YMB #121 The Importance of a Living Education for Special Needs: A Conversation with Cheryl Swope

This is Your Morning Basket, where we help you bring truth, goodness, and beauty to your homeschool day. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 121 of the Your Morning Basket podcast. I’m Pam Barnhill, your host. And I’m so happy that you’re joining me here today. On today’s episode of the podcast, we have Cheryl Swope, who is the author of Simply Classical. Cheryl is coming on to talk to us about the importance of providing a living education with truth, goodness, and beauty for our special needs kids, Cheryl actually raised two special needs kids and just found it was so important to give them a classical education and education in all of the beautiful things along with teaching them the skills that they would need to survive in the world. And so I think Cheryl’s take on it is really wonderful, very enlightening. And we’re going to dig into that in just a minute. Now, if you are looking to add more truth, goodness, and beauty to your homeschool day, there is no better way to do that then with our Morning Time plans, you can find Morning Time plans in the shop over pambarnhill.com. And we have Morning Time plans. We have seasonal plans. We have history-based plans. We have literature-based plans, preschool plans, Catholic plans, and so many more. So come and check those out in the shop, or if you would like a sample, a free sample, just to see what it’s all about you can find that pambarnhill.com/month. And now on with that interview with Cheryl.

Cheryl Swope is a veteran homeschool mom with a master’s degree in special education and a specialty in learning disabilities and behavior disorders.

She’s the author of simply classical a beautiful education for any child and the creator of the award-winning simply classical curriculum. Cheryl is a gift to the homeschool community. As she shares her experience of classically educating her adopted twins, both of whom have autism and other learning disabilities. And she encourages others to do the same Sheryl. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much.

It is awesome to have you here. Well, can you share just a little bit about you and your family and kind of what led you to classical education? What led me to classical education was actually Christianity was coming back to the faith. I had been baptized as a baby raised in the church, but then I went away to the state university. I’ve heard all kinds of other things about humanity.

And I did not hear that we are sinners in need of a savior. I had all of that undermined actually did my teacher training in large part was excellent, especially regarding special needs. And I’m very grateful for that. But a lot of the theories were antithetical to the Christian faith and mine, mine was beginning to erode. So this was long before I had children,

but I ran into someone who was similarly struggling and this person would become my husband. When, when we met, we both were being drawn back to the faith in which we were raised. We married and we were married five years and every, every month, every day we were hoping for children, but children did not come in. In that time.

I started reading about education from a different perspective was in the St Louis area. So Phyllis Schlafly was a big leader in kind of back to the basics and just encouraging parents that you can teach your own child to read. Why had one, this teaching, reading award in, at the university, because it was such a complex and expert needing kind of a process.

We have these bays of readers that were just like that thick to teach the littlest of children to read. And then here was this woman saying, make sure you teach your child to read before they enter kindergarten. And I thought, teach them yourself. How, I mean, how can this even be then there was another, another man. I started listening to their kind of radio show.

He’s the creator of alpha phonics. So this is going back to the eighties. Okay. When people were saying, what is going on with education, something’s really wrong. And what it was is they were exploring the errors of the progressive approach, not just to education, but also to the human being, to the child, like let the child lead and,

and then leave it to the experts, not to the parents. So all of that, they were kind of tackling it. I think that started chipping away at what I had been taught. Then I kind of reclaiming faith or being drawn back to the faith by the grace of God. I was listening to Christian radio shows. I heard Dr. Jean Edward V on a program that I really appreciated.

He started talking about classical education. I had listened anytime that he spoke kind of soaking it up. Then I started seeing these articles. Now we’re in like the early nineties articles on classical education appearing in homeschooling magazines. And it was really drawn to this. It was very similar to some of the best education I received when I was a child. And especially in high school,

I had a high school teacher who taught us the Latin Greek Greek roots of words. And this was just in a public school. He helped us learn to write well, he taught us to read real literature. It wasn’t called classical education. It’s just what it was. So that was all resonating with me as was a return to the Christian faith that all happened in the five years that we were waiting for children.

So then when children came to us through adoption, I thought I, and I had prayed all along. If I am blessed with children, I want to give them an even better education than I received. And I want it to be a classical education. Oh, I love that. I love that so much. And you know, that, that yearning for that classical education,

I think that’s something that we had little peaks of it, you know, from our own education, little people, those of us who were educated in the public school. I mean, I can so resonates with me. What you were talking about is I can remember teachers that I came in contact with that they just had something special and they were doing something different than what the other teachers were doing.

And they didn’t call it by any certain name, but it just made such an impact on you. And it was different than what you might’ve been getting with other teachers. So that’s interesting to me how that one teacher kind of had such a huge impact on you. And I can remember those particular teachers in my, my lifetime as well. Sure. And then,

and say grade school and middle school, I remembered the con when the contrast started. So for me, this was in the seventies. We had those old school teachers where the desks faced the front. She taught us and she taught us well, she taught us what she knew about, say English, grammar. I remember learning transitive and intransitive verbs. I right now I’m so thankful for Mrs.

Hatch from fourth grade. And then in fifth grade we had a whole different teacher. She wore bell-bottoms nothing against them, but it was, it was a statement. The other teachers had worn dresses. She wore pants. She was very, very free thinking and like the, the stereotypical swirlies of the seventies and laughing and just all of those things, that’s what she sort of embodied.

So when we wrote, we were to write feeling journals. So we’re in fifth grade that, and it was the kind of thing. Don’t worry about your spelling. Don’t worry about your grammar. So she was not in it to teach us these things. She was exploring having us explore ourselves. And we were 10 and 11, you know, just right for instruction.

So looking back, there was a, there was a stark contrast going on. So as I began to embrace more of a classical approach, then children did come to us through adoption, but they weren’t prime candidates for classical education. If you look at say the homeschooling catalog, where, who should fit in this box of pedagogy, which I really don’t care for,

I don’t like that. We pigeonhole our children when they’re two or three or four. I think that the riches of what we’re restoring in a classical education are truly for any child, but mine in particular had some significant special needs. So I wasn’t sure if I could bring a classical education to them, but I wanted to do it to the greatest extent possible.

I love that because I think so often when we think about as homeschoolers, a lot of times when we think about classical education, we think of this very stringent. What’s the word I’m looking for? There’s a lot of rigor, Rigor, that’s it? The rigorous is the word I’m after this very rigorous kind of education that, you know, this is for our most talented kids,

our smartest skids. And they’re going to, they’re going to really stick their nose to the grindstone and learn all of this stuff. And they’re going to have this vast wealth of knowledge. And, you know, sometimes I think that happens, but that’s not really the point of classical education, is it? No. And I think the, the flip side of that is we think that we have to be those people.

We have to be ready to translate the Aeneid and the original language in order to give someone a classical education. So it’s not that it’s not that it’s just for the best and brightest or most bookish of our children, but it’s also not for the best and brightest or most bookish of us. We, we can bring good literature, good music, good art,

the being comfortable, just thinking about things, the realm of ideas, we can bring that approach to living and to learning to any child, even if we didn’t that background ourselves. And what I learned is that because the publishers I’ve worked with memoria press, but Mrs. Lowe is the founder was the founder of memoria press. She assumed that our generation and beyond did not receive a classical education.

So she has it such that we can learn right alongside. I had never had formal lab myself, but then I was able to teach because we taught from Latina Christiana and it was so straightforward. So orderly, so predictable that I felt as if we were reclaiming two generations of education all at the same time. I love that. I love that. Let’s think about classical education.

You mentioned music, you mentioned art, you mentioned things like that. And that is kind of what we think of sometimes with classical education, but not always. I think we, we more think about like the, the memorizing, a large body of knowledge, that includes all of these dates and everything. And a lot of times we’ll think about the Latin declensions and chanting.

Those are chanting grammar rules. Do you see those as being able to exist in the same sphere, this kind of living education of art and music and things like that. And then what we traditionally see as classical education, because I do know that’s part of it. Do you see them as being able to live together? It is part of it. They do live together.

If, if you go all the way back, things like mathematics, science, art, it was all together. So was a mathematician, but the ancient Greeks were also lovers of physical education and developing the body. Self-control certainly art sculpture. You see all of that. Play-Doh he wanted gymnastics for the body and music for the soul. Those things come to us.

But then in, in the Christian faith, we see sacred music, sacred art and controlling our bodies or strengthening our bodies for service to others. So that’s when you move out of ancient Rome and ancient Greece, which only went so far, but then you have been like a guest in the middle ages that bring that together. That bring the tradition of classical education,

which was math, science, art, music, literature, history. It was all in that and the languages. And then you, you bring that into the church. That’s where all of it comes together in this richness that I do believe was set aside in that early reclaiming of classical education, because we needed rigor. We had gone. So kind of sloppy with education,

all of the focus on feelings, there was even a song in the seventies. So it was very popular called feelings, nothing more than feelings. It kind of epitomized what we were doing in our classrooms. So we needed the rigor. We needed to restore a respect for academic learning, a respect for training. The mind when Susan Wise Bauer’s book came out,

her book was the well-trained mind. She’s trying to reclaim that purpose of education, but then the rigor, and I know Dr. Perron often jokes. We don’t want rigor unto death. We do not want rigor. That’s not what we want to do to our children. And when I saw my own little children, they had autism speech and language difficulties,

coordination difficulties. They evidenced learning disabilities, very early difficulties with processing information. So I knew that if all it is is rigor, then you have to count us out because we will not be able to be rigorous. But if there’s more to this, then what, then what those characatures were showing us. Then maybe that was something that I still could give them.

That’s where I started getting excited. That’s where simply classical the book comes in because the subtitle I chose then was a beautiful education for any child. It’s simply classical a beautiful education for any child. I saw my children learning to love going to the art museum and just gazing at paintings. We took sketchpads. My daughter was so very hyperactive, but when she was drawing a painting and really,

like you said, living that artwork, she calmed down the same with nature studies. When we would go outside and draw a praying mantis on the women, see one on the screen or something we’d go out and we would just calm ourselves and draw that it was good for them. It was just good. That’s a, that’s another thing that we moved beyond the rigor.

We now focus more on what they call the transcendentals, but the true and the good and the beautiful, all three of those. That’s where I fell in love with classical education and felt like even I could bring this to my children because of all of the resources available. So let’s talk a little bit about your background in special education and looking at other than the effect that these transcendentals,

this truth, goodness and beauty had on your kids are, are potentially, could have for kids with special needs. What are some of the other benefits of giving children with special needs, this kind of education? I think that one of the biggest is, are just so many. I don’t even know which one to highlight, but I think the elevating aspect,

elevating their tastes, elevating their aboves Ella, helping them go beyond where they are. You think of all of the books that have come out for the typical child, not just the child with special needs, but it focuses on the grotesque or the base, the primitive and the idea there is, as long as they’re reading, you know, at least the reading,

but we, we don’t as good parents do that with food. We don’t say it just doesn’t matter what they eat, just as long as they’re eating. And then they just, we give them whatever their natural inclination would be. It’s not good. That’s not optimal health. So we’re looking for an optimal education. We want to raise what they love and raise what they know.

So that even going into church, we would, we would sing the hymns that would be coming up. Our pastor would give us the hymns that he was going to give the organist. He would give those to us. So then when we were in charge, it wasn’t some distant experience. It was, it was, this is my song. This is my refrain that I learned all week.

And then they were right there with it. So just helping them join in something bigger than themselves. And then having a stronger mind. This was really important for my husband. He is an, he was an attorney for 25 years. And he said with all of the problems that they’re facing, they’re going to need to learn, to think it was really important to him that they studied math,

even though they would never be mathematicians or engineers is important that they learned that the general knowledge, but not in that caricature way, that you’re saying where we just crammed facts. It was not like that. Like Eustis in one of CS Lewis’s books, it was more just learning things. But often in story form history, as a story, my son fell in love with history.

His first job flashing forward to when he was 14 and then 16 was in a local history museum because unlike so many of his peers, he thought of history as a textbook and kind of a yucky thing. He loved history. So just giving them things that you would not think to give children with special needs. You’ve mentioned my background. I just didn’t see this in the special ed classrooms.

I didn’t see the richness, the inspiring, I didn’t see that being brought to our kids. And especially, here’s another thing. They, the love of service that no matter who you are, what your abilities are, you can serve other people, just that Christian understanding was not, it did not seem part of what I had experienced. And I’m not saying that it doesn’t exist in some excellent special ed programs,

but I had not seen that. And I wanted more for those children too back then, but I definitely wanted more for my own. Yeah. Yeah. So if we’re talking to a mom who has a special needs child, and she’s looking at, she’s kind of nodding along at this point, like, oh yeah, I would like my children to have that.

So let’s talk about a couple of different things. A couple of different questions come to mind. One is, is there any place for, if not traditional rigor, but some kind of rigor with special needs children as well? Oh, definitely. Yes. And I did not mean to diminish it. I just didn’t want it to be the sole focus of a classical education.

There is definitely a higher standard. We do learn grammar. We learned the parts of speech. It helped my daughter so much. She had a language disorder. Her language therapist was a Catholic nun at our local children’s hospital. So when my daughter was just two and three and four, this nine took it very seriously that we were going to help Michelle’s language.

There was a lot of rigor. We had homework. I, she was still in diapers and I had these flashcards of like a cow and a calf and just teaching her, teaching her words. And I’m not saying everyone has to do that. And I know that there are some people who would not want to do that. In our case though, early intervention became essential intervention.

There was a window that I really needed to take it seriously. We did from the very beginning. So rigor absolutely was important. And I think it’s in those sequential areas, spelling, math, Latin literature, the things that build on themselves, you want to keep taking that seriously and moving forward. Those, those are very important things to do. Yes.

And I think it can be done in a way that is, you know, when we’re talking about rigor in this situation, we’re talking about rigor, that’s honestly life for the child because you know, it can be done in such a way that makes them feel good about themselves, but also meets the needs that they have for this structure. That’s going to keep them moving forward.

Yes. It definitely provided us with structure. I, I think that’s a really good way to say it. And it was not burdensome either for me or for them. There were some things that we would combine. We could, we used song about music a lot. So she needed to stretch her little hamstrings. She was just tight as a rubber band.

They both kind of have a cerebral palsy, kind of his is super low tone hypotonia and hers was very tight muscle tone. So we straddled on that bed and held hands and we would rock back and forth singing row, row, row your boat, or doing itsy bitsy spider. And if she wasn’t careful, then when she washed the spider out, she’d toppled off,

off of that. So she had to control her body and strengthen her core and all of that, but it was delightful. That’s if you go back to Cicero, I learned that’s where the motto of Memorial press comes from it’s to move, to delight or to teach, to delight and to move the chair. I did like Taray, mawera, that’s what we’re looking at doing.

We, it is not the, the cramming of facts, although the facts will come and they’re important so that you can hang your hat on, on that knowledge, but that’s not the end. That’s not the goal. Right? So the only goal, What other misconceptions? I mean, we’ve talked about a few things here today. Like that classical education is only rigor or that,

you know, maybe rigor is something, you know, another misconception that when we have special needs kids, that rigor is not appropriate for them. You know, we’ve talked about how it can be, what are some other kind of misconceptions about this idea of teaching our kids in this more classical style that you’ve come across, that you would like, this is your chance to clear the air.

All right, here we go. Yes. Well, mine is that you have to be able to have that output in order to have the input. So some moms will say, my child isn’t even verbal yet, or just as not maybe minimally verbal or non-verbal, or certainly just not speaking. So do I need to wait until he’s speaking so that he can recite with me or no,

no, no. You don’t have to wait. Or like someone might say my child has dysgraphia. He just cannot write as fast or as much as a classical education demands. Well, neither could mine because my daughter has just graph yet. So she would write the first part of a copybook phrase and well, and this is why we modified all of our simply classical copy books have larger font,

shorter verses. So instead of a big, long memory verse from the scripture is just the Lord is with thee with enough space. So that that can be copied and we can modify these things. But we also don’t have to require that level of expressive language. We can, we can focus our efforts on the receptive language, so they don’t have to be watching or memorizing songs from movies.

Maybe that aren’t the best lyrics. Maybe they focus on the self, believe in yourself, you know, that kind of emptying stuff. That’s just so prevalent. They are television jingles, or they’re going to memorize something. They’re going to hear something. We can give them beautiful music. We have this poetry in our, even in our little ones, there’s songs that are Robert Louis Stevenson poems set to acoustic music that can be playing at bedtime.

Even if they’re not doing anything, they’re still absorbing that or playtime. So that’s another misconception is that you have to wait until there’s somehow ready to start. You know, our simply classical curriculum, we start with an ability of just age to just with little books. And we have that input coming in. We’re also working on the expressive language and working on the fine motor skills,

gross motor skills through these books. But we do not, we don’t require something beyond where they are. We just, we have assessments that let you know exactly where to place the child. They’re free. They’re online. It’s simply classical.com. The whole thing is then you can just start as, as soon as you are inspired to do so. Just real quick.

Just another one is that it’s all, it’s all mental. One thing that’s really nice in the last five to 10 years is people have started reclaiming the physical aspects of a classical education. My husband received a classical education. He was at a private school, sixth grade to 12th grade. He had the most rigorous physical education. It was, it was astonishing to hear what they did.

It was the ropes climbing the ropes up to the top of the gym. It was an all boys school. It was just perfect for those boys. It was not the half hour of recess. And then that’s it or occasional gym class, or this was a very big part of their education. So we’re starting to see that come back that we’re not,

we’re looking to have well-rounded individuals. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Something that struck me earlier when you were talking about the receptive and the expressive is I think, you know, just let’s take this outside of the realm of special needs at the moment. And this is the problem, or maybe one of the issues that some people have with learning time or morning baskets,

like, oh, it can’t possibly count as school because in a morning basket, a lot of what we’re asking them to do is that receptive listen to the beautiful music, you know, those kinds of things. And we’re not asking them to produce like, you know, we’re not asking them to fill out a work book page. We’re not asking them to take a test on the material or anything like that.

They’re just taking it all in. We’re reading them beautiful stories where we’re, you know, memorizing some poetry together, but we’re not really testing them on anything. And so I think people just get hung up on that in general, that it can’t be real education if we’re not asking for production of some kind. And I think that’s so false because a lot of that production comes from,

you know, a teacher being in a classroom full of 20 or 30 kids and needing to know what they know. Whereas if you’re there as a mom sitting next to your kids, you know that they’re taking it in. Right. I, yeah, I think that’s part of it. And I think it’s also part of what you’re identifying is you you’ve deemed these things important.

How would you rate reading the Bible stories or gazing upon art selection for the week? And you’ve placed importance on those that, that teachers might not have the luxury of doing with all of the requirements they have to have in a classroom and especially in the public school with teaching to certain goals and outcomes and all of that. It’s it’s as if the, the classic reading a book aloud after lunch to all the students is it’s like that there’s not a time for that and what we’re doing and what you’re doing with your morning time is you’re putting that back in and you’re making sure it happens first,

so that no matter what else happens that day, you’ve, you have addressed the, the soul of education before, before tackling things like the math. And you’re not throwing those out. You’re just, you’re just prioritizing and allowing them to think of learning as something enjoyable and delightful and communal. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think there is a lot to that receptive learning,

you know? So if your child is they’re receptive is way ahead of their you output, then go ahead and do it. Yeah. Well, what words of encouragement do you have for moms of students with special needs, who might be uncertain that she can provide an appropriate education for her child at home? Because you know, other than teams going off to high school at a certain point after they’ve been homeschooled their entire life,

I think that that kind of the second group that we hear of that it’s like, I really would like to homeschool all my kids, but this child is in school so they can get their needs met because they have special needs. So how can we encourage moms who have these special needs kids that they can do it? Well, I was one of those moms.

So here I am with a master’s degree in education with an emphasis on learning disabilities and behavior disorders. And I was faced with the decision of sending my children to the public school or keeping them at home. I’m a home body I wanted to homeschool. I was not sure that I could teach my own two children. It’s just, I think that we have,

we’ve underestimated what we can do as parents and overestimated what the experts can do with our children. So that’s, that’s one thing is that we don’t have to, we don’t have to do that. We don’t have to fear. Another thing is you can take it a year at a time. That’s what I told myself. My daughter was three. She qualified for the public school program,

but I just, I thought, well, she learned poetry. Well, she learned Bible stories while she had the focus on language that she needs, or will she be picking up the language of these other children who are developmentally behind and also struggling hers was abberant, it really wasn’t delayed. It was just plain abberant she later developed mental illness and we could,

we can see now looking back, but, but I just wasn’t sure. And I thought, well, I don’t have to say right now that I’ll go from three to age 21, but I can just start. We’ll see how we’ll see how we do. And then I kind of made a promise to myself that if I ever found any place or anyone who could do this better,

get more out of my children. Then I was getting out of my children. Then I would place them there that this wasn’t going to be a pride thing. This was just going to be whatever whatever’s best for them. Then I’ll be open to that. But I could see, even in our therapy sessions that sometimes the therapist just couldn’t get them to do what I knew they could do.

Now. Sometimes it’s the opposite. Sometimes parents say they won’t listen to me, but they sure didn’t listen to their therapist. Well, then that might be a situation where you want to afterschool. You can, you can help in that way, but maybe you want the structure and the expertise of someone during the daytime. It’s obviously it’s very personal. The other thing is that,

that it’s never too late. You may have thought that you should have done this way sooner, but you didn’t. And you’re feeling bad about that. You can, you can know that it is not too late. If we have moms who have children who are in their twenties or thirties and they’re home, and they say, I just want to do something enriching with my son,

my older disabled son, but they can start with our simply classical curriculum, even, even in that setting or maybe their age grade. And we feel like we’ve missed so much. You can customize so that you can start just right where they are, right. Where they are. I love that. I love that, that it’s not too late to start because,

and, and this is how we tell our moms all the time. It’s like truth. Goodness. And beauty is good for every age. You know, There’s, There’s no specific age that it’s it’s for. So when you start with these kinds of materials, then they’re perfect for everybody in your family. For sure. So, well, Cheryl, where can we find simply classical and more information about your curriculum,

Simply classical.com. There are free readiness assessments there, and there’s a free journal to a magazine. That’s very encouraging. That’s at simply classical.com as is the book. But if somebody wants to contact me from something more customized, then share on spoke@memorialpress.com. I’m happy to do that. Sometimes you have four or five children, and you’re wondering if I placed each one,

then how, how will I do this? So sometimes we can combine things so that you can have a customized plan with the morning time and the academic rigor, but then also that beauty. So it doesn’t feel all remedial all day. We can, we can do that too. So that’s Cheryl spoke@memorialpress.com, but, but you can find community too, as simply classical.com.

We have a free discussion forum with moms who are doing this all across the country and other countries beyond ours. I love it. And thank you for providing that for homeschoolers. And I just love that you said like we can combine. And so that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re all about here combining for that truth. Goodness and beauty. So we love it so much.

Well, thanks Cheryl, for coming on and telling us, sharing your story with us and, and how you’ve done this and encouraging other moms as well. So I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. And there you have it. Now, if you would like links to any of the resources that Cheryl and I about today, do you can find them on the show notes for this episode of the podcast.

That’s at Pam barnhill.com/y M B 1 21. Also, we would like to thank you. If you have taken the time to leave a rating for the, your morning basket podcast or review in your favorite podcast player, we thank you so much for doing that. Leaving a rating or review helps us get word out about the podcast to new listeners. And we really do appreciate Yale.

Thanks so much for being here this week. I’ll be back again in a couple more weeks, we’re going to be chatting about priorities for doing morning time with teens. Now we’ve talked about how to do morning, time with teams before, but if you’re going to do it, what are the things that we should prioritize and how do we pull those teens into that morning time experience?

So I hope you join us for that one until then keep seeking truth, goodness and beauty in your homeschool day.