President Russell M. Nelson

About three years ago, my husband and I took a self-reliance class through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The class was about starting and growing a business. Our motivation for taking the class had sprung from a business idea of my husband’s. Though I did have some education concepts swirling through my head, I had no real vision for beginning something of my own. During the class however, I acquired an eye twitch. It was persistent and it pulsed for weeks. I didn’t think about it too much, but I recall it as being an odd thing: I was getting enough sleep, I wasn’t under any extra stress, so why was my eye chronically twitching? Perhaps there was an unknown medical reason for the eye twitch, but I now believe it was due to divine discontent.

At the time I kept feeling prompted that I was supposed to dive into some sort of homeschooling endeavor. A co-op curriculum? Consulting? I just wasn’t sure, so I kept ignoring those promptings. But eventually, I couldn’t ignore the Holy Spirit any longer, and I prayed fervently to God. I asked Him, did He want me to do something? Immediately I felt a rush of peaceful confirmation. Yes, the answer was yes. I continued to pray and I said I would do what the Lord wanted me to do. Once I voiced my willingness to obey, there was an instantaneous departure of my weeks-long eye twitch. 

Except, I still didn’t know yet what it was I was supposed to do.

So I tried a couple of things. This led to a few false starts. Things fell apart. The timing was wrong, and I felt I was supposed to wait. God wanted me to learn a few things first. 

A year or so later, a fellow homeschooler lamented to me about the lack of co-ops in our area that adhered to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education. I listened, and then I shrugged it off. It was an old problem, and one I wasn’t going to tackle. At the time, I was content to keep my focus on my own homeschool, and not to offer to teach anyone else’s children. I was not interested in joining or even starting another co-op. My own experience with co-ops and other casual homeschool groups was lackluster at best, and stressful at its worst. At this point in my vocation as a Charlotte Mason educator, I was not willing to sacrifice a school day at home for a co-op that didn’t enhance and align with our homeschool. I wasn’t interested in mediocre unit studies involving a book and a craft, or even unstructured park days that didn’t always benefit everyone in my family. Cindy Rollins once said that co-ops were not a good fit for her homeschool of nine children, because a co-op often only benefited one or two people in the family. I found that to be a true statement. 

So again, when someone began talking to me about wanting more opportunities for a Charlotte Mason based community, I didn’t think much of it. But later the discussion developed into what exactly we each wanted in a community (two very different things, funny enough), and the formation of Scale How School took place in my mind. I realized this was what my original prompting was leading me to.

Here is my offering. While I hope Scale How School will benefit many children, including my own, my true goal is to please God. I’ll be what He wants me to be.

May we live our days always seeking to please God.

Rachel Gooch
Creator and Director of Scale How School