Kolbecast

AMDG.  Tune in to our newest two-parter of episodes this week and next, where we visit with longtime Kolbe moms recently hired on as Kolbe employees.  Margaret Malek joins Bonnie and Steven today to share her experience with peaceful, confident homeschooling through Kolbe and getting the important pieces done around being on the go.  She discusses identifying priorities, trusting God to multiply resources, and her family’s three big goals: love God, love each other, and love learning.  She also touches on persevering through the feeling of being a failure, managing school with littles around, and riding the wave of chaos and survival. 

Related Kolbecast episodes: 

• 155 Mission Intent: Formed to Serve 

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG. Actor, writer, homeschool alumnus, husband, and dad Kaiser Johnson joins Bonnie and Steven today for a conversation on the love story of creation.  Starting with sharing his experience of deepening faith as an adult, Kaiser discusses how he lives out his desire to love more like God loves while having a career, a job, and a vocation all at once.  He highlights the importance of doing the work set before you and the skill of “learning how to learn” that homeschooling developed in him. 

Related links: 

• Kaiser’s website  

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG.  Education rightly formed helps students see and serve God in a practical way while both sustaining this current life and preparing them for the next.  Oxford graduate and VP of Finance for the College of St. Joseph the Worker, Jacob Imam, visits with Bonnie and Steven about how structural flaws in current higher education tend to cause an “ongoing adolescence,” how the College’s innovative program of combining book learning with the skilled trades is designed to bring a different approach, and how the changing nature of our understanding of work is behind both problems and solutions. 

Links mentioned & relevant: 

• College of St. Joseph the Worker 

Related Kolbecast episodes: 

• 191 A Window into the Ancient World with Mike Aquilina 

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG.  In this episode, we bring back a style of podcast we haven’t done in a little while: a deep dive into part of Kolbe’s curriculum.  We focus on classical composition with instructors Sarah Foulkes and Grace Berg, who explain how classical composition is a curriculum which seeks to educate students to think logically and develop rhetorical skills for both writing and speaking; how the middle school years when classical comp is offered are sometimes forgotten but full of opportunity; and how boys in particular respond well to the structure and toolbox that classical comp provides.   

Kolbecast episodes mentioned & relevant: 

• 81 The When and the How of Online Elementary 

Check out this article in the Kolbe Help Center for more information about Kolbe’s curriculum, including classical composition. 

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG.  Experienced Kolbe mom Deirdre Mundy joins Bonnie and Steven in this first half of a two-part conversation on the lessons and insights she’s gained from homeschooling her eight children.  Deirdre shares reasons why her family chooses for traditional homeschool options and year-round school rather than online classes and summer breaks; advice for families where the parents do not have a classical education themselves; and opportunities for scholarships.  She also highlights the importance of allowing your kids to see you try, fail, and try again in learning new things, as well as the distinction between schedules and rhythms.  

Links mentioned: 

• QuestBridge 

Relevant Kolbecast episodes: 

• 200 Transition Years  

• 54 Pro Omnibus Contendit 

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG.  Join us for the second in our multi-movement reflection on music.  Carl Hasler and Olivia Knuffke visit with Bonnie, Steven, and Jordan about how music can be a kind of beauty that stretches your soul; the way that “classical” music can build stamina, attention, and the ability to sit with something new—but also the way that “classical” music can be a misnomer; reminiscences of the first time each of them heard various pieces; and the ongoing exchange between what a piece of music brings to you and what you bring to it. 

Kolbecast episodes mentioned & relevant: 

• 186  Full Circle (of Fifths), part 1 of this conversation 

Other resources mentioned: 

• Anthony & Debra Esolen’s Word & Song Substack  

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG. In the 200 episodes since we rebooted the Kolbecast, we’ve heard from a lot of significant voices. In this episode, we hear from two of the most significant Kolbeans: our students. Ninth graders Noah (who does a hybrid of self-paced and online classes) and Caleb (who does all online) visit with Bonnie and Steven, where the real-life long-distance friends share about their typical school days, their happy and cautionary memories, the lessons they’re learning about both diligence and rest, the effort they invest in their education and formation, and the things they like to do when they’re not working on school. 

Noah and Caleb utilize Kolbe offerings in different ways. Here’s more information about the three ways to educate with Kolbe Academy.  

To hear the talks given at the 2024 Call to Holiness Retreat, check out this YouTube playlist. Speakers include Fr. Robert Spitzer, Msgr. James Shea, Mr. Dan Angel, Fr. Charles Archer, and Sr. Mary Rose 

Relevant Kolbecast episodes: 

• 123 A Change of the Ages with Msgr. James Shea 

Kolbe families can utilize the Schoology directory to contact each other. Here’s information from the Kolbe website’s help center.  

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG.  If you want to make boys into men, it requires a brotherhood of men to set a disciplined example.  Jason Craig joins the Kolbecast today to visit about calling men to conversion and brotherhood.  He, Bonnie, Steven, and Jordan discuss disorders of loneliness in today’s society, the imbalanced emphasis on mothers to the exclusion of fathers in various homeschooling discourses, and the necessity of living out mercy and community locally.  He also compares and contrasts centripetal and centrifugal forces in current life, shares about the organization Fraternus, and describes his experience of homesteading.  All in all, his message is that the classical world is a lived culture that requires men as well as women. 

Relevant Kolbecast episodes: 

Learn more about Fraternus here. Catch the first couple of episodes Till and Keep here and look for it in your favorite podcast app soon! 

Jason’s books: 

Jason also mentions a forthcoming book on localism to which he contributed: Localism: Coming Home to Catholic Social Teaching 

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

AMDG.  The Shroud of Turin—a burial cloth evidencing Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection—has become a research focus for Dr. Gilbert Lavoie, a physician who’s been practicing medicine for many years. In this episode, Dr. Lavoie takes an unflinching, clinical, and forensic approach to recount how he used his medical training in service of examining and understanding the Shroud. He discusses with Steven, Jordan, and Bonnie the process he went through to reveal the sign of our salvation hidden in the Gospel of John that awaits us. 

Listener note: the topics discussed include clinical descriptions of the sufferings of Jesus evident from the Shroud.  

Relevant links: 

• Dr. Lavoie’s book The Shroud of Jesus and the Sign that John Ingeniously Concealed 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey. 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

AMDG.  Children don’t come with instruction manuals, so having resources to help road map out various challenges can benefit everyone in a family.  In this episode, Karen Allgood and Krysten Pizzurro join Bonnie and Steven to describe the vast array of services available through Kolbe’s student support services and special education offerings.  They describe the individualized attention they provide and the confident communication they foster in situations where families may be uncertain they can fulfill a child’s need.  They also touch on the importance of documentation and accommodations, the concerns about being labeled or just needing to try harder, and the importance of the fact that each child is exactly how God willed him or her to be. 

Helpful links 

• Student Support Services page on the Kolbe website 

Related Kolbecast episodes 

• 196 Adaptable Asynchonous & Dynamic Digital Homeschool Options 

We’d be grateful for your feedback! Please share your thoughts with us via this Kolbecast survey! 

The Kolbecast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most podcast apps. By leaving a rating and review in your podcast app of choice, you can help the Kolbecast reach more listeners. The Kolbecast is also on Kolbe's YouTube channel (audio only with subtitles).  Using the filters on our website, you can sort through the episodes to find just what you're looking for. However you listen, spread the word about the Kolbecast! 

Have questions or suggestions for future episodes or a story of your own experience that you’d like to share? We'd love to hear from you! Send your thoughts to [email protected] and be a part of the Kolbecast odyssey.