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[music] Happy holidays, my ex-homies. It's your boy, Jacob Gooden, and we are [music]
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back for another week of the Ex Homeschoolers Club. That's right, the show where we talk about the good, the
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bad, and the ugly of growing up a homeschool kid. This is the last episode of the year. Last episode of 2025. Oh my
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gosh, can't believe another year is in the bags. It's been crazy. First and
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foremost, I want to say thank you to anyone who has listened to the show, watched the show, contributed to the
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show, commented, subscribed, all of the different things. If you've been on the
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show, huge thank you to you guys. Round of applause to you guys. To be to be quite honest, this has been an
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incredible year. And as I've been reflecting on it and looking at the numbers and kind of going back and and
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viewing the catalog and just like the people we reached and the messages I received and all these types of things,
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it's been an awesome, awesome year. Okay, so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Secondly, in this episode, I wanted
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to say happy holidays. If you're celebrating the holidays, whatever holiday it might be, I hope you're
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having a wonderful, a merry, a jolly old good time with loved ones, with family,
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with friends, however you celebrate, I hope you're winding out the year in style, okay? [laughter]
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And um I wanted to give you guys kind of like a little sneak peek maybe at what's
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coming in 2026 and some of the things I'm interested in in doing. and uh ask
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for your help. If you want to be a part of it, um I want you to be. So, here we go. Little sneak peek at January 2026.
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I've got two interviews with current homeschool moms coming up and those are
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going to be really fun. We talk about how the landscape has changed a little bit in the homeschool world. Uh both of
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them have kids that are on the autism spectrum and so we talk about that and growing up with that and dealing with
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that and and all those types of things. So, very fun interviews, very excited to
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share those. Secondly, I had a conversation with the director for the Coalition of Responsible Home Educators.
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It was a great chat. Not only was she a homeschool kid and shared her story, but
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she's going to talk with us about how we can get involved, what they are, what
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the coalition does if you're not familiar with them. I'm going to link it
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down below. Check it out for yourself. But it's been really cool. I've been
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jumping on a couple of the live streams that they've been doing uh and and chatting with them uh about my alumni
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experience. That's one of the things that they they do a lot of work on is the al alumni experience and creating
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resources and advocacy for those people, but also they work to help kind of create some legislation that can help
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current homeschool families um so that we don't fall into some of the pitfalls
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that that some of us did back in the day. So, very cool, very excited for that conversation. Coming up, I've also
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got a conversation with a public school teacher. Uh we're going to talk about
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the current state of public education and just the education system in general. Uh we're going to touch on how
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we can be stronger advocates for that, how we can be involved in that. Uh also her education experience and stuff. So
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that's going to be really cool. I've got a couple other things with some exhomies
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in the works. Nothing solid yet, but those are coming as well. And that's really what I want to pivot most of the
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content in 2026 to be more about. I know this year I've taken us on a couple wild
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I don't want to say goose chases or anything like that, but we've we've gone
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into the more of the territory of some of the current homeschool system. And really in 2026, I want to come back to
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focusing in on the alumni experience and the exhomeschooler experience. And so if
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that's you, I want to have you on the show. I want to talk with you. You can
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do that. Shoot me an email, [email protected]. give me a quick little synopsis of your
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homeschool experience and maybe some things you're interested in talking about. Um, and then I'll hit you back.
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We'll we'll kind of we'll go back and forth. We'll have a conversation about
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you being on the show and things like that. that even if you think your story is really boring, if you had a wonderful
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experience, if you didn't have such a great experience, whatever you would want to share about that or even coming
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out of that in the posth homeschool life world, you know, we touched a lot on that this year as well of like the
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things my friend Carrie was on the show. We talked about all the things we weren't allowed to do as kids and that
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then as adults we we have, you know, been able to do. And so anyway, I want to touch on a lot more of that kind of
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stuff. There's more topics that I want to hit on. Deconstruction, religion, worldview, all kinds of stuff like that
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as well. Um, there's a whole gamut, okay? But if you've got a story, if you're an exhomeschooler and you want to
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share, shoot me an email, [email protected]. I promise I will respond. We will be in
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contact and uh hopefully we'll get you on the show. There's a couple other
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things I have an interest in doing, but I also know that I can't do them alone.
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And so I don't want to just start them or push them if they're not something
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you're interested in. Okay? And so I've got two kind of main ideas that have
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been percolating my brain. Um and so again, shoot me an email exhibited. So first and foremost, I know previously
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I had started the exhomechoolers book club. Nothing ever became of that. I really fell off the bandwagon and did
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not finish that. I would love to bring something like that back. And I know at the time we read a book that was like
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very it was about religious trauma and and things like that. I don't know if
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that's where you guys want to go. Maybe if this is something you're interested
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in in doing a book club, it could be all fiction books. It could be fun stuff. It
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could be life stuff. I don't really know. So if that's something you're
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interested in, I want to hear your thoughts on it. Uh or the other kind of thing that's been percolating in my
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brain is just doing some kind of exhomeschooler happy hour Zoom call hangout session. Okay. And just get to
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know each other, get to reconnect with old friends, get to meet new friends. Um I don't totally know what that would
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look like. I've never done anything like that before. But if that's something
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you're interested in, um, that's kind of the next step and the next evolution
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that I see this show going on is building out the community in some kind of way. Uh, where it's not just me
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connecting with one person and sharing it with you guys, but it's also you guys
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connecting with each other. Um, and who knows what could come out of that. Okay?
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So, if if either of those things are things you're interested in, what I want
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you to do, if you're listening to this on audio, some of the audio platforms
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let you drop a comment below. Uh, if they don't, send me an email. Uh, but or
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a DM uh at EXHS Club um or if you're on YouTube and you're watching this, I want
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you to drop either book club if that's what you're interested in or happy hour
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if that's what you're interested, just comment that down below so I kind of get
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a gauge. If you want both of them, put both of them. And then any thoughts you have around those, I would love to hear
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them. And uh yeah, and if you want to help, if you want to help facilitate anything like that, let me know. If
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you've got other ideas for how we could build this community, I want to know
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them. That is I think about it. Okay. Uh I've tried to keep this short. Hopefully, it's it's been shorter. I'm
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sure I'm going to edit this. There was been like six or seven retakes in here,
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people. Um but, you know, as is the life of a podcaster. So, again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for a wonderful
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2025. 2025. Yes. I don't know. That didn't sound right coming off my tongue, but
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thank you. Thank you. Thank you for a wonderful 2025. I'm so excited for 2026,
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what's to come, we're building something cool here, okay? And I want you guys to
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be a part of it. Um, if you've got ideas, like I said, if you want to be on the show, if you want to know more about
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book club, happy hour, any of these things. If you just want to like know me more, exhsclubgmail.com.
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Shoot me an email. I don't bite. if I get a huge influx of emails, it's going
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to take me a while to get back to them, but I promise I will get back to each and every one of you. So, with that
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being said, I'm gonna close it out here. Have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,
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wonderful happy holidays and uh until 2026. We'll see you [music] [music]