Homeschool

Wars, Plagues, and Fires: Is This How the World Ends?

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

Saddled with an anxious mind, it’s easy for me to go bleak. Hopeless. Straight to the end of the world. It’s easy to look around at world or national events and think, it’s never been this bad before.

But this is not a new habit of mine. I’ve been fast-forwarding to Armageddon for years. This tells me it’s not about the age in which I live but about the mind I inhabit.

There is, as always, reason to fear. Recently some have said that we are closer to nuclear war now than we have been since the Cold War. (Note: I originally wrote those words in April 2024, shortly after the war in Israel had begun.)

But in times like these I remember what C.S. Lewis had to say in his 1948 essay, “On Living in an Atomic Age,” and I go reread it. You probably already know it, but here it is just in case:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.’

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors – anaesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things – praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Of course, that reminds me of this George Orwell quote from his 1946 essay, “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad,” which I’ve also shared before:

The atomic bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

And that reminds me of what we learned in homeschool history class. Specifically, what we learned in Chapter 12 of Susan Wise Bauer’s The Story of the World Volume 3: Early Modern Times. The setting was London, the 1650s and ‘60s. First there was a long, drawn-out war followed by an extremely unpopular governing regime. Then there was a plague. And finally, there was a disaster that destroyed half the city.

Nearly ten years of the English Civil War—violence, unrest, and oppression. An unpopular religious regime for the next five. Two fifths (forty percent) of London succumbing to the Yersinia pestis bacterium a few years after that. And less than a year later four fifths of London burning to the ground all because the king’s baker had been careless one night.

If I’d been living in London in 1666, at the end of all of that, I would have thought the end of the world was right around the corner. I would have thought Jesus was coming soon. Surely. But I would have been wrong. Nearly four hundred years later, we’re still waiting.

What about Matthew 24 and Jesus’s apparent warnings that the end was happening soon? What about Matthew 25 and the parable of the virgins? Aren’t we supposed to be ready for His return at all times? It could happen at any moment. At least, that’s what I’d heard growing up.

But when our Bible class studied this verse, the teacher explained that it’s not just that we need to be ready for His return to happen soon. We’re also supposed to be ready for it to happen later. To be prepared to stay and wait a long time. The wise ones were prepared for a longer wait — and possibly more suffering — and they were rewarded.

Wars, plagues, and fires. Those are the trials that the English people faced in the 1650s and ‘60s. And they are the trials the modern world has faced in the 2020s. It doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the world is nigh, although it might. But things have always been falling apart. 2026 is no different — though it is personal.

So don’t just be ready to receive Him now. Also be ready to wait. Be ready right now, and be ready later. We don’t know the times, and it’s not our job to know the times. It’s our job to be prepared no matter how long it takes. Even through suffering, even through heartache. It’s our job to settle in and make a life, to raise children and plant gardens, even if we have to wait seventy years, or more.

I remember in 2021 my husband Jonathan was working on a landmark article on codependency and the church. He took a couple months to germinate the seed and complete the essay. And all through that time, I knew I wanted to write about Rose of Sharon.

But he was doing something really important, and we were everywhere surrounded by chaos. I wondered if my desire might be meaningless. So I asked him, “Every day it seems like the world is ending. Should I still write about flowers? How could they possibly matter in the light of all this other stuff?”

You know what he told me? He said, “The end of the world is especially the time to write about flowers.” And then he said something about that C.S. Lewis essay I love so much. (You can search our website for his take on the essay and my take on the essay; apparently we love this essay.)

You know what else? Since I started writing this reflection a couple years ago and then laid it down before picking it back up again recently, my relationship with news-related anxiety has changed. I don’t follow the news so closely anymore. There have been so many brushes with apocalypse that they no longer shock me anymore. It’s seemed like the end of the world so many times that I’ve given up thinking it is. 

I’ve tried to order my loves rightly once again. Looking to history, especially London in the 1650s and ‘60s has helped. But so have the words of Jesus in Matthew 25 and the words of Lewis in his famous essay, along with the essays and book listed below. Because someday it will be the end of the world, and there won’t be any question about it. Everyone will know. But until then, God has work for us to do.

//

For further reading:

Why I Can’t Care About Every Crisis (on the challenges of living in two worlds)
What George Orwell and C.S. Lewis can teach us about chaos, creation, and a world living in fear
On Living in Terrible Times by Jonathan Trotter
Reading the News When Crisis Hits by Lilly Rivera 
Stop Burning Out for Jesus by Valerie Limmer
Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News by Jeffrey Lyle Bilbro

Just in Time for Summer Book Clubs: A Discussion Guide for The Hats We Wear!

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

Several women have told me they’re planning to use my book, The Hats We Wear: Reflections on Life as a Woman of Faith, for their summer book clubs, and I wanted to develop a discussion guide for them. But you could also use it as a set of journaling prompts if you’re reading through the book on your own.

The book is divided into six sections/hats (Practical Theologian, Emotional Human, Embodied Woman, Wife, Mom, Homeschool Teacher), so I’ve structured the guide around a six-week schedule — although you could split sections into two and take longer if you wanted.

The questions are designed to get readers thinking deeply about their own lives, so a single book club meeting might not be able to cover all of the questions in each section — leaders will probably need to decide which questions to prioritize based on their particular groups. But the discussion guide can at least be a jumping off point for you!

You can download the PDF or access a viewer-only version of the Google doc.

And I’d love to hear about how your book club conversations go or see any photos you might want to share, so feel free to contact me privately with any questions or comments!

What You Need to Know About Homeschooling High School

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

There’s a lot of guidance out there for young homeschool moms. It’s an adventure a lot of families try in the early years. But sometimes homeschooling is only for a season. Not every family keeps homeschooling all the way through high school, and that’s fine. It’s actually part of the beauty and adaptability of homeschooling. But having fewer moms to turn to for advice can make the teen years a little harder to navigate. 

So when I speak with moms who are nervous about homeschooling high school — whether their kids are in middle school or even in upper elementary school — I tell them two things. [For context, my two oldest have graduated already, my third child is in the middle of her senior year, and my fourth child just started her freshman year in high school.]

First of all, your student should be working at their level in every subject. Academically speaking, where are they right now? Figure that out, and then build from there. They can’t write a five-paragraph theme if they can’t write a good paragraph, and there’s no use wishing they’re in algebra when they’re actually in pre-algebra. 

I credit this wisdom to Lee Binz in her booklet How to Homeschool 9th and 10th Grade. The concept seems so simple, but when I first came across it, it was revolutionary.

So don’t freak out if your child is “behind” or needs to catch up on something. The truth is, they are where they are, just as you are where you are. In your housework. In your finances. In your relationships. In your faith walk. And your child is where he or she is. In math, in history, in reading, in writing, in science. There’s no changing what is.

But our job isn’t merely to assess. It’s to sketch out a workable plan for improving their skills and growing on their educational journey. We had a homemade poster in our schoolroom in Cambodia that read, “All learning happens one step at a time.” It had the image of a staircase on it, and we pasted a single puzzle piece at the bottom to represent the step-wise nature of learning.

We can’t rush our students to the next level, but we can encourage incremental change in each area. We want them to become lifelong learners, just as we want to be lifelong learners alongside them.

[I feel a grammar school song coming on here — “Inch by inch, row by row, I’m gonna make this garden.” But I digress.]

The second thing I tell moms is that a student’s daily time investment increases significantly in high school. They need to be working much of the day. This may come as a surprise to students (and moms) who’ve been accustomed to completing all their work in the morning, so you may have to require more of them than before. 

Ideally their work load was stepped up slowly during middle school so that by the time they get to high school, they’re ready. But if the time commitment still comes as a surprise, you can use 9th grade as a stepping stone to all-day studying.

There’s a yay and a yuck to these guiding principles. It’s a relief to simply accept where a student is in each subject and to know that you can and should continue tailoring their education to their needs and abilities. It can also feel like a challenge when they start studying more hours in the day — for both them and for you.

We need the grace to make slow, steady progress starting where we are and also to accept that high school is going to take longer than homeschool used to. But you absolutely can homeschool in high school if that’s still what your family wants to do. It just looks different from the little years.

* * *

SEE ALSO:

Two Challenges That Homeschooling Families Face on the Field (article at A Life Overseas)

The Hats We Wear: Reflections on Life as a Woman of Faith (my new book, with sections on marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling)

BONUS: Transcript Tips

I find that moms are usually pretty nervous about the dreaded transcript, but it doesn’t have to be too intimidating. The important thing is to start keeping records early. That way when it’s time to apply to college or university, you don’t have to scramble to create a transcript.

You can find different resources online to help you plan your student’s four years of high school, but whatever you do, remember to record it each year. For me this took the form of some Excel spreadsheets (I’m still an engineer at heart!) and a single Word doc.

The Word doc kept all the course descriptions, including the name of each class, what curriculum I used, and how I assigned grades for each class. (Deciding how to assign grades and which grading scale to use is an article of its own.) You may or may not need these course descriptions for college applications, but it helps keep you organized and on track during high school.

Each year I used an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my student’s assignments in each class, with a separate tab for each subject (math, science, language arts, history, etc). This meant that by 12th grade, each child had four spreadsheets, one for each year of high school, each with their own subjects tabs. (Did I mention that each child also had their own folder on my desktop?) 

In addition, I dedicated a separate spreadsheet to their transcript, this one with four tabs to record the final grades for each subject in each year (which had been calculated in the other spreadsheet) and a fifth tab for the actual transcript (you can find templates online for how to structure those). I used those grade-level tabs (9th, 10th, 11th, 12th) to calculate their GPA and cumulative GPA, which — I won’t lie — can be a pain in the neck sometimes.

I updated the transcript at the end of every school year (or sometimes, if I’m being honest, right before the next school year began) so that by the time we were ready to apply to colleges, I just had to make a few cosmetic adjustments, print to PDF, and sign the thing.

The moral of the story here is: If you start early on the transcript, you will greatly reduce your stress in the long run.

What Subjects Should Busy Homeschool Moms Prioritize?

/ Elizabeth Trotter / Leave a comment

Homeschool moms often tell me how difficult it is to squeeze every subject into every day. This is especially true when it comes to families with multiple children or families on the field, where ministry can take up a chunk of each day.

And I tell their worried hearts that it’s ok not to do every subject every day. But I also tell them that there are certain subjects they do need to do every day — namely math and language arts. These are skills subjects, which means that every successive lesson builds on the lesson before it. You can’t skip anything in an attempt to make forward progress.

In contrast, lessons for content subjects like science and history can be switched around or spaced out (within reason), and children can still grasp the lesson. With science and history, a child also has the assurance of studying that particular area again. They’ll be introduced to different eras in history and different sectors of science in elementary school, then again in middle school, and once more in high school. If they miss something the first time around, they have plenty of time to return to the subject and learn it later.

But if you only do math three or four times a week, that will eventually catch up with you, and your child won’t be ready for upper level math when the time comes. That’s because you can’t really “double up” on math. A child’s brain needs enough time to understand and digest new concepts, and a single lesson a day is pretty much their max.

But if you study history only three or four days a week and science only two or three, your children will still be exposed to new ideas, and those ideas don’t build on one another in earnest till high school. 

[Word to the wise: You can teach history, science, and art to your children as a group for a long time. Each child does not need an individual history or science curriculum until at least middle school.]

So five days every week, your children need to do math. Even if the lesson is too long and too hard to finish in one day, they still need to practice math every day. Consistency is key here. And since review days are great for helping concepts stick, be sure to schedule in a few of those too.

While young kids might be able to stop after twenty or thirty minutes of mathematics study, by the time they enter junior high and high school, they’ll probably be studying math about an hour every day. The good news here is that in junior high and high school you don’t have to sit next to them for that entire hour.

In addition to math, your children need to study language arts every day. When they’re just learning to read, they need consistency in instruction and the daily reminder of phonics rules. After they’ve learned to read, they still need to read every day — for practice and for fun! They continue to build fluency and comprehension for a long time.

But reading is only one strand of language arts, and it can feel overwhelming to add spelling, vocabulary, grammar, phonics, copywork, dictation, and handwriting every day. In the early years I really stressed myself out trying to choose the best version of each of those subjects, and honestly I didn’t need to worry that much — or waste that much time.

So take a deep breath. You don’t have to teach all strands of language arts to each child in a single day. One option is to loop those subjects, an approach I learned from Sarah MacKenzie of Read-Aloud Revival. Another option is to group them into units, which is what we tended to do — once I settled into a more realistic approach, that is.

When a child was younger, I would assign a phonics lesson every day in addition to their reading practice. When they finished the series of phonics books, I would begin spelling lessons. Then we might do a spelling lesson on most days for the next few years. 

After that, when they had a better handle on the spelling rules, I would introduce grammar lessons. I might sprinkle in a vocabulary workbook here and there once they were pretty solid in their reading skills, but vocabulary workbooks are usually optional, so you don’t have to assign them.

[A note regarding grammar: I tended not to introduce grammar too early, as the various rules can be quite complex and overwhelming for a young child. I did, however, tend to keep assigning daily grammar lessons all the way through 10th or 11th grade in preparation for standardized tests.]

With my “unit approach” to language arts, you don’t have to chase five or six different language arts workbooks for every child every day. You only need a reading lesson plus one additional language skill. 

It’s also important to note here that your children should practice some form of writing every day. That could be handwriting practice or some copy work in the younger grades (we used hymn lyrics a lot) or a written narration in the older grades (usually drawn from a history or science lesson). Thankfully, none of these tasks requires much time investment from Mom, and the written narration is a two-for-one deal, covering both the writing requirement and a content subject.

So when time is tight, what subjects should a busy homeschool mom prioritize? In the end it comes down to the proverbial 3 R’s: reading, writing, and arithmetic. 

And since those subjects all do best with a fresh brain, if at all possible, try to get them done in the morning. This might require some creativity on your part if you’re a ministry family or if you have a lot of young children. 

But whether you finish them in the morning or the afternoon, math and language arts are your daily non-negotiables, skills your children need to be making steady progress in. Even when there are disruptions and you can’t get to everything, I advise moms to try and at least finish these subjects.

There’s one more thing I always recommend, and that’s to read aloud as much as possible. Reading aloud with your kids becomes this beautiful pillar of family life. It creates your own unique family culture — a shared language, shared memories, shared inside jokes. You’re building something fun together, and Mom isn’t just a homeschool taskmaster. She’s also participating in the joy of life, experiencing epic, suspenseful, and even silly stories with her children. 

[Whenever possible, try to do the accents. This adds greatly to the fun.]

My kids are nearly grown now, and we still talk about the days when we read aloud together almost every day after lunch, and we still talk about specific stories we read together that were particularly funny, sad, or impactful. But you don’t have to read aloud every day to be a read-aloud family. You just have to read aloud regularly. Maybe you do it after lunch like us, or maybe you read in the evenings, or after breakfast. 

And maybe you don’t have time to read for thirty minutes to an hour. That’s ok too. Fifteen minutes still counts. Fifteen minutes here and fifteen minutes there still add up to a finished book in the end — probably lots of finished books.

The beauty of read-aloud time is that you get to choose what kinds of stories to encounter with your kids. You don’t have to read what the other moms are reading. You don’t have to burn yourself out by following a predetermined list. You can use books to create your own family culture, one that reflects your loves, desires, and dreams.

So teach a math lesson. Have your kids read and write something on their own. Then read aloud with them. These are the foundations of a successful homeschool, and even if you’re busy with ministry or a gaggle of young children, my guess is that you can probably still make them happen every day. 

When you get a chance, sure, add history or science or art. You could even put them on a loop. But you don’t need to stress if they’re not getting done every day in those early years. As long as they’re getting done some of the days, you’re still building a sturdy education. And that’s good news for an anxious homeschool mom.

* * *

MY NEW BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE!

The Hats We Wear: Reflections on Life as a Woman of Faith addresses six different aspects of being a woman of faith, with sections on theology, emotions, and embodied living, as well as marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling. Available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook forms.

Also stay tuned for some homeschool high school help, coming soon!

Two Questions I Always Ask Homeschool Moms

/ trotters41 / 2 Comments

by Elizabeth

The early days of homeschooling are intense. You’re afraid of messing up. You haven’t fully settled into your teaching style yet. You’re still getting to know your children’s learning preferences. You’re still uncovering their abilities and their challenges.

And often, you have little ones running underfoot while you attempt to educate your older ones.

Older moms offer advice, and it’s good, but you don’t know how to apply it to your situation. You read books, and they’re good, but sometimes the requirements feel overwhelming. How can anyone do all these things and do them well? 

And sometimes the advice conflicts, and you don’t know which to choose.

Now, after 20 years of motherhood and over 15 years of homeschooling, I’ve become that older mom who has advice to offer and guidance to give. And the first thing I want to say is: let’s all take a deep breath. We make better decisions when we’re calm.

Beyond that, there are all sorts of things I could tell you. Things like figuring out your educational approach and your teaching preferences and your family culture and your students’ learning preferences. And those things are all important, and I talk about them with moms.

But the two questions I always ask young moms are the two questions they sometimes forget to ask themselves. They are:

What are you doing to take care of yourself?

And, if you’re married, what are you doing to take care of your marriage?

These two areas are the bedrock upon which a healthy, happy homeschool is built. If you’re burnt out, you won’t bring your best self to the task of home education. You’ll be tired and worn down, you’ll run out of energy and enthusiasm, and you might let too many things slide that shouldn’t be sliding. (What needs to slide and what needs to stay is a conversation for a future post.)

If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have the love you need to pour out on your children. Your relationships with them won’t be as good as they can be because you aren’t as full as you could be. You’ll be snappier than you want to be, and you’ll regret those moments.

Answering these two questions can be really hard when you have young children. You’re almost always short on time, and you’re probably short on sleep, which means you could also be short on brain power. Hopefully you can take some time, either in the early morning before your children get up or in the evening after they go to bed, to get quiet and ask your soul these two questions.

Don’t be afraid to ask your husband for help with the children in order to discern these things. You might even need the help of a friend or coach to talk it out. But don’t discount the power of solitary journaling to help you figure these things out. Write out all your angst until the answers appear on the page. And then go live them.

**NEW BOOK COMING IN SUMMER 2025** 

The Hats We Wear: Reflections on Life as a Woman of Faith addresses six different aspects of being a woman of faith, with sections on spirituality, emotions, and embodied living, as well as marriage, motherhood, and homeschooling.