Member Spotlight: The Brodocks teach good things

The homeschooling movement has brought responsibility for academics back to the family circle, but practical skills have in many cases been excluded.

For the past five years, Kathy and Jeff Brodock of Alabama have been trying to turn that around with their Teaching Good Things website and classes.

“There is definitely a place and time for structured learning,” says Kathy Brodock, who has homeschooled three children, “but I think we have made education almost like a god by saying academics are the most important thing. We have failed to look at skills for the home as education.”

Teaching Good Things (teachinggoodthings.com) provides videos on domestic skills like sewing and cooking for women and girls, and carpentry skills for men and boys.

The Brodocks, who have been homeschooling for 20 years, realized the need for such lessons in the home education community when they would go to state homeschooling conventions. They started offering practical skills lessons at their church and “became more and more passionate about hands-on things.”

They began making DVDs to sell, but realized they’d need a launching pad for those, leading to the website.

The need for such a service is the result of a breakdown in communication among generations. Increasingly in the past several decades, many parents have neglected to pass along basic home-making and home-maintaining skills, meaning future generations would have to learn them on their own. Contributing to that situation was the pursuit of careers, especially among moms, as well as the division of the family caused by sending children off to schools, sports, and other activities, meaning less time at home as a family.

The result has been that many parents who have taken up homeschooling aren’t trained in basic skills, and so can’t pass them on.

The Brodocks are trying to remedy that problem, offering information to both parents and children, so the latter can then again pass it on.

Teaching Good Things offers lessons on a variety of everyday skills, such as balancing a checkbook, gardening, cutting hair, embroidery, making your own furniture (especially from pallet boards!), grilling a steak (and how to cook just about everything else, as well), working on your car, building a fire, decorating cakes, canning, roasting a turkey, folding a fitted sheet (one of the larger challenges of everyday life) and other laundry skills, offering hospitality, and plain old parenting.

Not all of the lessons are original productions or creations. The Brodocks mine the Internet for some of the lessons, often videos created by others. But many of the items, especially sewing and cooking lessons, are taught by the Brodock family. Since Jeff is a contractor, his insights are used for carpentry and similar skills. Kathy and her daughters, Olivia and Emma, are the experts on the homemaking skills.

Their efforts have had an impact, Kathy says.

“Teaching Good Things offers the balance of being able to manage your home and take care of your property and take care of your community,” she says. “The more you can do for yourself, the more you can do for others.”

Two examples demonstrate that.

After deadly tornadoes blew through northeast Alabama in late April 2011, the Brodocks, who live near Birmingham, helped others clean up from the devastation. Thanks to their experience with building materials—passed on by their father—“our daughters knew what to touch and what not to touch,” Kathy says.

“They’ve been exposed to such a wide range of activities, they can pick up and help.”

Two years ago, when Olivia Brodock was 18, she took her skills to the home of some family friends. The mother had been given only a few months to live and wanted to know if Olivia would come and help with the house and their 12-year-old daughter. The lady died much more quickly than expected, in only a couple weeks. But Olivia took care of things for the family, managing the household, doing all the shopping and cooking, living there on weekdays until the father remarried.

“God was able to use her faithfulness and diligence so she could step in and help this father and this daughter,” Kathy says.

Having everyday skills also saves money. You can do many simple things for yourself without paying someone else. You can make gifts for others instead of buying them. And, if you have an entrepreneurial spirit, there’s also money to be made.

“The more you’re able to produce, the more opportunities you have to sell.”

The Brodocks are working on making more things to sell.

Pretty much done with homeschooling their own children—17-year-old Emma is wrapping up that part of the family’s life—the Brodocks still attend conventions and conferences as vendors, selling their videos and promoting their website.

“Right now, we have girl products, but we’re working on some guy things,” Kathy says.

The Brodocks’ goal is to buy a piece of property, build a modest home, and then build a second building with classrooms.

Then they plan to show others how to teach their own children good things.