If you're wondering where to start homeschooling, the answer may surprise you—look in the mirror. In this episode, we talk about why your own education as a mom is the first and most important step in your homeschool journey.

Education and leadership don’t begin with lesson plans—they begin with you.

You'll hear why your kids will follow your lead more than your curriculum, and how a simple growth routine can shape your homeschool for the better. Whether you're a new homeschool mom or simply looking to refresh your perspective, this episode will help you take a powerful first step.

Here’s what we cover:

✅Why Charlotte Mason said, “There is no education but self-education”

✅The simple 3-step plan Kerry used for personal growth

✅How to model a love of reading and lifelong learning for your kids

✅How reading, journaling, and sharing weekly simplifies your homeschool and gives YOU freedom to study what is important to your family

✅Why summer is the perfect time to start your growth habit

👉 Grab the free resource mentioned in the podcast to kickstart your own growth routine and lead with confidence!

From Overwhelmed Mom to Confident Mentor

(use code: CONFIDENT10 to SAVE $10 & come free)

4 Steps to Raising Christian Leaders in Your Homeschool (FREE Limited Time Replay)

Show Notes

Hey everyone, welcome back to Homeschool Coffee Break, where we are pouring you a fresh cup of encouragement for moms who are raising the next generation of Christian leaders. I'm your host, Kerry Beck, and today we're diving into a powerful truth: education starts with you, Mom.

Leadership starts with you, Mom. Yes, you—not your curriculum, not the perfect schedule—you. Your habits, your mindset, your faith.

I want to unpack this through this episode as well. But before I do, I just would love to encourage you to click the subscribe button so that we can get this out to more and more people, and more and more moms like you can get the encouragement, simplify their life, and get rid of the overwhelm. Stop the overwhelm so you can take a coffee break.

All right. Let's start with Charlotte Mason. She says, "There is no education but self-education." What does that mean? True education is not external—memorizing a bunch of facts, saying, "I finished this book or this curriculum." It is all about internal. Real education is taking ownership, having that desire. You can't really even make your kids be educated because it has to be something from within them. And that is the same with you.

You know, kids don't become leaders, they don't become educated from tests. They grow in their education by watching and imitating real life. That's you. They grow in ownership and leadership skills by watching you and imitating real life.

So you cannot force education, but you can lead by example. And that's what it's all about. You need to lead by example. You need to take ownership of your own education, and then your kids will see what's going on.

My kids never doubted that I love to read. Now I will tell you, when they were little, maybe they did, because I'd fall asleep at night. I tried to read at night in bed, and, you know, I'd just fall asleep with the book on my chest. I was tired all the time. But as we got out of those little kid stages, I read. I still read voraciously. I read all the time.

And I'm watching my—especially my girls right now, because they've got kids at home—they are reading. They're actually reading instead of turning on that TV. That is a mom. They are modeling and mentoring a love for reading.

I am thankful that all four of my grandkids—we don't know about Sloane, Sloane's only four months old—but all of them, even my grandson that goes 90 to nothing—he is all out boy—"Gigi, will you read a book?" Or I walked in last week on Monday night, I was up there, and he was sitting in his dad's lap, listening just still as could be, listening to him read that book.

There is something special building relationships, but also you are modeling and mentoring for your kids the importance of reading, the importance of learning. And that is really a basis for moving forward to be a good leader.

Let me just say, when I say leadership, some people get confused, and they're like, "My kid's not going to be CEO or Mayor or whatever." No. Leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less. And you are a leader to your family. You are influencing. Your kids more than likely will grow up and have a family, and they will need to be able to lead and influence well.

You know, I do a class. And I did one recently—"4 Steps to Raising Christian Leaders"—and this is really Step 4. It is you, Mom. You go first.

And this is being published right before summertime. I don't know when you're listening to it, but this is being published right before summertime. It is a great time to take a step back and really work on your own education, growing yourself.

So let's talk about a very simple growth routine for you. This is something I was able to do even when my kids were at home, even when they were little. Okay? I had a morning growth plan, you could say. And what did I do?

I would say there's sort of two seasons, or maybe three. We had a membership at a gym. When the kids were real little, I would go to aerobics class. That was sort of a different thing. And before that, I would be here at home and read my Bible, and pray, and read books. But then it got to the point where I needed—when we were homeschooling—I didn't have time for that. So I would go up there, work on the treadmill, and while I was on the treadmill, I could read books.

I read John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education. Oh, my goodness! Was I educated? I learned so much about where American education comes from. That's a whole different story. But I would multitask in that way.

As the kids got older, I would go for walks because we didn’t have that gym membership. I would go for a walk and I would pray. I'd come home. I would read my Bible, and then I would read a book. And then I would keep my journal. I'd write down any thoughts I had about what I had just read. It's a very simple one.

I wanted to exercise. I tried praying. I still to this day go for walks, and I pray while I'm on a walk. I read my Bible either before or after—it just sort of depends on the season. And then I read books at all different times now because the kids are gone. But when they were there, it had to be in the morning, because if I didn't do it then, it probably wasn't going to get done.

Super simple, and it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time. You know, it is better if you could just read two or three pages of a book a day regularly than trying to cram in two hours on a Saturday.

So I am actually—I told you—I journal my thoughts. This is my reading journal. If you're watching on the video—this one, let's see—2007. We were reading Silas Marner. I think you can see it's nothing big. It's just a little bitty thing. And so I would just try to write a page or so. Sometimes it was paragraphs, sometimes it was just bullet points of things that I was thinking about after I had read. Whatever that book is—it’s nothing fancy, just reflections, notes, and sometimes just one or two sentences, just to get it out of my head and onto paper, because it will stick with me more then.

So this is not about being academic. It is about growth and habit and modeling and mentoring for your kids. So start small and then be consistent.

Again, summer is a great time—if you were listening to this when it first comes out—great time. Even year-round schoolers usually slow down a little bit in the summer as well.

So it becomes self-education first. Start a growth plan, a simple growth plan just like I told you that I do. Model it before you teach it. You need to work on a growth plan before you ever go teaching this to your kids.

Because this is what we did with our kids. I will tell you the 3-step plan: we would choose a classic book and read it every single day. Then write one page in my journal every single day, and then share it with one person during the week—or maybe you want to share it with your family.

Now, we took this a little step further. Once I understood what I was doing, then I started to teach my kids, and then it became a habit. They would read every day. They would write once a day. And then once a week, we would have a discussion about whatever the book is.

But I think this is just such a simple way to be able to educate yourself about anything. It could be a novel—like I love Jane Eyre. I like romance novels. I'm reading a mystery right now. But it could be nonfiction too. There's a book that I was sharing with our boot camp yesterday—it was How to Forgive When You Don’t Really Feel Like It. There’s another called The Well-Watered Garden. It was so impactful on me that seriously, when I was finished, I should have done it throughout the time, but I just went through—I went back to the book and wrote down notes in my journal, so I would remember what it was all about.

So, you want to practice this yourself before you teach your kids. This is a great way to develop critical thinking skills and decision-making skills with your children. But you need to understand the process.

Normally, I would encourage you—read one book, a classic. It can be a kid's classic. In fact, a few years ago, some moms and I read Anne of Green Gables. And it gave me a whole different perspective. She was so—what was the guy's name? I can’t remember—the guy that was giving her a hard time. But she was so angry at him, and forgiveness was a real theme towards the end of the book. And I didn’t even catch that when I read it like 10 years ago because I had walked through forgiveness in a way—I’d walked through being rejected.

And so every time you read a classic, it’s going to speak to you over and over again. It was great. And we kept a journal—I don’t even know where my journal is from that one—but I kept a journal, and so did the other moms that agreed to read Anne of Green Gables.

So read a classic—even a kid’s classic. Read it and write in your journal every day, and then once a week, share something about that book with someone. I would encourage you to share it at the dinner table and just let your kids know what you're reading.

Pick another book. It could still be a kid's classic. But by book number three, it needs to be an adult classic. I remember when we ordered The Iliad, and the kids were reading—it was a girl’s ancient—we were studying ancient history. And I mean, that thing—I wish I had it—it’s like that thick. It was really big.

And I was like, “Oh my goodness, are you really going to read that?” I thought, “Well, if I’m asking my girls, who are teenagers, to read it, I think I should be able to read it and understand.” It was a great book. And it wasn’t near as hard as what I thought it was going to be.

So pick an adult classic. The other reason you want to get to an adult—and I would do two or three adult classics—is when you read on your reading level, you experience some of the difficulty sometimes our children have or the frustration. When you read a kid’s classic, you're like, “Oh, this is easy, I understand it.” But you get to an adult reading level, and sometimes you really wrestle with some of the themes and the concepts and what the author is trying to say.

It helps you understand what your child is going through in 7th grade when he's reading something on the 7th grade level, and you're like, “That’s so easy.” No, it really isn’t. And it gives you more empathy for them as well. It also will grow your mind and your perspective on life in general.

So let's just talk about this self-education. There is no true education except self-education. You need to come up with a personal growth plan that works in your schedule and then use our Read-Write-Discuss method and work through that. Do it first, and then teach your kids next fall.

That way, you can use this with any subject area, with any book that is important to your family—or maybe your kids are interested in. If you're doing it with your kids next fall, I recommend starting with your read-aloud because everyone’s listening to the same book.

So your mindset, your faith, your habits—they shape how your kids view education, how your kids view learning, how your kids view leadership.

You have the power to lead your children by showing them how to grow educationally. Basically, just remember:

Leadership starts with you, Mom—not because you're perfect, but because you're present and growing.

Now, I do have two things I want to invite you to next week. Well, when you're listening to this, it'll just be in a couple of days. I am having an open house, and it costs $10. But guess what? I've got a coupon code, and you can save $10 and come for free.

The class is a one-time class: From Overwhelmed Mom to Confident Mentor. It goes right along with some of these ideas of how do we educate ourselves—from overwhelmed mom to confident mentor? We’re going to talk a lot about leadership, education, and how that will give you confidence. It will simplify your homeschool. It will set you and your kids free from the school system, expectations, from your own expectations—set you free from comparing to everyone else.

So all you need to do is use coupon code CONFIDENT10, and it will reduce your cost to zero. If you don't have the code, then it's $10 to come.

The other thing is I still have a replay up. It will only be available for a few more days: 4 Steps to Raising Christian Leaders in Your Homeschool. And I will put a link in the show notes for that, so that you can go and watch that replay because it is only available this week. I know I don't normally put timely things on my podcast, but that's what we're doing.

Hey, thanks for spending time with me. I am Kerry Beck with Homeschool Coffee Break. We'll talk to you next time.