Happy Wednesday!
Two quick notes before I hand the mic over to Ela.
First, a reminder that applications for the 2026-27 school year close July 1. If you have been thinking about OpenEd for your family, or you know a family who has, now is the time to start (or finish) yours.
Second, America turns 250 in a couple of weeks, and we want your family in on it. We are kicking off something we are calling the Independence Project: have your kids make one thing about what this country means to them - an essay, a video, a photo essay, a drawing, a song, anything. Start this week, submit by July 1, and we will feature our favorites on the Fourth.
If your family likes a finish line, you can run it as a two-week sprint. But one good afternoon counts too.
Now to this week's episode.
- Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)
In the spring of 2013, ToriAnn Perkey directed a homeschool play, planted a huge garden, and canned 80 quarts of tomatoes. Then the family drove to Yosemite, and she fell apart in a parking lot.
She was nine years and four kids into homeschooling, and she knew what she was doing. It still took her a full year to climb back out – a year of Magic School Bus episodes, bare-minimum school, and tortilla chips counting as a food group.
What she learned in that year is that burnout has levels. Sometimes you fix it by lowering your expectations and shrinking the school day. Sometimes the school day was never the problem, and the fix is therapy, a doctor, or a hormonal change no one thought to check for. Most burnout advice only treats the first kind, which is why so many moms do all of it and still feel like they are drowning.
In the episode:
The summer of overdoing it that ended in a parking-lot breakdown
Why "just lower your expectations" only fixes one kind of burnout
What a “bare-minimum” school year looked like in her house
The moment her skeptical husband became a believer
ToriAnn has homeschooled for 20 years and graduated four kids. This is her second time on the show. The first was on homeschooling high school without fear, worth a listen here.
- Ela
