Homeschool Remix

Public schools aren’t a perfect fit for everyone. The traditional "one-size-fits-all" curriculum often leaves out many students whose identities and learning needs don’t fit an outdated norm–queer students, Black and Brown students, neurodivergent students. And with decreased funding for specialized programs, crowded classrooms, and legislatures banning curriculum that honors diversity and inclusion and removing anti-discrimination protections, many families find their kids struggling and don’t know what to do. We know traditional school isn't enough, but pulling kids out or committing to full-time homeschooling feels impossible. Today’s In the Den guest Chris Linder offers a solution–a unique hybrid approach to homeschooling designed to bridge the gap between traditional schooling and homeschooling, providing a hybrid approach that allows students to thrive academically and socially that centers diverse and inclusive education.

Special Guest: Chris Linder 

Chris Linder is a former educator and tech professional with a Master's degree in Instructional Technology. Chris is passionate about making education accessible and equitable for all. He co-founded The Literacy Initiative in 2013, focusing on publishing educational resources for diverse communities. Through Homeschool Remix, Chris inspires families to explore the benefits of hybrid homeschooling, ensuring that every child receives a comprehensive and engaging education.

Links from the Show: 

• Homeschool Remix: https://homeschoolremix.com
• Homeschool Remix Blog: https://homeschoolremix.com/pages/the-homeschool-remix-revolution-blog 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here.

Public schools aren’t a perfect fit for everyone. The traditional "one-size-fits-all" curriculum often leaves out many students whose identities and learning needs don’t fit was an outdated norm, queer students, black and brown students, neurodivergent students. And with decreased funding for specialized programs, with over-crowded classrooms, with legislatures banning curriculum that honors diversity and inclusion, removing anti-discrimination protections, so many families find their kids struggling and don’t know what to do.

And as parents, we might know and understand that traditional schooling isn't quite enough, but pulling kids out or committing to full-time homeschooling feels impossible. But today’s guest offers an incredible solution. Today we’re talking with Chris Linder, founder of Homeschool Remix, a unique hybrid approach to homeschooling designed to bridge the gap between traditional school and homeschool, providing this approach that allows students to thrive academically and socially. And Homeschool Remix centers diverse and inclusive education. Chris is a former educator and tech professional with a Master's degree in Instructional Technology. He is passionate about making education accessible and equitable for all. He co-founded The Literacy Initiative in 2013 and focused on publishing educational resources for diverse communities. Through Homeschool Remix, Chris inspires families to explore the benefits of hybrid homeschooling, ensuring that every child receives a comprehensive and engaging education. Chris, Welcome to In the Den! I am so looking forward to this conversation.

CHRIS: Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

SARA: Homeschool Remix is like no other homeschool model curriculum I’ve ever encountered before. But before we get into all of the offerings and the foundations and structure of the program, I’m really curious to hear your story. I know you’re a parent. You were an educator. So share with us a little bit about how this idea for this kind of homeschool model, how did it come to you. And I am curious if you were experiencing a need for something like this in your own family.

CHRIS: Well, I’ll start at the beginning. It’s really the result of all of this stuff that I’ve been through in my younger days. And it’s all culminated into what I saw as a need for a solution for homeschooling. I started out, my elementary school was a small charter school. We worked in little cubicles independently on little workbooks called “Paces”. And we worked at our own pace. And I didn’t see the inside of a traditional classroom until middle school and high school. So, even from the start, I had an independent way of looking at education, looking at learning. When I did get to high school, I had great teachers who taught me the importance of writing, of expressing myself, and critical thinking. So when I went into college, I had that in my tool belt. And I think that that served me well. I eventually got into radio broadcasting. My high school had a radio station. So I got into radio. And that was it for me. That was going to be my career for the rest of my life. And I tell this story: One day I was on the air in Knoxville, Tennessee. And it was a Sunday afternoon and I was bored out of my mind. And I was thinking to myself, I have kind of a wanderlust in my system. What’s the furthest away I can go and get this out of my system and come back and devote all of my energies to radio broadcasting. And I bought a book called Work Your Way Around the World. And in this book, it described that you could pick fruit in South America. You could work on a farm in Poland. And all those things sounded fine, but I’m not really an outside worker type person. I mean, my chosen career was sitting in an air-conditioned room playing music, right? But it did say that you could teach English in Japan and South Korea. And so I bought a ticket for South Korea and started teaching English in a hagwon, a small language school. And I had students who were middle school, high school, college students, even some housewives, and businessmen. And they would come early in the morning, all throughout the day, and then late at night, especially before school and after school. So I had a lot of younger kids who were in regular school and then they’d take English classes at our hagwon before school and after school. So there I learned that schooling was a lot different in other parts of the world, especially when students were motivated differently. Over there, they were motivated to learn English because it would help with their careers. But also, they wanted to catch the idioms and slang that we used in American movies that were all around the world. So I spent around two years teaching English. I came back to the states. I was homesick for Wisconsin where I had grown up. So I moved back there, fell back into radio, and bounced around as you do in radio. So I bounced around to Houston, Texas, and then to Atlanta, Georgia, where I kind of got off the radio train. I met my wife, who was an elementary teacher and then she started to teach English as well. But we had a couple of kids, settled down, and decided, well maybe I should do something that would actually earn money as opposed to radio which was – if you’ve ever known anybody in radio, just know they’re not making a lot of money. So I got into teaching again. I taught high school world literature and speech. And I wish I could say that that was my passion. But teaching high schoolers here is a lot different than teaching high schoolers in South Korea. There’s a lot more in the realm of classroom management and other things that you have to kind of master here. So I did get my Master’s degree in Instructional Technology. And my wife was really like a born teacher. So she ended up writing books about the common core and about using anchor charts in the classroom. And so we started doing professional development for teachers around the country. And had a great time doing that. I got out of the classroom and got more into tech and project management for a large media company. And my wife, who had written a couple of books, she unfortunately passed away. And I was left with our daughters and wondering what’s next. So our daughters, they weren’t homeschooled. My wife was not a fan of homeschooling. And there’s always a stigma with homeschooling, especially in the black and brown community, especially among teachers. There’s always the socialization aspect and also a little bit of, are parents qualified to teach their kids? There’s always that question there. But what I realized was, as my daughters were in high school, especially when COVID hit, they needed something more than what they were getting in the traditional classroom. And I wasn’t about to pull them totally out of school, even though at the time there was a lot of remote learning going on and I had one child who was thriving remote learning and one child who really needed the classroom, really gravitated towards being in the classroom environment. So that was kind of tricky. But my youngest child was having trouble in Algebra II. And I was not a math teacher whatsoever. I’m not proficient in math at all. But I was able to find some curriculum out there that would help me teach math to them. Something that I could supplement what they were getting in school with something from home. And then it worked. And I figured, well if I could find something that would fill this need, then maybe there’s a way of homeschooling without homeschooling. Maybe there’s a way of hacking homeschool, figuring out some kind of system to where you could supplement what they’re not getting in school with some targeted home lessons. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were things that they weren’t getting in school and that might be by design. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that school hasn’t really changed in the past century, even more than that. And it’s not for lack of trying. And recently, in the past – I would say the past couple of years – we’ve started to go backwards, especially this year. We’re starting to roll back DEI, starting to say that teachers can’t talk about their sexual identity in class. And it’s getting to where marginalized communities are really suffering from this culture war that’s happening. But even more so than that, parents are not getting the results that they need from schools. Schools are doing a really poor job of teaching critical life skills, financial literacy, cultural history, critical thinking. Those aren’t things that kids are getting in school. And they need to get those skills to survive. And I’m realizing that that’s by design. Most of the, the average high school graduate reads on a fifth or sixth grade level. They don’t have critical thinking skills because they don’t need them if they’re just going to be a laborer. If they’re just going to be a worker in the workforce and that’s what the traditional American school system was basically set up to do. And it’s been doing a great job of that. So when people say the educational system is broken, it’s not broken. It’s working exactly as it’s been designed.

SARA: A hundred-something years ago.

CHRIS: Exactly. But the people who are really suffering, the people who are becoming the victims of that, are marginalized communities. Kids from black and brown, LGBTQ, indigenous kids, they’re really suffering from that. But there’s an answer. And that’s what I’m trying to do with Homeschool Remix. For a lot of reasons, maybe full-time homeschooling is not the solution for a lot of families. But definitely a traditional classroom is not really the solution either.

SARA: Exactly. Yeah. And I’m no surprised to hear that the core of this origin story started in COVID because so many of us, all of us, were experiencing that strange phenomenon of online learning, home learning, of how it was impacting our kids and really beginning to see what was truly effective and not because our kids were home all the time.

CHRIS: Yes.

SARA: And I had a very similar experience to the one you described with my kids at home. But as you’re talking, I’m thinking about my own teenager right now who’s sixteen, a junior – and really since junior high – which was when the height of COVID was for him and online learning – doesn’t like school, feels completely detached and unhappy. And that just saddens me greatly because I get that sometimes you don’t like classes and there aren’t great teachers. But if our kids aren’t excited about learning, that is really sad for me.

CHRIS: Yes.

SARA: What is really beautiful about Homeschool Remix, I read, is that you’re really clear that it was developed specifically with black and brown families in mind.

CHRIS: Yes.

SARA: Really speaking to what you just said about how they are the ones that were being the most impacted and the most left behind in this very old traditional model. So can you share with us a little bit more about why that felt so important and the how of how you went about creating a model that centered learning and inclusivity particular for marginalized identities.

CHRIS: So when I first started formulating this framework, race wasn’t a factor at all. In fact when I wrote the book, I wasn’t trying to separate it, trying it to be exclusive to marginalized communities. In fact, when you read the framework, when you follow the framework, it doesn’t matter really. I mean, for an inclusive education, it doesn’t necessarily have to be exclusive. So if, say, a straight white family or what-have-you says, “Okay. Can we do this too?” Yes, of course. Education is education. What I found was two things. There’s that stigma in homeschooling where you think the average homeschooler is some dooms-day prepper in the middle of Oklahoma, white, Christian family, and they’re basically trying to indoctrinate their kids or teach their kids in a certain way. And obviously there’s an element of truth to that. But that’s not all homeschooling is. So, while I was trying to teach more families about hybrid homeschooling, I realized that black and brown families were like, “Of course we can’t do that. That’s not us.” But it actually makes even more sense for black and brown communities, for parents who are often single parents or both parents are working. So there’s not a lot of time to go around, there’s not a lot of time for full-time homeschooling. There’s not a lot of money for full-time homeschooling. This is an option that brings that option of home learning, almost democratizes it, brings it to everyone. So that’s why, now, I’m focusing more on marginalized communities.

SARA: That’s amazing. And I appreciate that because I know I am that parent who has often thought about or wished I could homeschool my kids, but just couldn’t figure out how to devote the time with two full-time jobs and have felt even a little envious of those homeschooling families in my circle that were able to do that, especially when I saw my own kids really struggling. So I would love to hear more details about how does it work? What is the remix like? What are some of the offerings that are involved in the program?

CHRIS: So what it usually looks like – and I say usually but it can differ. That’s one of the great things about it. It’s so flexible. It can differ from family to family. As a family, you can decide to leave your kid enrolled two days a week, or three days a week, or full-time depending on the way your state does homeschooling. And you can supplement what they’re learning in school with targeted home lessons. And one of the things I usually recommend is partner with your child’s teachers. And you should be doing this anyway as a parent. But learn where they’re doing well and where they’re having trouble in school. And take those subjects that they’re having trouble in and kind of support them by giving them extra guidance, extra lessons, in those subjects. You can start there. The other thing is to look at the subjects that they’re not getting in school. Look at, they’re not getting black history or indigenous history or Hispanic, chicano history. If they’re not getting that, teach some of that. If they’re not getting financial literacy -- I talk about this in the book. My daughter, I was driving her to work one day and she asked me what a mortgage was. And I thought she would’ve known that by then. But I mean, she was a senior in high school. And I explained it to her. But kids just aren’t getting that. They aren’t getting how to balance a checkbook. They’re more likely to know how to deal with an active shooter than to be able to handle a checkbook. You know?

SARA: Yeah.

CHRIS: And it’s a sad truth and that says a lot. But think of the things that they’re not getting in school, the books that are being banned, and LGBTQ history because it goes back centuries. It goes back thousands of years, but you will never hear that in a regular classroom. But there’s nothing saying that you can’t teach your kids that stuff. And it’s so important for young people to see themselves reflected in the subjects and topics and people that they study. So it’s so important to find materials, resources, that are representative of what your child sees. If they see that, hey there’s a scientist who looks like me that invented the folding chair or what-have-you, that’s great. They’ve studied this. This is actually something that helps outcomes, helps them learn better, when they see themselves. And that’s another thing that’s just being taken out of textbooks. There’s less and less of black and brown faces. There’s less and less LGBTQ representation in textbooks, if any at all. So that’s something that parents really have the opportunity to change and fix for their kids. And I think that’s so important.

SARA: That’s really great. And I think about that a lot. Especially as the opportunities are narrowing because of all of the legislative and government impacts in schooling. And making it really complicated for teachers as well.

CHRIS: Yes.

SARA: I just really want to name that. On your website, you offer this mixtape model. Now I know the radio influences that are coming into Homeschool Remix.

CHRIS: Yeah.

SARA: It’s awesome. Talk a little bit about how that works because that sounded really interesting to me and I was curious to hear a little bit more. How does it work and how do students interact with it?

CHRIS: Okay. So what the mixtape is is a curated collection, it’s a monthly collection of twenty different lessons and projects over eight different subjects that they’re usually not getting in school or usually maybe needing a little more representation or a little bit more help in. And then each of those lessons and projects weaves critical thinking in. So the questions are open-ended, deeper kind of questions to help them synthesize and formulate and display their learning, what they’re learning in that specific – we call them missions. So we talk about critical media literacy, cultural history, cultural arts, STEM, financial literacy, health and wellness, character and ethics. There’s eight but I’m always naming six or seven. So there’s something else. It’ll come to me. But just basically trying to get kids exposure to things that they’re not getting too much of in their traditional classroom. So there’s also, I mentioned the projects. Usually there’s a banned book review. They have to do a project about a book that’s been banned.

SARA: Wow. That sounds great.

CHRIS: Yeah. And these are lessons aimed at teens. And it started off as a pdf. But now it’s like an online course. And it’s tied into our SEAT Squad which I really think it’s important to realize that parents who are starting to either homeschool, or even hybrid-homeschool, they face the danger of burning out early on because we have this tendency of – if you’re anything like me – you’ll make a big plan for something and you’ll do that for a couple of days or week or a couple of weeks. And then things don’t actually go exactly as planned. So you’re like, “Oh, God. This is impossible.” And so many parents burn out in the first couple of months of homeschooling because they’re not letting themselves connect with other people. So I really encourage parents to find a homeschool co-op or at least a couple of other parents who are also homeschooling to kind of share with, connect with and share with. So we started a community called the SEAT Squad to help people share lessons and things like that with.

SARA: So this is a community for parents, an online community, to connect with one another and share ideas and thoughts.

CHRIS: Yes.

SARA: That’s amazing. That is so helpful because it can feel really daunting to be in it all alone. And I think that’s the other, maybe, stigma of homeschooling that I hear about a lot of folks. It feels so isolationist and what about all the socialization that comes with public school and sports and other kids and how important that really is.

CHRIS: Yes. Another way that isolization [SP] presents itself is the fact that – in full-time homeschooling at least -- it’s just you, your parent, and your books. And that’s pretty much it. But with hybrid homeschooling, you’re taking advantage of the socialization that’s there in the traditional classroom and the extracurricular activities, the sports, and things like that to kind of keep them into socialization. But, it’s also a myth that homeschooling doesn’t result in socialization. If you’re able to find a co-op, if you’re able to find a micro-school, your kid is going to meet and hang out and play with other kids, period. You’re not going to stop that.

SARA: Right.

CHRIS: And if anything, it’s probably better for them not to be cooped up in a classroom all day. It’s better for them to actually get out and experience the world.

SARA: Yeah.

CHRIS: And one of the great freedoms of hybrid homeschooling is that lessons can be taught through anything and anywhere. So a field trip to a museum or a day trip to a historical battle field or what-have-you, is much more impactful than reading page 337 of your history book. So that’s really so important for kids.

SARA: Yeah. And those are also the experiences that are getting fewer and fewer in public schools. There’s not enough money for field trips and buses and so that feels really important. I’m curious for parents who have students who, let’s say, are struggling in a couple of subjects, or just really not connecting with English, let’s say. So COVID taught us that while we could take English online – and our kids at least in my school have this choice now. They can take something online if they want and drop it in regular high school – Does your Homeschool Remix offer those really specific subject area lessons where families can choose to do that instead of the online version?

CHRIS: We do try to connect parents with resources that fit their exact needs. We don’t specifically offer, let’s say, an English curriculum. But I can point you in the right direction of several curricula that could fit your needs. And also, I think it’s really important for parents to be flexible in what they choose to teach. So I would say, use a straight ahead grammar curriculum and then supplement that with, hey here are some books that you need to read – that you could read – or here are some graphic novels that you could read, or even here’s some television or some videos they could watch and let’s discuss the literary themes that you see in these stories or let’s discuss how you think you would write this story if you were the writer. Using all of the tools at your disposal, I think, is so, so critical. And it’s something that hybrid homeschooling parents can do with no problem.

SARA: Yeah. I appreciate you just giving us so many ideas just in that one answer alone. And it helps remind us, particularly I think parents in our Mama Dragons community who are parenting queer youth who often have additional challenges, many of them are mental health challenges. Lots of queer kids on the spectrum.

CHRIS: Sure.

SARA: Lots of queer kids with ADHD. Those things seem to overlap, whose kids are really, really smart, but struggle with the very confined ways that learning is happening in the traditional classroom. And the way you’ve just spoken to us is reminding us, oh, there are so many ways we can help our kids learn and engage with material that kind of can meet them where they’re at.

CHRIS: My youngest child is nonbinary. They identify as trans and so smart, also neurodivergent. They’re on the spectrum. I talk about how I had to help them with Algebra II and it just blew my mind that even as a freshman in high school they were studying this advanced math class. And I’m like, “Why are you even in this class?” But, I mean, it was something that when I was in high school I didn’t even attempt Algebra II. I took Algebra I and I was like, “OK that’s it.” But they’re thriving now. They’re in their senior year and they’ve picked out a college that they’ve wanted to go to since, I think, second grade. So hopefully next year they’ll be attending that college. But it doesn’t take much. I guess that’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t take much. We’re so blessed that we’re able to give our children that little nudge in the right direction and maybe find this resource or this resource that will help them. And they will take it and they will thrive. And it’s beautiful to look at, you know?

SARA: Yeah. That is also a good reminder. I appreciate that. Do you have any other stories of families and students who have used Homeschool Remix that you can share with us?

CHRIS: I do. I think I’ve worked with another family whose child is differently neurodivergent than my own. And there was a lot of concern as to the quality of education that they were getting in school. It was like they were being, not left behind, but kind of ignored. And I’m a big proponent of figuring out how to meet your child where they are, how to choose the things that they’re interested in and use that to teach whatever you’re trying to teach. In this particular case, it was song lyrics that, Boom, that was the connection. And it’s still controversial. People don’t like to use AI. Some people do. Some people don’t. But I feel it’s a tool, like anything else. My kids are totally against it, totally against. Like, wow. I joke that they’re ludites. So maybe they know something that I don’t. But I’m like, ah well. But you can use AI to just generate song lyrics based on whatever parameters you prompt it to do. You can teach things through song lyrics easily. Instead of having to spend hours actually writing down poetry, you can have your computer do it and instantly connect with them.

SARA: That is brilliant.

CHRIS: Yeah. AI, as a tool – now it’s not the be-all-end-all of everything – but it is a tool that can really help in education. And more importantly – I haven’t talked about this much – but my philosophy now is, and what we’re doing with the SEAT Squad, it’s folding chair homeschooling. And what that is, it’s free and low-cost resources to homeschool. It’s seeking out free resources, using what you have at hand, using that to teach. Open AI, Chat GBT, use that for lesson planning. You have to learn how to correctly prompt, and there’s an art and a science to that.

SARA: And how to fact-check AI.

CHRIS: And how to fact-check and how to make sure that AI fact-checks itself. The more you put the guard rails up, the better the AI does. If you tell it to use academic sources, if you tell it to list the sources, if you tell it to double check itself, you go a long way towards making good lessons. And also the assessment is the important thing. If you’re able to come up with open-ended questions that reflect what that learning in but make the student come up with their own connections to their lives, they’re processing what they’re learning and they’re coming to their own conclusions. That’s the actual point of the lesson. It isn’t the facts and figures that you’re giving them through the lesson. It’s, “What does this mean for you? What does this mean for society? What conclusions can we draw from this?” And I believe with hybrid homeschooling, your assessments should be written or they should be verbal. They should be a result of conversations. Parents should be in there discussing with their child. That’s the only way you can really tell if they’re really getting it. When I was a project manager, we used to have this thing called the Crucible. You’re basically putting the technical work that you’ve done in front of your peers and have them look at it and going, “Okay, this needs to be more like this or this needs to be more like this.” Your child probably could get used to presenting their ideas better through discussions with you. That’s great practice for their future. But, yeah. We practice folding-chair homeschooling. And that’s one of the tools that should be in your utility belt should be AI, I think.

SARA: Yeah. It reminds me, talking with friends, my child did an online English class last year. And somehow or other, I managed to stumble across the fact that they were studying Macbeth. And my child is not a reader, has never loved to read, has always struggled, can do it but just doesn’t like it. And I thought to myself, “Oh there’s no way my kid read Macbeth.” I bet you he just went to Chat GBT and got the plot points and had Chat GBT teach him Macbeth. And at first I had that reaction that everybody does, which is like Oh, AI is going to ruin us all. And then I thought, well, if that’s how my child’s going to know Macbeth and be able to talk about Macbeth in this culturally iconic literature, cool. He got something out of it. I was able to turn it around and think, actually he probably learned something.

CHRIS: Great.

SARA: So my own relationship with AI is changing out of watching and talking with my own child.

CHRIS: It’s not much different than, well maybe they watch the movie instead of reading the book.

SARA: Right.

CHRIS: In generations past, it would’ve been they watched the movie or they read the Cliffs notes, or they read the comic book.

SARA: Oh, I read so many Cliffs Notes. Even in graduate school, I read Cliffs notes. I don’t have time to read that whole thing. I’m curious just in a more broad vision, how do you see homeschooling, or even just alternative education models, playing a role in helping us build more equitable, more inclusive communities?

CHRIS: That’s the true key to homeschooling. It’s really great at democratizing education. It fulfills the promise of IDEA and FAPE and all of those acronyms we came up with in the 70’s making education a level playing field. So school choice is one of those euphemisms for making it legal to . . .

SARA: Defund our public schools.

CHRIS: . . . Yes. Moving dollars from here to the pockets of rich people. Basically making it legal to exclude education from large groups of people. But I believe that the future is hybrid homeschooling. The future is parents retaking control of their kids' education. And despite whatever the government is trying to do with education, really using the tools that they have available, freely available in a lot of cases, and teaching their kids and letting them go off to college, get good jobs, and so on. I think that that’s in the hands of parents. And I think it’s a great thing. I think it’s great.

SARA: Yeah. I think it’s great too. And in this whole push towards vouchers and school choice, I can see how some people might be more concerned about homeschooling, again, taking away from public education. And your model really offers the opportunity to stay plugged in with public education and supplement and support and craft something that can work for your child without completely withdrawing from the system. I know that there are many of us who feel that deep hope to not want to see our public education system just completely fall apart and thereby leaving so many marginalized families behind.

CHRIS: And there’s a lot of states that are offering money, like homeschool funds. And I think parents should take advantage of that while that actually exists as opposed to trying to get their kids into a private school where they’re free to say, “Oh you’re not our kind of people.”

SARA: Yeah. Chris, this has been a really fascinating and wonderful conversation. And thank you for being in it with us and for this extraordinary program and work. I’m sure we’ll have lots of families who will be checking it out. And we’ll make sure to post the links to the website and to the mixtape and all that you offer, in our show notes so folks can just connect directly with it, including the book. But before I let you go, we do have some final questions that we like to ask all of our guests at the end of every episode.

CHRIS: Okay.

SARA: So the first question has to do with the Mama Dragons name. And that name really came about out of a sense of fierceness and fierce protection for our kids. So we like to ask our guests, what is it you are fierce about?

CHRIS: I think I’d be a Papa Dragon, right?

SARA: You would be, yes, for sure.

CHRIS: On a personal level, I guess, I’m fierce about protecting my children from this culture war that’s out there. Looking back at it, it’s almost traumatic. But I was raised in a very evangelical Christian atmosphere. My elementary school was a Christian elementary school whose curricula still exists to this day. But it’s a very strict Christian curricula for homeschooling. And now I see that, not to really get into religion, but religion has taken this 180 degree turn from what I believe that it should be or what it had started out as. So I think that I’m fierce about protecting my kids from that. There’s unfounded animosity towards LGBTQ youth. Any marginalized community, right now it’s so hard from these outside forces from our own government. It’s just really disheartening if you let it become that. But I also look at our young people, not just my kids but when I talk to other families. The kids are going to be alright. The kids see through all this stuff that’s weighing our minds down. I know that five years from now, ten years from now, they’re not putting up with this stuff. So they’re going to be alright. As a parent, it’s just hard to kind of keep that optimism going in my head. So I try to keep that. But that’s what I’m fierce about. I’m just fierce about, hey, this world that we’re leaving for you guys is kind of screwed up but just keep doing what you’re doing. If my kids don’t like AI, that’s fine.

SARA: That’s right. That’s right. That’s good. We need them too.

CHRIS: Exactly.

SARA: Yeah. Thank you for that. Yes. That fits right on in, Papa Dragon for sure because I know a lot of our Mama Dragons will resonate with that. The last question that I have for you is what is bringing you joy right now? And recognizing that in these times when we’re experiencing all of this, and it is very disheartening, we need to cultivate as much joy as we can. So where are you finding it?

CHRIS: I’m finding joy in the resistance. I’m finding joy in the fact that I’ve been able to successfully, I think, cull most of the people off of my Facebook feed who aren’t agreeing with me. And I know that maybe that puts me in a little bubble, but I’d rather surround myself with optimistic and right-thinking people. I look at the resistance to all of the things that are going on right now as so vital and so important. And I really take to heart that saying that, whatever you think you would’ve been doing in Nazi Germany in the mid-30s, you’re doing it now. I really think that we’re facing some dark times. But there’s, hopefully, light at the end of the tunnel. So what’s bringing me joy is the fact that there’s a bunch of people defiantly marching on “No Kings” day. There’s people who are organizing and realizing how the message needs to be adapted so that everybody is prepared for next November. I could talk political all day and your listeners probably don’t want to hear that all the time.

SARA: Oh, I don’t know. Some of them probably would. But thank you for naming that. And it is clear to me that after this conversation, the work you are doing and this kind of homeschooling model is very much a part of the resistance. You are resisting all that this government is taking away from our kids and pushing upon them things that are really awful, and offering an opportunity for parents to turn to something that will support them to have all of that in a way that feels really doable. So thanks for that.

CHRIS: It’s been great here. Thanks for having me on.

SARA: You’re so welcome. Thank you.

CHRIS: I love this conversation.

SARA: Thanks so much for joining us here In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links.

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