Kolbecast

AMDG.  Current Kolbe students and brothers Jacob, Gabriel, and James visit with Bonnie and Steven today about their day-to-day lives, their experiences with Kolbe, and their insights for their fellow students. Highlights include their various extracurricular activities and how they juggle their commitments through various time management styles, how they prepare for graduation, what it’s like for...

AMDG.  In this episode, we gather alumni in various stages of life post-graduation to discuss the dividends their Kolbe education is now paying.  One-year alumnus Ian describes his transition to college life; five (ish)-year alumnus Charlie describes the ways his Kolbe formation serves him both in the work world and in his growing family; and ten (ish)-year alumna Hope describes the integrated wor...

AMDG.  Tune in to our newest two-parter of episodes last week and this, where we visit with longtime Kolbe moms recently hired on as Kolbe employees.  Elyse Williams puts the day to day of homeschooling life into perspective of the bigger picture to be seen as she visits with Bonnie and Steven.  She highlights the differences in various seasons of parenting, from elementary school to high school;...

AMDG.  Tune in to our newest two-parter of episodes this week and next, where we visit with longtime Kolbe moms recently hired on as Kolbe employees.  Margaret Malek joins Bonnie and Steven today to share her experience with peaceful, confident homeschooling through Kolbe and getting the important pieces done around being on the go.  She discusses identifying priorities, trusting God to multiply r...

AMDG. Actor, writer, homeschool alumnus, husband, and dad Kaiser Johnson joins Bonnie and Steven today for a conversation on the love story of creation.  Starting with sharing his experience of deepening faith as an adult, Kaiser discusses how he lives out his desire to love more like God loves while having a career, a job, and a vocation all at once.  He highlights the importance of doing the wor...

AMDG.  Education rightly formed helps students see and serve God in a practical way while both sustaining this current life and preparing them for the next.  Oxford graduate and VP of Finance for the College of St. Joseph the Worker, Jacob Imam, visits with Bonnie and Steven about how structural flaws in current higher education tend to cause an “ongoing adolescence,” how the College’s innovative...

AMDG.  In this episode, we bring back a style of podcast we haven’t done in a little while: a deep dive into part of Kolbe’s curriculum.  We focus on classical composition with instructors Sarah Foulkes and Grace Berg, who explain how classical composition is a curriculum which seeks to educate students to think logically and develop rhetorical skills for both writing and speaking; how the middle...

AMDG.  Experienced Kolbe mom Deirdre Mundy joins Bonnie and Steven in this first half of a two-part conversation on the lessons and insights she’s gained from homeschooling her eight children.  Deirdre shares reasons why her family chooses for traditional homeschool options and year-round school rather than online classes and summer breaks; advice for families where the parents do not have a class...

AMDG.  Join us for the second in our multi-movement reflection on music.  Carl Hasler and Olivia Knuffke visit with Bonnie, Steven, and Jordan about how music can be a kind of beauty that stretches your soul; the way that “classical” music can build stamina, attention, and the ability to sit with something new—but also the way that “classical” music can be a misnomer; reminiscences of the first ti...

AMDG. In the 200 episodes since we rebooted the Kolbecast, we’ve heard from a lot of significant voices. In this episode, we hear from two of the most significant Kolbeans: our students. Ninth graders Noah (who does a hybrid of self-paced and online classes) and Caleb (who does all online) visit with Bonnie and Steven, where the real-life long-distance friends share about their typical school days...

AMDG.  If you want to make boys into men, it requires a brotherhood of men to set a disciplined example.  Jason Craig joins the Kolbecast today to visit about calling men to conversion and brotherhood.  He, Bonnie, Steven, and Jordan discuss disorders of loneliness in today’s society, the imbalanced emphasis on mothers to the exclusion of fathers in various homeschooling discourses, and the necess...

AMDG.  The Shroud of Turin—a burial cloth evidencing Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection—has become a research focus for Dr. Gilbert Lavoie, a physician who’s been practicing medicine for many years. In this episode, Dr. Lavoie takes an unflinching, clinical, and forensic approach to recount how he used his medical training in service of examining and understanding the Shroud. He discusses w...

AMDG.  Children don’t come with instruction manuals, so having resources to help road map out various challenges can benefit everyone in a family.  In this episode, Karen Allgood and Krysten Pizzurro join Bonnie and Steven to describe the vast array of services available through Kolbe’s student support services and special education offerings.  They describe the individualized attention they provi...

AMDG.  Today’s episode demystifies the self-paced program and describes upcoming changes that will streamline and improve Kolbe’s asynchronous course offerings. Chrissy Almanzar, Bonnie, and Steven discuss how self-paced classes fit into Kolbe’s three ways to educate ; weaknesses in the older versions of self-paced courses that Kolbe is currently revising; and ways the upcoming changes support par...

AMDG. Brothers Bobby and Dan Angel visit with Bonnie and Steven today about how the human soul is meant to be challenged toward greatness.  Through a discussion ranging from video games to running marathons, they touch on ideas such as the fact that we’ll never grasp the fullness of truth in this life; the call the humans feel toward adventure, fellowship, and community; and the importance of anch...

AMDG. This episode is all about the accessibility of art history. Friend of the Kolbecast Therese Prudlo and co-host of the Catholic Art History Podcast Amanda Shepard (also the vice president of the Fort Wayne Museum of Art) visit with Bonnie and Steven about experiencing art and introducing it to children. Topics along the way include the sacramentality of creativity, the conversation modern art...

AMDG. We cover a trifecta of topics today that homeschooling parents tend to fret about: STEM, state schools, and sibling dynamics. Kolbe alumni Erin and Michael O’Donnell visit with Bonnie and Steven about their experience with Kolbe and how they transitioned to college, the tradeoffs that come with various kinds of college settings, and how the adjustments for a homeschooled college freshman ove...

AMDG.  Creativity and frugality, experimentation and reflection, community and solitude, fasting and feasting...the kitchen is a place for all of these pairings and more.  Today’s episode invites Kolbe online instructors Neva Hernandez and Chelsea Plesko into conversation with Bonnie and Steven about feeding family.  With voices representing multiple stages of parenthood, from toddlers waving in s...

AMDG. Mike Aquilina —vice president of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, author of more than 50 books, homeschool father, and expert in Church history—joins Bonnie, Steven, and Jordan today for a discussion about the pre- and post-Incarnation world. The conversation includes lessons to be drawn from the apostolic fathers, the Church’s indispensable role in the development of charitable in...

AMDG. Today’s guest speaks from fourteen years of homeschool experience raising eight boys. Tricia Kavanagh joins the Kolbecast from Ontario, Canada, to share her approach, insights, and outlook on both work and rest. She, Bonnie, and Steven discuss homeschooling in times of both acute and chronic illness as well as the learning and formation that parents develop alongside their homeschooled child...

AMDG. St. John Paul the Great had a great love for the integration of physical activities and virtues. That passion is built into Kolbe’s approach to and curriculum for physical education. In this episode, Chris Bates and Christina Davin visit with Bonnie and Steven about how physical movement can be a daily source of joy for homeschooling families. From getting the wiggles out during class to sta...

AMDG. In this episode, Dr. Kevin Majeres, Catholic psychiatrist and co-founder of Optimal Work (among many other things), brings words of wisdom for the start of a new calendar year.   Dr. Majeres explains that many truths in psychiatry and neuroscience are in line with our Catholic faith, in particular how some of the concepts of reframing, mindfulness, and challenge are important steps in our li...

AMDG. Tune in to this episode for our hosts’ yearly Between the Years conversation—part retrospective, part preview of what’s to come. Bonnie, Steven, and Jordan talk about the apocalyptic side of Advent, share favorite Christmas and New Years family traditions, and talk about some of the things they’re looking forward to on the horizon of 2024.  Kolbecast episodes mentioned & relevant:  34 A...

AMDG. A harmony of voices joins together on today’s episode to discuss music. Bonnie, Steven, Dr. Jordan Almanzar, Dr. Carl Hasler, and Kolbe alumna-turned-teacher Olivia Knuffke share their musical backgrounds and memories, reflections and pedagogy. With topics such as the discipline and work ethic required of both music and a Kolbe education and the formative music of folks’ teenage years, the c...

AMDG.  This episode debuts in the dreary days of American wintertime, but our topic is far sunnier: summer camp.  Bonnie and Steven visit with Josh Wattenbarger and Alyssa Wollums of The Pines Catholic Camp about the highs, lows, benefits, and burdens of the camping experience both at The Pines itself and more generally.  The conversation ranges from fun and games to unhealthy socialization like c...