to work. If you didn't go to work, you were either handicapped or you were a parasite. They were called literally a parasite of society. Everybody had a job. Now, the jobs were fake. The factories went bankrupt, of course, once the system collapsed, because reality had to hit the bottom line of everybody's production. But everybody had a job and so being a mom wasn't a full-time job.
Adriana Zoder:I had a friend, very good friend with a PhD, very smart American woman, when I gave birth to my first child and she said to me Adriana, the first five years of your child's life before they go to school, that's the best time. Stay at home with them. Don't put them in daycare, don't put them in preschool On the floor with blocks. Take them to preschool reading time at the library and read books to them. That's the best use of your time. You will never regret spending the first five years of your children's life on the floor with blocks. And when I heard that from a very smart woman with a PhD in psychology, I thought I'm going to do that. When my mom heard that, she was protesting you have a college degree. What do you mean? Put them in daycare and go to? You know, go get a job. You know I was like no.
Adriana Zoder:My mom came to visit when my daughter was born we're talking 2010. And so one time I went to the bank with her. I had her in the car with the kids and I was making a bank deposit and I left and mom goes, see, you could go be a bank teller. Kids would be fine, they were just playing, they would just be over there at the First Baptist Church where they have a Mother's Day out program. You could just, you know, but they're the first Baptist church where they have a mother's day out program. You could just, you know, I was like mom, no, no. So I had to fight a lot of cultural differences once I became a mom, and that was counter-cultural to me as an, as a Romanian right, as an immigrant into this culture, my once I brought homeschooling up, that was a whole new level of protest.
Rebecca Twomey:I'm sure if just staying home with the kids was controversial, schooling them at home, I'm sure, was next level.
Adriana Zoder:Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I went back to Romania in 2016. I went several times, but the last time I got invited by a local Christian, by a Christian television station, to give a couple of interviews, and one of them was about homeschooling, and the lady was trained as a psychologist and she spent the whole hour with questions that sounded like barbs to against homeschooling, how it's not good for the children's psyche to be at home, other kids I'm like you don't understand.
Adriana Zoder:they have other kids around them, just not for seven hours a day, five days a week yes, you know yes and so I kept being positive about homeschooling and avoiding her barbs in this interview and finally, at the very end, she goes. My last question could you please tell us some of the drawbacks of homeschooling?
Rebecca Twomey:so and you're like it sounds like you've already addressed all those lady we've. That's all we've been talking about here. It absolutely is interesting. I hadn't thought about it from your perspective of being from europe and being from another country and being from romania specifically, of what that must be like. You know what the culture is like there and how they are supportive or non-supportive of homeschooling. There's this woman that I follow on Instagram that travels the world with her. She has two daughters and she's a single mom and she homeschools them, but she has a remote business through social media where she sells digital products so she can live anywhere and she's always going here to and fro and she has mentioned that some cultures are very not understanding of homeschooling where others are. She's currently in Nova Scotia, canada, and apparently they're very welcoming to homeschooling in that specific area and I found that to be really interesting to see her kind of going all around the world and she was in Europe for a while and how that must look to other people and other cultures. You know I'm so used to defending homeschooling to Americans, let alone to other countries. You know, even here, talking to a woman down the street about homeschooling is controversial.
Rebecca Twomey:My daughter's at the age where she's four now she's almost five and everyone everywhere that she goes, when they find you know, they ask her how old are you? She'll say four, almost five. Oh, so you're going to go to kindergarten next year. And she just kind of looks at them because we've already started. We started school when she was three, you know. We started doing things together. She's been learning since she was born. And she'll say I'll kind of prompt her a little. I'll say actually she's already started doing some things and I say where do we go to school? And she'll look at the person and say that's right, we homeschool and people are pretty positive about it here in Tennessee and they'll say, oh, that's great, but then there's people that'll just feel like they don't know how to respond to it.
Rebecca Twomey:It's a very interesting conversation to have and I was homeschooled back in the late 80s and 90s when homeschooling was becoming a thing. My parents actually were a part of legalizing homeschooling in the state of Florida back in the early 70s or in the 70s, turning to the 80s, because truancy was a big thing back then and there weren't laws about homeschooling and they had to go lobby and all that kind of stuff. So it's it's definitely become more popular, but there are still barriers and it you have such a unique story in that you know where you are from. It is completely countercultural versus here. It's it is, but it's it's different.
Adriana Zoder:And let me say something about the homeschoolers from Romania.
Rebecca Twomey:Oh, tell me about that.
Adriana Zoder:They don't have laws to say homeschooling is legal.
Adriana Zoder:There's no actual law okay but some of these moms somehow, through their research, found my blog and when they heard that I was in romania, they invited me to speak to a few of them. So I spoke to about I don't know 50 women who homeschooled in a park. We were in in a park in Bucharest and I said well, you guys need to band together and create. There is an association that works with HSLDA and there's a president. I spoke to him. They have little conventions and I said you guys need a law, you need to go to the parliament. They don't have Congress, they have parliament and lobby for.
Adriana Zoder:And they said we don't want it. Right now. The law is vague. As long as you are signed up as an online course taker, okay, they sign up in England. They sign up with home life Academy in Tennessee, okay, with all these umbrella programs. And officially they have a paper that they can show to anybody coming to their door saying oh no, my child is not in school physically any day, but he is actually in school. Look, we are taking correspondence courses, that's what they call it. And they said we don't want that because we know regulation is coming in. If you say it is legal, I have teachers and inspectors and professors that come in and say you got to teach, said you got to teach that and they go. We don't want that. We want total freedom.
Rebecca Twomey:Yes, that's a really good point. I think that's been kind of a conversation lately with politics right, Because they're coming out with oh, homeschoolers are going to get X amount of money or whatnot. And I know a lot of people in the homeschooler community are like just leave us alone. We don't want anything from you government, Just leave us be. We don't want your money, we don't want your rules coming into what we're doing. Just let us do what we're doing here. What about other countries in Europe? Are there any that are homeschooling friendly?
Adriana Zoder:England is very homeschooling friendly. Sweden, germany are not. Holland is not. If you go to the HSLDA page you will see there are pages for different countries. My mom had a friend in Spain. My mom lived in Spain for 17 years and some of her Spanish friends were asking her to put me in touch with them to help them, and all I could do is HSLDA, you know, and there is a page for the Spanish Homeschool Association. So I would direct anybody to that and look for specific information for each country. But I do have a story about Holland. The year was 1999.
Adriana Zoder:And I was talking to a family of homeschoolers from Holland who got interviewed on TV. Their daughters were teenagers. They had two daughters, teenagers, and they got interviewed on this program for youth and they were told we're going to ask you this and this and this, and they were treating them like they were animals from a zoo, just rare specimens of this thing called homeschooling. You know, in holland we don't do that. But here, here's this family that does it. So here they are, and so they. They treat them very nicely in the green room saying here are the questions, get some answers right. When they got in front of the camera they were not nice to them. They asked them. Them all these questions went in the windows, that they're weirdos, that they don't talk to people. It was very different from what they had prepared, so it was a bit of a trap, and so they said we know, we learned our lesson, we don't do that and we don't give interviews anymore. That was, like I said, 1998, 1999.
Rebecca Twomey:That's interesting. It kind of reminds me of I personally get a little bit maybe I'll use the word offended. I get offended on behalf of other people and there has been situations. So, like I said, I grew up, you know, being homeschooled in the nineties mostly, you know early nineties, through through, through that and a lot of mothers that would pull their kids from school were because of learning disabilities that weren't yet understood. So a lot of ADHD and autism and that type of you know on the spectrum type of behavioral stuff that wasn't understood at that time. The way that you know on the spectrum type of behavioral stuff that wasn't understood at that time. The way that you know there were special programs today they didn't have that then and so there were mothers that were pulling their kids out because they knew that school was not the right place for their child.
Rebecca Twomey:And so when I hear people say things like, oh, homeschoolers are weird, it offends me because a lot of these children have learning disabilities or some sort of behavioral issue that the mother is keeping them home to give them the best life possible. Would anybody say that about a kid who's in a special needs class? That's what I would ask. Would you say that about those children that are in the special needs classroom that they're weird, that would be one of the most rude, horrific, crude things that you could say to a person.
Rebecca Twomey:Yet people say that about homeschoolers not knowing what that child's particular situation might be. So I personally kind of find that to be a little bit offensive when it comes to the way that people talk about homeschoolers, because you don't know someone's situation and I find that most the majority of homeschoolers are very well socialized. Of homeschoolers are very well socialized, if anything can hold much stronger and better conversations when compared to a public school child down the street. Right, I mean, that's just my opinion on it, though I don't know if that's something that you've run into as well. You know it's kind of that perception that people have, and they also like to group all children together into one bucket.
Adriana Zoder:Yes yes they do that a lot and I'm with you. I get offended, then I get over it, then exactly.
Rebecca Twomey:I just don't understand.
Adriana Zoder:Yeah, sometimes I have a ready answer, sometimes I just I'm just quiet. You know, I was in a business meeting. I have a small business that's something else off the topic. But I have a small soap and candle business that I started. But I shouldn't have. Don't start a business while you're homeschooling. Please learn from me. But I was in a networking business and this lady said something negative about the socialization of homeschool kids and I had meningitis at the time and I was quiet. I couldn't speak. I would have said something to her, but I just had to sit there and go.
Rebecca Twomey:She doesn't understand she doesn't understand, and that's the thing is. A lot of times it's just they just don't understand the situation. But speaking of passing things along, I'd love to know for any parents that might just beginning their homeschooling journey and want to pursue this. First of all, I think that your story is extremely inspiring already and people are going to be inspired by this. But what would be one key piece of advice that you wish you would have received when you started?
Adriana Zoder:Don't do too much, just calm down, it's okay. Just read to them for 20 minutes in the morning we're talking small children that are just beginning. Read to them for 20 minutes. Do a little math with them, with little teddy bear counters or whatever beans on the table, and then maybe read to them again in the evening for 20 minutes. Take a walk, let them get dirty outside. That's it. That's enough.
Adriana Zoder:In the beginning, yeah, and then I was doing too much because ambition kicks in and of course I've got a background of you know, I've got a college degree and I speak all these languages and I want them to know where Brussels is and you know I wanted them to learn everything so fast. So much of it. And then I read Susan Weisbauer Well-Trained Mind that doesn't help. Well-trained mind that doesn't help. So I love Susan Weisbauer.
Adriana Zoder:I went to some of her workshops in person, but even she herself and I heard her with my own two ears she said I wrote the ideal blueprint of a homeschool in my book. I didn't follow it. I had four children. So, susan Weisbauer talking, I'm quoting her sort of not verbatim. She said I have four children. So, susan Weisbauer talking, I'm quoting her sort of not verbatim. She said I have four children. They were all different. I couldn't do what I wrote in that book with each one of these children. So, as a beginner in homeschooling, you know your children, you know your values as a family, as a mom, as a Christian or non-Christian whatever you are you know your values. You know your children. Do your research, make your pick and just calm down, just slowly. Every day, just give them something.
Rebecca Twomey:I love that. That's such great advice. Is there anything else that you want to share with listeners or pass along as we are wrapping up today?
Adriana Zoder:I think everybody's different. Everybody has different needs. I see people searching on my blog for different topics. Everybody's on a different level. You know, I had to recently give myself a sabbatical from blogging because I was doing too much and I got really sick in September. I'm a lot better now, but something had to give and I found myself doing the same things over and over again on my blog and I said something has to stop. So I'm keeping my column going. I haven't been writing books. I haven't published any books in a while for the same thing. There's only so much of me. So just calm down. Focus on your kids. These years are going to go by so fast and right now I'm heading into college admission tunnel vision.
Rebecca Twomey:That's exciting, scary and exciting, I'm sure vision.
Adriana Zoder:That's exciting, scary and exciting, I'm sure, yeah, and I'm doing a lot of research, like when I, when they were preschoolers, you know, at night, um, they're researching colleges and majors and you know which? My, my son, wants to work for SpaceX. Okay, so I'm finding myself Googling which universities does SpaceX recruit from?
Rebecca Twomey:Interesting.
Adriana Zoder:And then I have to go and research. You know what majors do they have and all this stuff. So it's very, very interesting Just do your research as a homeschool mom. Follow your heart, see where the peace is, because if you have peace in your heart when you make a decision, that's how you know you are within God's will and that is the ideal for all of us. If I'm within God's will, I don't care what so-and-so says, I don't care what you know they just told me. I know I'm doing what I know God is calling me to do for my family, for my children, and just follow your heart, follow that peace.
Rebecca Twomey:Beautiful. That's great advice, adriana, thank you so much for joining today and sharing your story. This has been so inspiring.
Adriana Zoder:You're welcome. I'm so glad I could do this.
Rebecca Twomey:Me too, me too. And if you are looking for her outside the podcast, and if you are looking for her outside the podcast, you can find Adriana at wwwhomeschoolwayscom. That's W-A-Y-S. Also on Facebook and Pinterest, and on Twitter, or now called X, at homeschoolways. So facebookcom forward slash, homeschoolways. And, as always, thank you so much for tuning in and for being on this journey with us. If you'd like to follow along outside the podcast, you can do so on Instagram at the Radiant Mission, facebook at the Radiant Mission Podcast, or, if you're not already watching this on YouTube, you can find it on YouTube by searching for my name, rebecca Toomey, youtubecom forward slash, Rebecca Toomey, or by searching for the radiant mission.
Rebecca Twomey:And today we are going to close with Philippians, one verse three. Adriana mentioned to me that it gives her hope that she is on a journey with God and he started this work in her and he will complete it. And it's encouraging especially on days when I feel like I have not lived up to all the light I have, and that verse is being confident of this that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion, until the day of Christ Jesus. We are wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye everyone.
