Homeschool Hints
Homeschool Hints Podcast
What is Midwest Parent Educators (MPE) and how does it help homeschool families?
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What is Midwest Parent Educators (MPE) and how does it help homeschool families?

Join us for an interview with Chad and Michelle Womble! Chad is MPE's President and has been serving at MPE for more than two decades. Learn more about the nonprofit's homeschool history and benefits.

TRANSCRIPT:

Shanxi: Hello, this is Shanxi Omoniyi, host of MPE’s “Homeschool hints” podcast to encourage you wherever you may be on your homeschool journey. Today we're going to talk to Chad and Michelle Womble, President of MPE, and just to talk about MPE and what it's all about. So, I'll start with you, Chad.  

Chad: Thanks for having us here. This is an exciting time for me, the opportunity to visit with you on one of our early podcasts, this new thing that MPE is doing. My name's Chad Womble, and this is my wife Michelle. We currently serve as the president of MPE. We've been involved with MPE for probably 21, 22 years. We started out just by attending the homeschool conferences when our oldest son was, uh, three or four years old, even before he was school age, so to speak. Shortly after that, a few years after that, we were asked to join the board of MPE. We've been serving in some capacity ever since. <laugh>, mainly with the conference committee and on the board on several different occasions. And over the last couple of years, we were asked to step into the role of president and it's been quite an adventure.

Shanxi: Thank you so much. And Michelle?

Michelle: Well, I just mainly just try to support him as much as I can, give him time that he can work on the stuff that he needs to work on. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> try to hold down the fort while he does that. <laugh>  

Chad: It's great to have a partner in life. Michelle does a really great job of managing our household and keeping everything together at home. And that gives me the freedom to do the other things that I feel like I need to do. I look at MPE as my ministry, and I've looked at it that way for over 20 years, and she's just a great support and giving me that freedom to still do that.  

Shanxi: So how did you hear about the homeschool conferences in the first place? I mean, that was a long time ago.  

Chad: <laugh>, that was a long time ago. I really don't know how we, yeah, probably, I worked with a friend of mine, Mark Williams and his wife, their daughter was just a little bit older than our son. They were talking about going to the homeschool conference and we thought, well, we'll go see what this is about. I already knew that I wanted our family to be homeschooled. Michelle wasn't quite as convinced. So we went to the first homeschool conference.  

Shanxi: And was that enough to make Michelle change her mind, or did it <laugh> did she need further persuasions?

Michelle: <laugh> Yeah, I think, I think I came on board pretty quickly and easily, but that was pretty overwhelming. That first conference, <laugh> seeing all of the curriculum and all of that.  

Chad: she always said that she was doing it year by year. I was always convinced we were in it for the long haul. But, uh, <laugh>, we let her go ahead and pretend that it was year by year <laugh>.  

Shanxi: So what has MPE meant to you over the years?

Chad: Relationships, really. We've made a lot of really good deep relationships over the years through our involvement with MPE. We've gotten to know hundreds of other homeschool families that have served as, uh, encouragement to us. We've had mentors that we've gotten through our time serving with MPE. So really to me, MPE has been about the relationships that we've built in the process. Certainly your, your parents would be part of those relationships that we've made over the years serving alongside them with MPE.  

Shanxi: Yeah. It's being a real family, <laugh> family dynasty in some ways.  

Chad: <laugh>. Yes, that's right.  

Shanxi: What are some benefits that you've seen just in your own family from serving at MPE?  

Michelle: Our kids, once they were old enough, they were pages, which is what they used to be called, and they would, introduce speakers, which gave them a great opportunity to learn, just talking in front of people, which I'm not very good at, but <laugh>. And so that was a good opportunity for them. And then also some of our kids worked in the children's conference and that gave them training on how to, you know, help with kids and be organized and do the music and, you know, help out with all of that.

Michelle: Yeah, we started out with, you know, all they, they just went to the conference and then actually we started out, it was our weekend away. Oh, <laugh>. And the grandmas kept them, and then once they got old enough to, the oldest got old enough to work in the conference, then we started bringing the younger ones to the conference to, um, participate. And so, but yeah, it's been fun watching 'em grow up. And, uh, we have one grandson, so now hopefully they'll be attending soon. And, you know, getting ready to homeschool him, they've said they want to <laugh>. And so, um, that'll be fun to watch, watch them start their journey.  

Chad: It's been really great to see our kids take on serving in many different ways, but certainly MPE is one of 'em. They all, they've all served at the homeschool conference in one way or another, whether being what we used to call pages, the youth leadership team, they've, many of them have served in that role. All of them have served within the children's conference. And it's been a dream of mine that eventually MPE is run by homeschool graduates, and part of that dream is getting our children involved. And I know, know that one of my sons, Trenton has been on part of the, has been on the leadership team for MPEK, our MPEKids crew. And, uh, he's also continuing to serve with our safety team. And I look forward to him expanding that role as time goes on. And now that, like she said, our grandson, his parents, I would suspect that over the coming years they will begin to get involved with MPE and more of a leadership role as well. And I just find that really exciting. I look around and I see we have several, we have a couple of homeschool graduates on the board. You certainly have been a, an incredible resource to us. Oh, thank you to MPE and you being a homeschool graduate. And we have several homeschool graduates now that are in leadership within mpe. And that's really my dream is that we see that. I guess I kind of deviated from your, from your original question about my family, but That's okay. <laugh>, they fit in there as well. Yeah.  

Shanxi: What are some challenges that you've experienced over the years?  

Chad: To be honest with you, probably the biggest challenge that we've faced with MPE is attracting new volunteers. The Lord's always provided who, who needs to be there, when they need to be there. And it's important to us that we continue to trust in the Lord for whatever the needs are for MPE. This ultimately this is, this is his organization. We minister, we minister and serve for him. And, but as far as challenges, we have a lot of things that we would like to do. Sure. And a lot of times we have a hard time having the people we need to do it. Everybody's got busy lives, I understand that. But we certainly are always in need of people that have a desire to serve and have a desire to serve specifically the homeschool community. And so that's probably what I would say our biggest challenge has been.  

Another very large challenge is many homeschool vendors have begun to not attend conferences. And our homeschool conference that we have generally in April is by far the largest event that we do every year. And it is driven financially by the vendors. Certainly we charge membership fees to get into the conference. We charge admission fees. We try to keep those really, really low. But without vendors to finance the whole project makes it very difficult. And so a lot of vendors through the Covid days, and even before that, with the advent of Amazon and online shopping and retailers, a lot of vendors have started not to attend conferences because they don't see the value of if people are gonna buy online, they don't see the value of spending the money to go to a conference. So that's also being a challenge. So I would encourage your listeners to, if they're vendors that they like, that they want to see at a conference, reach out to 'em, if their customers are reaching out to them and saying, we want to see you at our conferences, that certainly has a bigger impact than whenever a, a conference vendor director calls them and says, Hey, we'd like for you to be here.  

Shanxi: If people are interested in volunteering at MPE, what would be the steps to start volunteering?  

Chad: Certainly drop an email to our info at m@midwestparenteducators.org. That's our general email address. Drop an email there describing that. You just let us know that you wanna volunteer. Maybe let us know a little bit about your skillset, what you're interested in. We certainly have many places we can plug people in with lots of different skillset sets. Certainly we need people with administrative skillsets. And so really that's really the first step is just send us an, in an email to that info mailbox. and we'll get back in touch with you and work on getting something set up so that we can get you plugged in. Sure. We, this all started with us, just, we volunteered. We had developed some friends over the years at the conference, and then through church we had developed some friends who, one of which was the president at the time, Kevin Trembly, Kevin and Sue Trembly, they asked us if we wanted to volunteer as board members. We, they needed board members. That's how this all started for us.  

Shanxi: And 20 years later, you're still here.

Chad: <laugh> Twenty-plus years later, here we are and happy to be here. This, it's been a, it really has been a, a real blessing to be a part of everything MPE over the years.  

Shanxi: How has MPE changed over the years? I mean, from your vantage point and your perspective as homeschooling has changed over those 20 years, how has MPE changed as an organization?

Michelle: The conference place has changed tremendously. I mean, when we first went, it was at Mid-American Nazarene College, and they just had rooms of different vendors like packed into there, like sardines.  

Chad: Yep, they didn't have enough. They didn't have one large space to have all of the vendors, so vendors were scattered all over the church.  

Michelle: Yeah. So that, so once we moved to the next location, that was really nice to be able to have it all in one room and be able to see it all at once.  

Chad: Yeah. And I think we've been able to attract some since we started in the early days, most of the conference speakers were local. Certainly nothing wrong with local speakers. Some of my favorite speakers have been local speakers, but because the size of our conference had grown, we were able to attract some more nationally known speakers to headline the conference. MPE as a whole, MPE’s role, I believe has changed a little bit. The way that families educate is a little different now with the online and social media. So many families are now more comfortable with not being together in a group as often. Early on, MPE facilitated more small groups, I think, than we do now. I would like to see us expand that. Again, I think that that personal connection is something that families need. We really, we really can't do this life online.  We have to live life out and about.

And I think that that personal connection's good. I'd like to see us be able to expand that, but that's certainly been a change because early on that was more of what MPE was doing. We're currently trying to do more in the way of specifically encouraging moms.

We have our Women's Encouragement Day, I believe that takes place in February. And, uh, that's really our second biggest event, certainly as far as active attendees. And we just get rave reviews about that. Now, we've expanded that, even though it's a separate thing. Our GROW, which is smaller groups, I believe, 20 to 25 moms generally. And we we're doing that three, four, maybe five times a year, really just mainly to encourage moms. And I, I'm glad to see that MPE is branched into that really heavy. I mean, um, I'm not a homeschool mom, <laugh>, but I certainly understand and conceive the need for encouragement. It's a really hard job and the paycheck is deferred way down the road, <laugh>. So I just, I'm glad to see that we're really working towards encouraging moms.

Shanxi: So what are some goals that you see for MPE? You mentioned the small groups emphasis.  

Chad: Yeah. I would like to see us move into more of the cluster groups that we used to have. Maybe see more of those start to establish and see, I don't want MPE to necessarily be involved in leading those or, but some, but facilitation to get the word out. And I would also certainly like to see MPE continue to expand our encouragement for moms. I'd like to see these groups grow, and I would like to see us develop some regional mom encouragement support groups where maybe moms can get together for coffee once a month or something in, in specific geographic parts of town. I'd like to see us do that. Of course. All, all these things take, take volunteers. It takes people that are willing to, to step up and coordinate that and head that up. Certainly MPE has to look at the changes to the society's landscape with, on everything online.  

I know we've started to venture into a virtual conference by hosting one of our rooms at the conferences, simulcast through the internet each year. Maybe we need to be expanding more into virtual conferences so we can reach a larger group. Also, I would like for MPE to continue to be and expand our encouragement of the homeschool families that we represent. Encouraging them to be more vigilant about legislative matters. Certainly Kansas has been very favorable to homeschooling. Missouri has been very favorable to homeschooling, but truthfully, that can change within one legislative session. And I would really like to see us be very vigilant about that, to continue to get the word out and for families to continue to be involved and to be even more involved.  

Shanxi: From your 20 years of experience, has there been any times when legislative vigilance was needed?  

Chad: There certainly have been some concerning legislation that we've had to keep an eye on. I know a few years ago, several years ago, there was a, a family that a real tragedy happened with the kids in the family, and whether they were actually a homeschool family or they were just claiming to be homeschooling to avoid anybody knowing what was going on in their family. Certainly at that time there was a lot of talk about, oh, well, we need to have more oversight over these families. That's a, that was a time whenever I was certainly concerned that we could end up being drawn into where we have to report more and we have to have social service visits and that sort of thing. Certainly something that we're not, we're not interested in. And certainly, there's always discussions at the legislative level about providing government money to homeschoolers.  

Although I don't know that we have a specific opinion whether we're going to support or not support that legislation. It's certainly something that I think we have to be very vigilant about in that generally money comes with strings. And I think that it's very important that we as homeschool families maintain independence from that government oversight. Not because we have anything to hide, but because we have a vested interest in our kids. And we, God has put us in a position and we are uniquely equipped to manage our own families, and we've chosen to take that responsibility very seriously.  

Shanxi: If you, you know, if you could from the high, from the high level <laugh>, look back on your 20 years of experience, and, you know, MPE has obviously been such a huge part of your homeschool journey, is there anything you'd do differently or suggest to people who, you know, maybe starting their homeschool or not sure even how to go about beginning, starting homeschool? Anything you would suggest?  

Chad: I don't know that we would do very much different than we've done. I might say that we would probably have, early on, we did everything, all of our education was in-house. We did have cluster groups like we mentioned before, that we did go do some field trips with. But we did everything in-house. And I think that we might have missed out on some value of maybe doing some co-op classes. Not, not many. I certainly wouldn't want, wouldn't have wanted to change the way we've done that, but a few here and there. Not because I think it was necessary from an educational standpoint, but I do think there would've been a little more value from a social standpoint. And that's just me being absolutely transparent. Sure. Our kids certainly had plenty of friends and the church that we, we attended most everybody was homeschooled.  

And our kids, our kids made great friendships, but I think there may have been some value that we missed out on in having them sit side by side and, and in a class, not certainly all the time, but I think that's one area. And as far as encouraging, uh, newer homeschoolers, uh, especially those with, with young kids who are just starting out from the very beginning, I always try to encourage people that you're not gonna screw your kid up. You know, there are lots of resources out there, and when your child graduates from high school and you've homeschooled them, you will have given them what they need. They'll know how to read, they'll know how to write, they'll know how to communicate with other people. You will have given them everything that they need. I find so many times that parents, moms especially worry about, well, I can't do this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna screw my child up. And that's just not gonna be the case. <laugh>, it's just not gonna be the case. The early years of even in, you know, kindergarten, first grade, those early years, it's basic. It's basic things that, you know, anyway, don't worry about it. You know, they're learning, they're learning their ABCs, they're learning one, two threes, they're learning basic one plus one is two, they're colors to tie their shoes. All of those things are certainly things that you can, you can teach 'em. So don't worry about screwing your kid up, <laugh>. You're not gonna screw your kid up.  

Michelle: And Chad always said, we're teaching them character. Character is the main thing that we're teaching them at home. And I found that when they learned that, then when they graduated and went to college, they knew what they wanted to do. And so they just did it. And they, they had the good character to be able to do that and study on their own. And, and if they didn't have a good teacher, a professor at the college, then they would, you know, they, they knew how to do it on their own just from what we trained them to do at home.

Chad: And we've always said that we don't, we don't homeschool because we can give them a better education. Although I believe we've given them a better education than they would've gotten had we sent 'em to public school. That's not why we homeschool. We homeschool because of character. Like she said, we are attempting to raise godly men and women, and certainly our kids aren't perfect. I'd be the first to tell you that, but neither are we. And, uh, I think they've had, they've had a great deal of success in their work life. They've got an, they've, they've all got really good work ethics, something that's missing and many in their generation, and they've got good character. Like I said, we don't, we've never homeschooled because of education. We've homeschooled because of character.  

Shanxi: Well, we can look back and it was all worth it, right? <laugh>  

Michelle: Yes.

Chad: Definitely. It was a, it has been all worth it. Yeah. We've got a, got a few years left before we graduate. Number last <laugh>, but…

Michelle: Yeah, our last is this year as he'll be a senior this year. Yeah. But then we have one more,  that we've added to the family.  

Chad: We've added to the family that's living with us. And so we've got a couple years left there. And God's been good. God's been very gracious to us. And  

Shanxi: You couldn't have imagined it way back when, right?  

Chad: No. What would've happened, <laugh>, we're still taking it year by year. Right?  

Michelle: That's why it's year by year. Yes. <laugh> too overwhelming to think of 20 years down the road.  

Chad: And, and regarding MPE and the benefits from MPE, you know, we've had the privilege of having a graduation ceremony for each one of them through MPE this last year. I had the privilege of being the speaker and the mc at the graduation, and what a, what a unexpected blessing that was for me. That speaking has never really been my thing, but that was just a really, very rewarding time for me.  

Shanxi: Well, you get to do it again.

Chad: <laugh>. I do get to do it again, and I get to do it again for my, uh, youngest graduation. So I'm trying to figure out how we'll have to figure out the logistics of how that's gonna work. <laugh>. But I know previous president Todd Kangas, he did that several times, so I know that it can be done. <laugh>.  

Shanxi: Well, thank you both so much. This has been really rewarding and eye-opening into MPE as an organization. And you're right, Chad. It is all about relationships and not just the ones you've made within the organization, but also within your own family too. Michelle holding down the fort at home.  

Chad: Well, thank you very much, Shanxi. And I thank you. Again, I just can't tell you how much of a blessing you are to me and my family to MPE as a whole. Uh, you do way more than anybody will ever know that you do <laugh>. And we really, we really do depend on you. So, thank you very much.  

Shanxi: Thank you. But now I have too much pressure on me. <laugh>.  

Chad: <laugh>. That's the idea. <laugh>,  

Shanxi: Thanks so much for listening. We hope you are encouraged in your homeschool journey. Please continue the conversation with us on our website, midwesthomeschoolers.org, or email us at podcast midwest parent educators.org. We're also active on social media. If you'd like to connect with us there, thanks to Kevin McLeod of incompetech.com for providing this royalty free song, Wholesome, which is licensed under creative commons.org. 

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Homeschool Hints
Homeschool Hints Podcast
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