I was a public school kid. Truthfully, I hated it. I’m not against all schools or all teachers (I had a lot of good ones!), but I remember being as young as nine years old and realizing that this was not the best use of my time.
Today, Melissa and I homeschool our 7 children (in fairness, the 3-year-old and 1-year-old don’t do a lot of schooling yet).
When God first inspired us to start this writing apprenticeship, we didn’t really have homeschoolers in mind one way or the other. It wasn’t something we thought about. It’s just a vocational college alternative for whomever wants to come.
In hindsight, I can see some good reasons that most of our apprentices (ok, practically all of them) have been homeschooled for at least part of their K-12 education.
- Homeschoolers are more open to alternative paths. You just want the best way to get the job done.
- Homeschoolers haven’t spent the last 12 years hearing that 4-year college is the only way to get ahead. (In the case of creative writing, it is absolutely not.)
- Many homeschoolers understand that the integrity of your faith is more important than your achievements.
These are all values that we share.
As it turns out, I’ll put our 2-year apprenticeship results up against any 4-year creative writing program and even any 6-7 year MFA creative writing program. If the goal is to produce professional writers who reach real audiences with their books, we win by a landslide. It’s not even close.
Despite those results, if you’re not interested in at least trying to put Jesus first, to put His work in your life over your own goals, then our apprenticeship won’t be very fun for you.
I’ll be honest, if you have SAT/ACT scores and high school transcripts, we’ll do you the honor of looking at them. Genuinely, I know you went to a lot of trouble to get them. But it’s not really what we’re about. It’s not a big factor in how we make decisions.
So I understand why many homeschoolers have found a home here with us. And we’d love to see more of you guys.
(We love you public school and Christian school kids too. Don’t mishear me. You are very welcome and you’ll fit right in.)
This weekend, I’ll be speaking at the Great Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. On Saturday, at 11:30 a.m. I’ll be teaching about the business behind book publishing.
The Company will also have a booth set up Thursday through Saturday. If you’re in that part of the world, I hope that you’ll come and see us! We’ll have a lot of our books, and many of our authors and current apprentices will be there helping out. It’ll be a great time to meet some of us.
I’m actually really grateful to our homeschooled apprentices.
When our oldest son, Theo, who is now 16, first became Kindergarten-aged, we lived in inner-city Columbus where we did ministry in one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. The public schools that he would have gone to just didn’t seem like the right fit for our family.
I didn’t know if we would continue with homeschooling forever. We just took it one step at a time.
Five years ago we started this apprenticeship. Over the years, young homeschool-graduates-becoming-authors like Thirzah, Alli Prince, and Noah J. Matthews have helped to me to see how good homeschooling can be.
Are they a little weird? Not really. I mean, yes, but truthfully not any weirder than anybody else.
Did they get a good education? Definitely, oftentimes much better. Sometimes we uncover a gap, but then we just work together to get it covered. It’s really no different than graduates of any schooling system.
Are they too shy or introverted? Did you miss the part where this is a school for writers?
So that’s why we’ll be at the Great Homeschool Convention. We love you guys. We want to meet more of you.
Public school, Christian school, homeschool—you’re all welcome. But I’m very glad to see that God has helped so many homeschoolers find a new home for school here with us as they take the next steps in their vocations.
You guys are pretty cool and I admire your independent spirit.
-Brad Pauquette
Director, The Company
P.S. If you’re interested in becoming an apprentice, start here.
