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When you “mom” as we homeschool moms do, we get introduced to activities & people by our homeschool kids that we didn’t imagine we would deep dive into.
For me? Barbie movies, Harry Potter, the history of the British monarchy & the history of the Titanic, chess & poker strategies, woodworking, the world of ballet, chemistry theories & experiments, anything related to fashion & make-up, and pop stars, like Selena Gomez, Gracie Abrams, and Taylor Swift.
And some of these activities and some of these people have more impact on us homeschool moms than we might ever have imagined.
Taylor Swift can Inspire your Homeschool? Here are 13 ways…
For me, one of those people is Taylor Swift. My oldest daughter introduced her to me, possibly in Taylor Swift’s Fearless Era, but likely in her Speak Now era at a time when it wasn’t just Taylor who was transitioning into adolescence and adulthood, innocence and understanding, it was my oldest daughter too.
So how do I suggest that Taylor Swift can inspire your homeschool?
FYI I wouldn’t have guessed it way back when, but I can genuinely say, “It’s been enchanting to meet Taylor.”
To watch Taylor grow and mature, to watch her come into her own, to fearlessly declare herself as the uniquely creative person she is, to speak confidently, though sometimes self-deprecatingly, own who she is and who she was meant to be on this planet.
It has been remarkable to see her rise and even to watch her become the nominee for the Presidential ticket. Oh, that hasn’t happened yet? Umm, Swiftees unite?? I’m pretty sure y’all can get her there.
Taylor Swift has tangibly influenced my homeschool and my homeschool mom life and today I want to share with you 13 ways she can influence & inspire your homeschool & homeschool mom life too.
1. Taylor Swift continues to be relatable despite her successes & acclaim.
- She writes stuff that’s relatable, of course.
- She takes cues from her fans, rereleasing songs like All Too Well because the fans demanded it.
- Connecting with Swifties through friendship bracelets, benefits, random photo ops, and actually interacting with them on social media.
- I’m sure you have a story about how she’s connected to her fans here too.
I think we can take a cue from her in how she remains relatable:
- Our goal: create opportunities to connect with our kids. That can be grabbing a kiddo to grocery shop with you so you can tack on a trip to the Boba shop, letting your oldest kiddo stay up with you to watch a movie once a week, or it can mean planning a trip to see the Eras in concert as one last hurrah with your nearly-to-be launched kiddo as I did this past summer.
- Look at them eyeball-to-eyeball regularly. Ask them who they are, what they want, how they think, and what matters to them.
Make connection your most important homeschool intention.
2. Plant Easter Eggs & surprise & delight your homeschool kids just as Taylor plants Easter Eggs & surprises & delights her fans.
You know how she puts hints on her album covers to hint at a song, or when an album will be released, like Midnights at Midnight: we can do unexpected fun things with our homeschool kids too.
- We can plan surprise ‘no-homeschool’ days.
- On the 100 day of your typical homeschool routine, you can plan a 100-Day party.
- When you’re having a family birthday, take off the entire day to celebrate. Or plan a field trip that that child would like to do.
- Every April Fool’s Day we can tell them there’s no homeschool that day.
- We can take the entire month of December and bake every day, sit around the fire with games and books, and learn that learning happens whether you plan for it or not.
- We can hereby declare that Fridays are for fun and plan fun activities, not catch-up days on Friday.
Surprise & delight your kids.
3. Taylor Swift reminds you that you can be assured, your kids belong with you, homeschool mama.
Taylor says it best. She reassures your homeschool mama’s heart that your 5-year-old child belongs with you. Possibly I’m misunderstanding the intention behind her lyrics, but it makes sense to me when I listen to her song lyrics from You Belong with Me…
“Think I know where you belong,
Think I know it’s with me,
Can’t you see that I’m the one who understands you?
Been here all along, so why can’t you see?
You belong with me”
Taylor Swift, You Belong with Me
ps As an aside, but I didn’t officially know this before this past weekend, Taylor Swift did homeschool work on the floor of airport terminals in her graded 11 & 12 years.
4. Taylor Swift directly impacted my life: here’s how.
Hannah, our oldest daughter, named our fuzzy grey barn kitty after Taylor Swift’s kitty, Meredith.
I found it challenging to offer traditional homeschool activities to my oldest daughter for various reasons. I leaned into child-led learning and unschool principles hard to make educational things relevant to her.
Also, I did this because she liked her independence early and was easily overwhelmed by noise and activities amongst the others in our home.
So she’d retreat to her room to do her formal studies. She wrote many things, but Taylor Swift’s lyrics were amongst the masses plastered to her teenage bedroom wall. She’d be the last kid to complete an IEW curriculum or Rod & Staff textbook. Yet, she was the kid who was compelled to write unconventional things, like a whole lot of Taylor Swift lyrics on homemade posters plastered to her teenage pink walls.
Those handmade posters are long gone, but I imagine there were posters of these lyrics…
And I don’t know how it gets better than this
Taylor Swift, Fearless Album
You take my hand and drag me head first, fearless
And I don’t know why but with you I’d dance
In a storm in my best dress, fеarless
Now I’m standin’ alone in a crowded room
Taylor Swift, Speak Now Album
And we’re not speakin’
And I’m dyin’ to know, is it killin’ you
Like it’s killin’ me? Yeah
I don’t know what to say since the twist of fate
When it all broke down
And the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now
And now I know she wouldn’t have hung the following lyric on her wall, but it has hung on my heart since she was little:
Your little hand’s wrapped around my finger
And it’s so quiet in the world tonight
Your little eyelids flutter ’cause you’re dreaming
So I tuck you in, turn on your favourite nightlight
To you, everything’s funny
You got nothing to regret
I’d give all I have, honey
If you could stay like thatTaylor Swift, Never Grow Up
Oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up
Don’t you ever grow up, just stay this little
Oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up
Don’t you ever grow up, it could stay this simple
I won’t let nobody hurt you
Won’t let no one break your heart
And no one will desert you
Just try to never grow up
5. Letting go of my well-intended homeschool plans.
The story of me letting go of traditional violin lessons, releasing my kiddo from formal music lessons and daily violin practice, and watching her return to guitar to learn to play and ask for lessons on her own terms.
6. Taylor Swift reminds me how homeschooling makes me feel.
You get to decide how you homeschool and why. But you have an opportunity to enjoy your kids’ childhood as you relive your own.
You can feel young, alive, playful, present, and curious.
I don’t know about you but I’m feeling 22
Everything will be alright, if you keep me next to you
You don’t know about me, but I bet you want to
Everything will be alright, if we just keep dancing like we’re 22,It seems like one of those nights
Taylor Swift, 22
This place is too crowded, too many cool kids uh uh, uh uh
It seems like one of those nights
We ditch the whole scene and end up dreaming instead of sleeping
Yeah
We’re happy free confused and lonely in the best way
It’s miserable and magical oh yeah
Tonight’s the night, when we forget about the heartbreaks, it’s time uh oh
ps My daughter, Hannah, turned 22 this year. How wild is that!
7. Sometimes we homeschool mamas need to recognize how we’re the anti-hero.
Hi!
Taylor Swift, Anti-Hero
I’m the problem, it’s me (I’m the problem, it’s me)
At teatime
Everybody agrees
I’ll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror
It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero.
As I’ll do in this episode, to make meaning from Taylor Swift’s that weren’t intended as she stated them, I’m certain. But one thing we writers know, and I have heard Taylor Swift say herself, we interpret what we hear to help us understand our own lives and experiences by what other people write.
My experience and interpretation of this lyric: sometimes we homeschool mamas are stuck rather than being able to see the bigger picture to become wiser homeschool mamas.
We stare in the mirror and do not see the reflection reflecting back at us that, I’m the problem, it’s me, that at poetry tea time, everybody agrees, I’m the problem, in my homeschool, my perspective, how I’m showing up, it’s me.
Teresa Wiedrick’s homeschool mama reintrepretation of Anti-Hero
8. Taylor Swift reminds us not to care what other people think about our homeschool choice.
Okay, again, wild and massive creative interpretation here.
I’m 100% certain Taylor Swift wasn’t talking about our homeschool choice. But I want to encourage you to let this theme song ring in your mind when you’re discouraged that others aren’t supporting you in this out-of-the box life and family choice.
You do you, girlfriend.
Decide why you’re homeschooling, and do it. On your own terms. For your own reasons.
Then when others boo you at Thanksgiving, quiz your kids at Christmas, remember to “haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate, but baby you just gonna shake shake shake shake shake it off!”
…the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
Taylor Swift, Shake it Off
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)
Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off (hoo-hoo-hoo)
9. She teaches us to take on the conflict to become ourselves, to determine who we are, and to assert this person, the one we were meant to be on this planet.
Umm, girlfriend, Taylor Swift is a good old-fashioned pioneer who contributed to empowering women in leadership by setting an example of reclaiming ownership and control over one’s creative work, challenging industry norms, and advocating for artists’ rights in a male-dominated music industry.
Where do you need to reclaim ownership of your life, and your creativity, challenge cultural norms, and advocate for the specific kids in your homeschool to become who they were meant to be on this planet?
I don’t like your little games
Don’t like your tilted stage
The role you made me play of the fool
No, I don’t like youI don’t like your perfect crime
How you laugh when you lie
You said the gun was mine
Isn’t cool, no, I don’t like you (oh!)But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Taylor Swift, Look What You Made Me Do
10. In her NYU 2022 Commencement Speech as she received her Doctor in Fine Arts (so you know, she’s Dr. Taylor Swift), she shares these inspiring words:
“We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires, our fears, our scars, and our dreams.
You will screw it up sometimes, and so will I, and when I screw it up, you will most likely hear about it on the internet.
Hard things will happen to us. We will recover and learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.
And as long as we are fortunate to breathe, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, and breathe out, and since I am a doctor now, I know how breathing works.”
Beautifully said Taylor Swift: you can inspire my homeschool life x 100!
11. Taylor Swift shares this life principle: catch & release.
“Know what to keep and what to release. You can’t carry all the things…”
…all the grudges, all the world events, and all the enviable “homeschool Instagram accounts” (Teresa’s reinterpretation). Just let ’em go.” — Taylor Swift, NYU 2022 Commencement Speach
12. Perspective shifting with Taylor, minus song lyrics.
“I know I look like a consummate optimist, but I’m not. I lose perspective all the time. And I know what it’s like to live a life through a lens of perfectionism.
In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong person, underreact, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self-sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time. Rinse, repeat.”–Taylor Swift, NYU 2022 Commencement Speach
13. Thank you for reminding us Taylor that there is a season for everything.
“There’ll be times in your life…
where you need to stand up for yourself
times when the right thing to do is back down and apologize
times when the right thing is to fight
there are times when the right thing is to turn and run,
times to hold on with all you have
and times to let go with grace
Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old school of thought in the name of progress & reform.
Sometimes the right thing to do is sit and listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us.
How will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? You won’t.” — Taylor Swift, NYU 2022 Commencement Speach
So how can Taylor Swift inspire our homeschool lives?
She can teach us valuable life lessons such as embracing individuality, being unapologetically oneself, and navigating our own paths, making choices that align with our values, just as she has in her music career.
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Call to Adventure by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3470-call-to-adventure
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
