Homeschool Became Our Only "School Choice"

A conversation with Latham Turner, Author of Building the Plane on Substack

We hadn't planned on moving to Montana.

After Latham Turner and his wife left suburban Maryland, they made their way to Bozeman, MT via California during the early days of The Pandemic. Navigating a diagnosis and the school systems in each city turned out to be challenging. Ultimately the Turners were unhappy with the way their son’s needs were being supported. After many frustrating conversations, Latham decided to leave his job and homeschool their son full time. He does not have a teaching degree, but he is dedicating all of his energy to using a child-led approach and providing an appropriate, individualized education.

Latham’s insight is very valuable. Few parents would quit their jobs and take up homeschooling without a background in education. He has been documenting his experience, and his views on the American education system, on his Substack Building the Plane. We first connected when he posted a Note crowdsourcing Substack users about media and literature related to boats, his son’s most recent interest at the time. Reading through his newsletters, I could tell that Latham was genuinely trying to find the best ways to explore his son’s passion for airplanes through the ultimate project: building an actual airplane.

What has it been like to work with the school system and handle special education services in Montana, versus California and Maryland where you lived previously?

Latham: We stopped in [Bozeman], Montana on the way from Seattle to Denver not even sure if we were 100% going to move there. My wife was amazing, she immediately started reaching out to a local nonprofit that supports the schools and provides special education services to kids. So we get on a Zoom call, and there's eight or nine people on this call—the head of the non-profit, the principal of one of the schools, the special education coordinator, the speech coordinator, they had an occupational therapist, and a kindergarten teacher. They sat there for an hour and were just like, this is what we're going to offer your son if you decide to move here permanently.

So we found a small town community we liked, and these were the people that ended up becoming his team. It's pretty common for our neighbors to text us and say, “Hey your kids are over here, are you cool with that?” and we're like, “Oh, sure I guess just send them home for dinner when you're done.”

Jennifer: You’ve mentioned that you and your wife felt less connected to your neighbors in California. So in Montana, it felt more like being back in that close-knit military community in Maryland?

Latham: Exactly. But what we started to find was, there are limits to what the school system can and will offer. It's not that they're not trying, it's just that it's a bureaucracy. They have goals, they have progressions, and they have funding tied to that. What we started to find was, you know, for instance, every year in occupational therapy one of his goals was to recognize emotions in pictures of people¹, but it wasn't helping him on the playground.

Jennifer: Oh that’s such a classic IEP goal [laughs], and you found overall that this school wasn’t aligning with your vision anymore.

Latham: We just kept finding that this well meaning teacher was great for a certain personality and a certain type of student, but not my son. That was what led us to the decision to move him from a public school to a private school.

Jennifer: The school that you moved to, was it a General Education or Special Education private school?

Latham: It was billed as an “individualized education.” Lots of outdoor opportunities and lots of personal one-on-one attention. I think that was true at the beginning. Ultimately my biggest hang up was breakdowns in communication between us and the school. The curriculum did not turn out to be what we originally thought.

I was actually a little uncomfortable with how easy it was to leave the school system. I sent an email to the school on Friday. On Saturday, I filled out a web form saying I intend to homeschool my son. Then I got an auto-generated response saying to go for it, and that was it.

Jennifer: It is unfathomable to me that they don’t bothering asking you to submit some sort of rationale for why you're going to homeschool. As a licensed and certified speech pathologist I am responsible for so much documentation, regardless of whether or not it’s funded². What about all of his related services?

Latham: We had a fantastic ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) provider. She was incredibly aligned [with us], really thoughtful about progressions and about conversation with us. It really became a family experience. Contrasting that with what the school system provided was night and day. One of our big frustrations actually, is that we were fortunate enough to get him on his own private insurance, and that allowed his ABA provider to go into the school to support the teachers. Unfortunately, the school system refused to do it. We offered to pay for it. We offered for her to work around their schedule, and they they kept giving us the, “Yeah we'd love to at some point,” and then some point never came.

It's interesting you mention having him in ABA, because what you're doing now is actually quite the opposite of Applied Behavioral Analysis. How did you get to the point where you decided to be done with that type of intervention and to pivot towards a child-led approach?

Latham: A lot of our ABA experience was his therapist coming into our home and helping us to learn how to support his relationship with his sister. They were fighting all the time. He wasn't getting in trouble at school [by the time we moved to Montana]. It was very much kind of minor instances that we had learned how to handle, and we had learned that because she was in our home teaching us as much as him.

Jennifer: So she was doing quasi cognitive behavioral therapy through the guise of ABA, versus the traditional approach?

Latham: Yeah, exactly. What was interesting was that with all the progress he made with his therapist in ABA, he made 100% more progress in the first two months of being home without any of that, and I attribute it to him. He wasn't stressed for the first time ever.

Changing the environment can make a huge difference! What sort of professional development did you seek out once you decided you were going to start homeschooling? I imagine it took some research, since teaching wasn’t your profession at the time.

Latham: Taking a child-led approach, it kind of just happened, because I failed at everything else. I started with saying, “This is the way we're going to do it” and he was like, “No we're not.” He would put up with me for a little bit and then say he’s not doing it anymore. It got to the point where I could either keep fighting with my son once every two months, or I could just shut up and get out of the way.

Jennifer: That’s a really interesting perspective, because ABA as an intervention promotes reinforcing specific behaviors and adults being in charge. My personal clinical perspective is the exact opposite—within a parent-child relationship, parents should of course be setting boundaries and expectations. That does not mean they should also control the way their kids communicate and learn. It sounds like taking a child-led approach came naturally for you, which is amazing because it's not for a lot of parents.

Latham: You know, it's like I said, we did not have a traditional kind of ABA experience, so I think that helped. At the same time those three years until he got the diagnosis, and then probably the couple years afterwards, it just shattered my confidence as a parent. I didn't know which way was up or down. I thought I was the worst parent ever, because I could not figure this out.

Then we had this therapist come into our home, somebody who was aligned with us in this idea of “your kid is a kid,” and his differences make him the person that he is and that should be celebrated. That was what really reinforced my confidence. I think having that confidence is what allowed me to step back and look at it differently. That feeling of needing to be in charge? I learned very quickly I'm not in control.

Oh no, we're definitely not in control. Alternatively, I need to know where the love of planes came from. Is it something you are all passionate about because of your and your wife’s aviation experience?

Latham: There's two answers—one, it's probably genetic. I flew airplanes from the day I graduated college until 2017. [My son] was always at the flight hangar, and we used to go to our local officer’s club in Maryland where they had this bar that is full of airplane cockpits, tail hooks, and all this really cool memorabilia. So he grew up around it. My wife was a flight test engineer for the Navy for 11 years³. So, you know, she is far more impressive in the aviation world than I am. Then the second piece of it is, if I look back on it, I don't think he said, “I really want to build an airplane.” When we sat down together and I asked, “Hey, what do you want to do?” I think he thought—how far can I push this? An airplane was the biggest idea he could think of, and I believe it made him feel really cool and really special.

Jennifer: You’ve mentioned confidence a few times—kids definitely want to feel confident and special. They also want to feel powerful. I think a lot of the time, that's how kids try to connect with each other too. They’ll say, “I did this thing. Have you also done that?” I wanna share about my experience, do you wanna listen? Did you also have this same experience? Sharing information and personal stories are both ways we use language socially to connect as a community. I love that he’s trying to connect with other people by talking about the plane. It also goes to show how meaningful it is to him.

Here’s the plane!

So from the time he said let’s make a plane did you already have a plan in mind? You’ve shared in your newsletters that at one point you also taught him math and Latin, was that your choice or the state’s mandate?

Latham: I wanted to make sure he did some sort of foreign language and Latin was his choice. The first thing he asked me to do was learn Latin. I thought to myself, I don't know anything about Latin, but I guess I'll figure it out, which seems to be the theme in all of this [laughs]. I care pretty deeply about math, probably because I was a physics major and I love math.

Jennifer: Because of that, did you feel it was easier to teach math compared to some of the other subjects?

Latham: I don't know. You know how if you're really good at something and it comes naturally, you don't always know how to teach it? That was me. This has also been my own journey. The number of times I've sat there and thought How do you not get it? How are you not getting it? And he's like, I don't know, I'm not getting it.

Jennifer: Wow, we really don’t have original experiences, huh? [laughs]

Latham: Haha yeah exactly. I've also, you know, I've got 17 math books sitting over here that are not textbooks. I have Paul Lockhart's book on measurement and a book called A Moscow Math Circle. I'm trying to pull all these pieces together, because I've had that experience of How are you not getting it? How do you just not understand? I gave you everything…what is happening here?

Jennifer: Truly, that's what makes a good educator. Unfortunately, right now teaching is very formulaic with Common Core. That's never been my experience, because I've decided to work in special education private schools where my colleagues and I have the freedom to develop our own curricula. I’ve been able to follow my students’ lead, I’ve gotten a lot of professional development opportunities, and I can pull inspiration from various sources to create units and activities that I know are going to be helpful for my students.

So really what you're able to do, the freedom that you have and the flexibility that you have, it’s as if you're a private tutor for your son. You're able to pull information from all these really well-developed resources and individualize it to him, and on top of that you're his father. You know him best. Plus, he gets to do it in the comfort of his own home.

Latham: Yeah, for better or for worse. The number of times I’ve had to say, you're not building your airplane in your pajamas today…right?"

You’re so right though when you mention the fact that I get to be a private tutor. That has actually been the most helpful mindset shift for me. I read a book called The Science of Tutoring. I don't know if you've heard of it? It's an online book written by this guy, Lawrence Hall, where he looked at all the research behind tutoring and Bloom's two sigma problem and outlined what the science of tutoring looks like today. That mindset helped me to shift from: I need to teach what this book says to we're just going to figure out what the next thing is for you together, and that's okay.

So back to your original question, I actually tried to hold onto math and Latin longer than I should have, because I thought in order to do a language, we need to do it for three years. That's when [research says] you get “the benefit.” Thankfully, I gave up on that, so we don't do Latin right now.

He has a private Greek tutor that we found. She lives in Athens, and she's getting her doctorate in either Ancient Greek philosophy or philosophy in Ancient Greek. I'm not sure which one [laughs], but he has Zoom calls with her twice a week. He’ll very casually tell me, “We read, like, two pages of the Odyssey in the original language.” Like, I’m sorry…you're nine!??! This is the coolest thing ever. I also get to pull in all these Greek myths. [The Greek tutor and I] are basically just trying to build this world for him that he's really excited about.

That was actually a big transition for me, was giving up control. Giving up being the person doing it all and allowing him to learn with somebody else. He has thrived because of that. I think having another person who's as excited as I am, but is not me, has helped a lot. I still hold that we will do math, so we do math three days a week about two hours at a time. We're doing grammar, mostly because I just want him to understand the rules, and then we do a lot of reading.

When I was in control of choosing the books, he wasn't getting anything beyond the plot and I didn't know how to help him go more in depth. So what we found is by building this world that he's already excited about, it takes a lot of the pressure of learning what the plot is off, so he can just be curious, dig deeper, and ask more questions. That was another big shift.

Jennifer: So the Greek teacher has come in, and you're starting to integrate Greek myths. It sounds like the plane thing is existing in its own little silo. I actually love that you have a project that you can kind of bounce in and out of, I think that's really important for you and for him to give it a break. Sometimes you have to make sure it continues to be an interest, because kids can burn out on a project, which I'm sure you've experienced.

How I like to approach curriculum development is similar to how you've naturally found your trajectory—finding an interest that’s motivating and focusing on appropriate skills within their zone of proximal development and ability.

In the speech and language world, we talk about how language is like a building with many floors. So all at once we're attempting to support social language (pragmatics), comprehension, articulation of sounds to make sure our message is coming through clearly, expressive language and vocabulary—some of that grammar that you're working on—and writing. I'm trying to make sure that no matter what I'm working on, all of those areas are being targeted. In the traditional model of education, that's really hard. Everything's very compartmentalized. But in the work that I do, it’s all seamlessly integrated.

You mentioned history is a little less motivating, but does he show any interest in learning ancient Greek history, or history of the that region?

Latham: Yeah, um, I mean, it depends on the day. You know, he loves the myths. I think he likes the stories, but I don't think he likes having to read them if that makes sense? I mean, in September he told somebody that history was his favorite subject. Two months later, he told me he never wanted to read history again, he’s not interested.

Jennifer: I have to say, I’m not surprised about that at all.

Latham: You know, it's interesting. I think one of the things I really struggle with is that I don't have a mental model for how these things should progress in the sense of, when he really liked history, he was happy to read it. Now it's a fight to like get him to read. So I read 80 percent of the pages, and he reads 20 percent. It's not this linear progression that [I always thought] school should be where you go from reading the sounds, to reading the plot, to being able to deeply investigate the stories. I just haven't figured out how that really works in my head.

When it comes to moments like that, I like to think about it as—how can I make this activity or this subject as playful and creative as possible?

You're already building. He clearly likes to build, and I wonder if there's a way for the Greek myths or history or whatever subject it is to pull some kind creative element into the lessons that you're doing, so that it's not just sitting and reading all the time? I remember scanning through one of your newsletters where you said, here I am trying to innovate this new approach to education and it still feels like school.

I have a play-based background⁴ and I’ve collaborated with other types of professionals for many years. I find it very hard not having other people to collaborate with on a daily basis. So you’re not only taking on all of the planning, you also don’t have anybody to process these challenging moments with, and I wonder if a logical next step for you could be to try and collaborate with other professionals in your area. Maybe an art therapist or an art teacher? Or even a STEAM teacher? There's so many interesting [content] creators out here now too. Creativity could be the motivating way you get him to take in the information and really synthesize it, because you also don't want to get stuck in the trap of like, all right, now he's memorized a bunch of facts.

Latham: Right.

Jennifer: Where he says, okay great. I’m done…why do I need to care about this?

Latham: When I first started homeschooling, I had all these visions of joining a co-op here, and I just I didn't find anybody that I clicked with locally. I kind of just gave up. I just thought, okay I need to handle this thing. It's definitely not easy. I'm pretty much making it up as I go, which I'm not confident in almost ever.

Jennifer: Yeah. Welcome to the club. It took me years to feel like things clicked into place, if it makes you feel any better.

Latham: It does, thank you. I've even thought is there a way to, we just got a 3-D printer for Christmas, is there a way for him to like 3-D print some of these Greek mythology characters and get excited about it? But then I also very much worry that once again that’s my idea. Am I just pushing something, because I feel unconfident that this other thing isn't working? I never feel confident in that line between I'm pushing versus he's pulling.

I think that's a really important reflection, and it's something that I've gone through as a professional as well. How do I provide an opportunity for them to share an idea, or how do I plant the seed of an idea and see if they then generate it on their own?

A lot of the time kids, within the dynamic of a teacher-student relationship, they automatically have assumed the role of, you tell me what to do and I’m expected to listen. When I invite certain kids into my office and I say, “All right, look around my room”…mind you, half my office is filled with blocks…”What do you want to do?” They look at me and they're like, I get to choose? and I’ll say, yup you get to choose from anything in here.

Often kids will just sit there, and they need that time as a support. Even if I have a 30-minute session, and they’re sitting there for the entire 30-minute session unsure of what to choose, my job is just to be there and say, “Okay, whenever you're ready, let me know. I can also help you with an idea if you want me to give you choices?” Sometimes they take me up on it, and because I know them so well, I can offer individualized ideas by saying something like, “You really like to draw, so we could draw or we could look at a book?” and they'll either say, “Yeah, I want to draw,” or they'll respond, “Actually, I don't want to do either of those, I want blocks.” Really, they just needed extra processing time to calibrate.

Then other times every idea will get shot down, but they’ll still have trouble generating. So I have to sit back and say okay, 1) is this a language retrieval issue? 2) is this a executive functioning breakdown? or 3) do I need to break these choices down even more? Instead saying, “Do you want to draw with crayons or a sharpie?”

To gauge his interest in 3-D printing, you scaffold the idea by telling him: "We've been talking about these Greek myths, and I really want to organize all of this information that we have collected. I would love to be able to catalog all of the Greek gods, how do you feel about that? If he says no, you pivot and say, I wonder what you've liked about the Greek myths so far? Maybe he responds with, I like that Zeus has a lightning bolt. You then get to respond back, Oh, I agree! Zeus’ lightening bolt is the coolest. Actually, we could make our own lightning bolt. What do you think of that idea?

You’ve planted the seed of the 3-D printing, but the idea ultimately comes from him. Then you've got this lightning bolt, you're pretending to be Zeus, and maybe from there he initiates with a new idea, like we should make our own action figures!

Now look at that—you've got Greek mythology action figures and you're playing out the greek myths. You’ll gain a better picture of what he's recalled from the stories, but you’re also able to follow his lead and see if he can expand on the familiar myths using his new background knowledge. Would you say 3-D printing is his favorite medium right now?

Latham: Yes he’s really into it right now. At one point, he’d gotten really into clay, and he was making models out of clay. Then all the clay dried out, because he left it all out, so he hasn't gotten back into it even though we bought new clay.

He loves being outdoors. I find he likes telling stories. I know it’s not necessarily physical creativity, but he loves to tell these stories. If I can get him to go for a walk, which has been hard because it's been in the single digits outside, he'll tell me a story about the Greek myths for hours⁵. All of those are probably good avenues that I could return to.

I do want to come back to confidence for a minute.

You keep talking about his confidence and your own confidence, and I wonder what impact his confidence has on being able to continue an idea or activity. I’m thinking about this air dry clay that he left out and it dried up. Is it possible after that happened, he didn’t feel confident enough to be responsible with clay again?

Latham: Yeah, it's funny, whenever my son was in a really bad spot and he would just shut down, we would intentionally tell stories to him wrong. He’s big into Star Wars, and we'd say, “So, you know, Darth Vader was trying to save Anakin.” He's like, “That's not how it happened!” “Oh, you're right, sorry.” He could never let something be wrong. That's a technique that we could probably bring back.

Jennifer: 100% and the affect that comes along with that too, it breaks down all the walls that kids like him tend to put up. They’re thinking I need to prove that I'm good enough. I need to prove that I'm smart and I'm perfect. This is my dad, and I have to make sure that I'm living up to his expectations, even though we all know that you're not setting an unrealistic expectation. I wonder if that's also why he's cycling in and out of ideas as he gets into a place where he starts to feel less confident in his abilities?

Latham: Yeah, I think that's, that's definitely true in drawing. I made the mistake of trying to introduce actual drawing techniques. Thank you for pointing that out.

You asked earlier about community and others to collaborate. I started my Substack, because I needed to figure out how to pay for an airplane. However, I quickly realized that this Substack is probably not going to pay for an airplane in the in the sense of paying for it all right away. It did give me a chance to talk it out with other people and get [helpful] responses. I mean, we would never have had this conversation otherwise.

Jennifer: Agreed! When you posted that note about the boat recommendations, I thought, this Dad's doing the right kind of work—recognizing his son’s interests and I want to use his platform to crowdsource ideas. That's what my colleagues and I are doing all the time.

Latham: That was so cool. I mean, I've written about this, but so much of what I'm trying to do is just do the things I wish I'd had as a kid. I have no idea if my son someday is going to be like, man, Dad really screwed me up by doing this or that.

Jennifer: No, when you take this approach, I don't think that that's possible.

Latham: I hope not. I appreciate the perspective. I think one thing about homeschooling and being a parent is the stakes feel really high. Like, well, my kid has one chance, and I'm responsible for everything all of a sudden, and it's very easy to psych myself out more than once.

Jennifer: Have you read The Gardener and The Carpenter yet?

Latham: I haven't.

Jennifer: I recommend you read it now that you're in this dual role. The author defines two vastly different parent-child relationships. I think that your intention is to be the gardener, and you are starting to view yourself as the carpenter, but that's not the case.

Latham: Yeah, I am pretty sure I go back and forth between that. I’m deep into the into the thick of it at the moment.

Jennifer: You definitely are, and on the harder days, you're gonna be like, Wow, I got nothing done today. This was terrible. I feel like such a failure.

Latham: Oh, yeah. I've had a lot of those days. Yeah.

Jennifer: We all have!

Latham: It's funny because for all those days where I feel liked I’ve failed my kid, and I tell myself the worst, as I think we all do, there's other days where even if we didn't learn anything at least the relationship is way better than it ever was.

Jennifer: Exactly. It's strengthened your relationship with him, even when you're not in the teacher role. But that’s the hard part—that you’re going back and forth between the role of his teacher and the role of his parent.

Latham: Yeah, so much so. I mean, I thought I was a good dad in the sense that I was always there, I was helpful, and I was going to PTA meetings. [Now I’m realizing] I didn't know what it meant to be a dad to my kid until I started teaching him, and now to see the relationship and the way that he interacts with me.

Jennifer: I mean that in itself is such huge progress, and I feel like you've given him the opportunity to really learn a lot about himself and his limits. This collaborative experience is going to allow him to become of an agent in his own learning. Focusing on his regulation, continuing to make things meaningful, and boosting his confidence is going to be key. In the moments where you feel him shutting down, it’s not a reflection of you, it’s just where he is functioning in that moment.

I would trying shifting your focus to verbally validating the difficulty. My colleagues and I often use the strategy “name it to tame it” when trying to avoid getting into a power struggle. Some kids need that extra bit of transparency—I see you and I'm attuning to what you're experiencing, even if you can't verbalize it to me.

My job as a speech pathologist is to provide kids with the language that matches their ideas. For instance, I might point out, “I notice you’re looking around the room. Do you need a break or would you like some help?” Your son saying I don't want to do this isn't as much a failure on your part of presenting him with the right opportunity, as it is him simply needing help with self advocacy.

Latham: You’re so right. He's never been a kid who will self advocate, and his [challenge] is once he shuts down, he just doesn't talk to you ever. We've always known that the people who had the most success working with him were the ones who were willing to have a relationship with him on his terms.

Jennifer: Latham, this was such a great conversation. I really loved hearing a little bit more about the work that you're doing and your homeschooling progression. I also appreciate the fact that you're out here sharing your experience. I think it's going to be helpful to so many families that are supporting kids in the way that you're supporting your son.

Latham: This was a lot of fun. I'm super grateful, and I feel like I could talk to you for hours about all of this. Thanks again.

1. For the record, this is not how you teach emotions!

2. By insurance or the Department of Education

3. A flight test engineer is technically qualified as a Civilian Employee position. Latham attended the U.S. Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, MD and later served in United States Navy.

4. As a DIRFloortime® provider

5. I didn’t point this out at the time, but the walking is definitely providing his son regulating sensory input that is allowing him to access language and a higher level of comprehension than sitting at a table together.