Kolbecast

22: Imagine Being Homeschooled

AMDG. So far this season we’ve met instructors and parents, directors and alumni, but today we meet three current Kolbe students. Aidan, Jameson, and Peter are sophomores in high school. After surmounting the learning curve of freshman year, they’re well on their way to building habits of truth, wisdom, and virtue. In the episode, they discuss learning how to manage their own schedules, the adaptability they’re developing as they learn the styles of various online academy teachers, and the trials and triumphs of doing school at home. 
 
Have a question for the Kolbecast team? Write to us at podcast@kolbe.org. 

21: To Live Fully Alive

AMDG. Today’s episode is about life and life in abundance, from the molecular to the cross-county road trip. Science chair Elizabeth Hoxie joins Bonnie and Hope to discuss the foundational needs to live a healthy life—physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual—and how Kolbe’s science curriculum teaches students the Ignatian concept of cura personalis or care of the whole person. Topics also include why all Kolbe science classes use secular textbooks, how Kolbe course plans empower parents to have discussions with their children on topics that can be sensitive or tricky, and how Kolbe students graduate with a profound reverence for their bodies.  
Content warning: This episode includes a brief discussion of suicide in context of addressing various mental health concerns. 
 
Websites: 
Daughters of St. Paul
Souls and Hearts
Books  
The Mindful Catholic 
Emily Stimpson Chapman’sThese Beautiful Bones  
Podcasts 
CFR Poco a Poco 
Souls and Hearts: Be with the Word 
Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem
St. Dymphna’s Playbook
 
Have a question for the Kolbecast team? Write to us at podcast@kolbe.org.   

20: Head, Heart, and Hands

AMDG. Today’s episode is a crossover between Homecoming and curriculum deep-dives as Kolbe teacher and alumna Rebecca DeVendra describes how she’s lived out the idea that, if you’re challenged by something, it’s probably worth buckling down and learning the self-discipline to pursue. From writing “I hate Latin” in her high school textbook to earning a classics degree and from learning how to properly sharpen a pencil to her work as a representational artist, Mrs. DeVendra discusses both her own experience and how she teaches current Kolbe students. Ultimately, the conversation centers on the idea to never sell students short. By inviting them into discussions of primary sources and surrounding them with artistic mastery, we develop their senses of both curiosity and dignity.  
 
Resources discussed: 
Art Renewal Center 
Cast Drawing Using the Sight-Size Approach 
Drawing the Head and Hands 
Options for prints of Da Vinci’s Last Supper 
Options for prints of Bouguereau paintings 
Bouguereau’s The Elder Sister 
 
Artists of note (alive and painting today!) trained in Atelier Schools 
Mrs. DeVendra’s studio 
Katie G. Whipple 
Gwyneth Thompson Briggs 
William Nathans 
 
Have a question for the Kolbecast team? Write to us at podcast@kolbe.org.   

19: Wherever He Wants You to Go

AMDG. Take heart, those with fractious high schoolers! It’s okay to not be okay sometimes. Today, we talk to Fr. Paul Hedman—the Diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis’s current youngest ordained priest—and his mom Sharon, who used Kolbe to educate Fr. Paul and his three siblings. They describe Fr. Hedman’s early days serving and playing Mass while homeschooled, the friction between parent and child in his high school years, the way marking events of his vocation, and his current ministry both in parish life and in providing Last Rites to those dying in the pandemic. Together with Bonnie and Hope, the Hedmans also discuss the drama of the liturgy, Advent traditions, and social media.  
Toy Mass kit 
Anointing Corps ministry article 
Past Productions by St. Paul Seminary Theater Program and Spotlight Family Theater  
 
Have a question for the Kolbecast team? Write to us at podcast@kolbe.org.   

18: Homer and The Hunger Games

AMDG. Alumnus Charlie Mihaliak, a current University of Dallas junior, joins us today to discuss how he relies on his Kolbe education in pursuing the pragmatic and the creative, the athletic and the artistic, the collective human experience and the unique individual self. Charlie reminisces with Jordan about the powerful experience of meeting friends in person after relationships developed through online classes without physical proximity. He and Hope discuss the strong sense of individuality that comes from balancing friend groups with varying interests rather than associating with one particular identity in high school. And he and Bonnie talk about the catharsis of encountering timeless big questions in drama and literature. Along the way, Charlie describes how the best opportunities to grow in college come when you acknowledge the fact that you have maturing to do, the importance of enhancing reality rather than escaping it, and what he would say to his tenth-grade self.  
University of Dallas Fall 2020 production of Love’s Labour’s Lost 
2018 Graduation recap 
2018 Graduation pictures 
Jordan’s graduation address 
Charlie’s graduation address 
Patricia Kolakowski’s graduation address 
The McCormick family’s graduation reflections 
 
Have a question for the Kolbecast team? Write to us at podcast@kolbe.org.   

17: Secure to Explore

AMDG. Homecoming season continues with alumna and classical violinist Sarah Thomas. On this episode, she visits with Bonnie and Hope about her experience of timelessness in homeschooling, her state’s requirement for homeschooled students of yearly evaluations with a state-certified teacher, and the skill of developing friendships with people of all ages. Sarah discusses how the security she felt being homeschooled was a foundation for her collegiate and post-collegiate travels, such as studying abroad in Austria and walking the Chartres pilgrimage in France. She also describes how her Kolbe education informed her experience working in underprivileged public schools. We wrap it up with some thoughts on the sacramental nature of music and the importance of “feeding your soul” time. 
Sarah’s website 
Bowdoin International Music Festival Q&A with Sarah 
Sarah’s master's degree recital performance of Brahms Sonata No. 1 in G Major for Violin and Piano, Op. 78 
Sarah’s bachelor’s degree recital performance of Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 
Sarah references Josef Pieper’s book Leisure, the Basis of Culture. 
Have a question for the Kolbecast team? Write to us at podcast@kolbe.org.   

16: It’s All Greek to Me

AMDG. In this episode, Jordan interviews Magdalen College sophomore and former Kolbe student Sophia Harne. They discuss language acquisition in general and how a strong background in Latin can help one learn any language more easily. As she indicates in the conversation, Sophia has been learning Latin since the time she learned to read English. Now, her linguistic focus is on Greek, a language that has some unique features that can’t be replicated by nor translated exactly into other languages. Underpinning the conversation is a shared journey of linguistic and educational history that began in Germany back in 2014. Enjoy the show!
Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts.
Latin Flashcards.
Greek Flashcards.
Have a question for the Kolbecast team? Write to us at podcast@kolbe.org.  

15: Asparagus Moments

AMDG. Taking another deep dive into the Kolbe curriculum, we visit with Therese Prudlo, who teaches history and homeroom for Kolbe’s Online Academy. She describes how, by orienting our study of history from the Incarnation, we see evidence of God’s guidance of the universe in its “state of journeying (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it.” (CCC 302). And we discuss how Kolbe’s chosen treasury of primary sources and textbooks with a narrative but rigorously accurate treatment offers Kolbe students a rich and thorough grounding in history with practical applications to everyday life. Therese offers several suggestions for approaching all subjects through the lens of history, including virtual tours, travel, and living history ideas, to underscore the idea that “history is ultimately hope.” 
Virtual tours: 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY) 
The Vatican Museum 
National Gallery of Art 
The Louvre 
Google maps: catacombs of St. Priscilla in Rome 
Chartres restoration; article on New Liturgical Movement 
Catechism of the Catholic Church #302 Creation has its own goodness and proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the hands of the Creator. The universe was created "in a state of journeying" (in statu viae) toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it. We call "divine providence" the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection: 
By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, "reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well". For "all are open and laid bare to his eyes", even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.