Living within a quarantine of indeterminate length, many parents are having their first experience of becoming hands-on in the academic and spiritual instruction of our children. Word on Fire Institute Education Fellow Robert Mixa brings us a helpful interview on the benefits and challenges of homeschooling, whether planned or circumstantial, featuring Kathleen Vogt. Kathleen is the wife of Word on Fire’s Content Director, Brandon Vogt. She studied at Florida State University where she graduated with a degree in Elementary Education. She and Brandon have six children, with a seventh due in July, and they live on a small farm outside Orlando, FL. There she homeschools their four oldest children.  Kathleen would be happy to answer any questions you might have about homeschooling at [email protected]  RM: How did you get involved in homeschooling? KV: Growing up, I went to Catholic school for grades K-8 and then switched…

The Word on Fire Institute is happy to introduce its readers and students to Dr. Holly Ordway, Fellow of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, Visiting Professor at Houston Baptist University, and the author of Apologetics and the Christian Imagination. Dr. Ordway is a former atheist who speaks and writes movingly of her journey into Catholicism and the vocation she has found there. Here she discusses her role as a Fellow of Faith and Culture with Andrew Petiprin, himself a Fellow of Popular Culture here at Word on Fire. AP: Your new role at the Word on Fire Institute is “Fellow of Faith and Culture.” Welcome! What will your work entail, and what will Institute members and fans of Word on Fire content be getting from you in the months and years to come? HO: Thanks! I’m delighted to be joining the team. As Fellow…

Many commands are being issued today in response to COVID-19, and all for the good. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to call your attention to a perennial command to ponder as you’re at home realizing your parental duties: educate your children in the faith. Parents are important witnesses to the faith in the lives of their children. Through them, the faith is handed on generation by generation. Jews have been heeding this command for millennia, so it might be good to learn some things from them, especially the importance they give to household religious education. Years ago, a friend of mine was seriously studying Rabbinic Judaism, and he told me that part of the Talmud’s list of a father’s duties to his son is to teach him: (1) the Torah (2) a craft (3) how to swim Leaving aside the literal vs. metaphorical meanings of “to…