Schoolhouse Rocked Production Update – Summer, 2019

For those of you who have been keeping up with production on the movie, you know that last month some big decisions were made about the direction we would take in finishing the film. We asked you to pray for the Lord to guide us, and He has! We are SO excited to tell you that in a few weeks, we are driving west from Georgia to Washington to complete the filming of Schoolhouse Rocked with Heidi St. John! Here’s the scoop…

Yvette Hampton:           Hey, everyone. This is Yvette Hampton and I am here with my oldest daughter Brooklyn for this update.

Brooklyn Hampton:       Hi, guys.

Yvette:             She’s 13. I love having a teenager. It’s so much fun. Most of the time.

Brooklyn:          Ouch.

Join us on the Schoolhouse Rocked Backstage Pass membership site for the full, unedited video of this interview. Save 10% on any paid Backstage Pass Membership by using the coupon code “Podcast10”.

Yvette:             No, I’m loving it. It is so much fun. So far not at all as scary as I thought it would be. I love being a mom of girls and I love being a mom of a teen. God’s doing great things in her life. Speaking of your life, what are some things that God is doing with our family right now?

Brooklyn:          Well, we are going to travel across the country and finish filming the movie with Heidi St. John in Vancouver, Washington. Yeah. It’s very exciting.

Yvette:             It’s very exciting. Here’s the update. We are heading to Greenville. We’ll be there for about a week. We’re going to have some meetings with some people there and do a few things there, maybe a little bit of filming, but then we are trekking across the country in our big, blue Excursion and we’re really excited.

Yvette:             On the way there we’re going to get to stop and see the Rinella family who we’ve gotten to know pretty well over the last year but we haven’t actually met them in person, right?

Brooklyn:          No.

Yvette:             If you listen to the podcast you’ve heard Aby Rinella for sure on the podcast a few times and so we’re really excited. We’re going to get to meet their family. Then we are going to go all the way to Vancouver, Washington, which is right outside of Portland. We’re going to finish filming the documentary with Heidi St. John. We are super excited about this.

We’ve filmed all of the interviews for the documentary but what we have left to film is the actual storyline that weaves throughout the documentary to pull all of the interviews together. That is going to be myself and Heidi are going to do that together and basically talk as homeschool moms about our journey of homeschooling and all that God has done.

For those of you who don’t know who Heidi is, which most of you do, but for those who don’t she is a homeschool mom of seven kids and she’s got a couple grandkids now but she doesn’t at all look like a grandma.

Brooklyn:          No.

Yvette:             No.

Brooklyn:          She really doesn’t.

Yvette:             She’s very young looking. She’s just amazing. She has a great platform. She has a podcast, she speaks, she writes lots of books, and she and her husband and her family run a homeschool resource center in Vancouver, Washington. We’re going to do a bunch of our filming there. We’re going to get to meet some of the families there in Washington and film some B-roll. Then from there we’re going to head to?

Brooklyn:          California.

Yvette:             California.

Brooklyn:          Yay!

Yvette:             California is home for us, for those who don’t know. We have not actually really been home for the past two and a half years. We went home for a couple of weeks. My mom was really sick and so we went to help take care of her. We haven’t been back there to actually get to spend time with friends and family and so we’re going to go back to do that and finish filming.

Between Vancouver, Washington, Portland, Oregon, and then our treks south from there to California – and in California we will finish filming the whole documentary, which we are really excited about.

Brooklyn:          Yes. We are.

Yvette:             It’s been a very exciting few years for our family but we are definitely ready to be done with filming and to get this movie out to encourage homeschool families.

Brooklyn:          Yes.

Yvette:             Here are some things that you can do to help us. We are in need of lots of prayer. There’s just a whole lot that goes into filming a feature length documentary like what we’re doing. God has been so faithful. I mean, do you want to tell some of the stories? I know that’s totally putting you on the spot because we didn’t talk about this beforehand.

Brooklyn:          We didn’t.

Yvette:             What are just a couple of things that God has done to provide for our family and to just show his power through the whole process of making this movie?

Brooklyn:          I mean, there’s so many.

Yvette:             I know.

Brooklyn:          I honestly don’t know where to start.

Yvette:             How about hospitality?

Brooklyn:          Hospitality? All right. When we were coming to Georgia to start really editing the movie and all of that we had so many families just offer up their home to us and just welcome us in and be so hospitable and it was a huge blessing.

Yvette:             Yeah. We’ve had that happen all across the country really. I mean, it has been absolutely incredible because, as you can imagine, of course, staying in hotel rooms and stuff can get really expensive. We have sometimes reached out and just said, “We’re coming to this particular area. If there’s anybody there who is willing to host our family we’ll be there from these dates …”

Every single time, without fail, God has provided a place for us to stay and then sometimes people just know where we’re going or … Last week, or I guess it was a couple of weeks ago, there was a family who just sent us an email and she said, “We live in the Modesto area in California.” She said, “If you’re coming through this area we would love to host you and have you stay the night at our house.”

These are people that we don’t even know but it’s such a neat way to just see the tangible hand of God working through the body of Christ to support this documentary because we can’t do it on our own. There’s just so much that goes into this. It really is a team effort of the whole homeschool community. That’s been great.

Brooklyn:          While you were talking I thought of a story.

Yvette:             Oh, tell a story.

Brooklyn:          Yes. All right. It was about a year ago and we were going to head to Tennessee. We had nowhere to stay. We were just trusting God to provide a place and this family opened up their barndominium to us. We got to stay there for about five weeks.

Yvette:             Yeah.

Brooklyn:          They were just amazing. Yeah.

Yvette:             Yes. We didn’t even know until I think it was two weeks before we left for that trip …

Brooklyn:          We had been planning this trip for like months ahead of time.

Yvette:             Yes.

Brooklyn:          Like we had this trip, we were going to Tennessee, and we didn’t know where we were staying.

Yvette:             We didn’t know but we trusted that because God was leading us there he was going to provide a place for us to stay. Two weeks before we arrived in Tennessee he provided the most amazing place for us to stay on this farm. The White family, is just so incredibly hospitable and gracious. We have been the recipients. That has happened over and over again. The McCosky’s and … I can’t even list all of people because there are so many of them.

Brooklyn:          So many.

Yvette:             We have literally stayed in many, many houses, which has really stretched our family and our comfort because it’s kind of awkward sometimes, especially in the beginning, to just go stay with people that you don’t know.

Brooklyn:          Yeah.

Yvette:             But we have made friends. We have friends now across the country. Like really good friends.

Brooklyn:          Yeah, that we now text with everyday and they just say, “Hey, how’s it going? We’re praying for you.” Those are friends we didn’t even know before.

Yvette:             Right. We are learning that where God guides he provides. Our pastor gave a sermon on that years ago, before we left California. This was probably just a few weeks before we left. I remember him giving a sermon and he said, “Where God guides, he provides. That really stuck with Garritt and I. We were like, “Okay, God is guiding us on this trip. He’s guiding us to make this movie. He is going to provide everything that we need” and he has unmistakably and miraculously provided for us in ways … The boxes.

Brooklyn:          The boxes. Yes.

Yvette:             Do you want to tell the story about the boxes?

Brooklyn:          I was going to tell the story but I didn’t know if you were going to go into that whole thing.

Yvette:             No. Tell the story of the boxes.

Brooklyn:          Yes. Okay. We recently sold our trailer and we are heading across the country, as you guys already know. We just needed totes.

Yvette:             Those plastic Rubbermaid tote boxes.

Brooklyn:          Earlier that day we had gone to Sam’s Club and we saw these … I don’t even know how much they were like.

Yvette:             I think they were like $8 a piece.

Brooklyn:          $8. They were like top quality totes. We put them in the cart. We just were walking through and my dad was like, “I don’t think we should buy these right now.” We put them back. We had two of them. I don’t know if I mentioned that.

Yvette:             We had two of them. That we needed.

Brooklyn:          That we needed. We really did need them. Later that day … Oh my gosh.  Later that day we went to my grandpa’s house and we were unloading some stuff and loading up some stuff.

Yvette:             To store at his house.

Brooklyn:          Yeah. He said, “Hey, I have two totes. Would you guys possibly be interested?” We were like, “Two totes? What?”

Yvette:             Yeah. I mean, it was just amazing because it seems like such a small thing but it was one of those moments where I realized once again that God cares even about the little things. He provides for us in amazing ways. He provides for us even in the little things. He provides for us in big ways but he knows when we need plastic boxes and he provides those for us as well. He is a faithful, faithful God.

Just as we have gone to Tennessee and God provided a place for us we’re now trucking across the country to finish filming with Heidi. Heidi is excited about it. We are super excited about it. We know absolutely that this is God’s plan for finishing the story of Schoolhouse Rocked. We have prayed a lot about it. We’ve sought wise counsel. This is just absolutely the direction God is leading us.

It costs a whole lot of money to do this. We’ve got to hire a crew of people to help us finish filming. We’re going to be filming for probably five solid film days with Heidi but we’ll be filming for probably about 10 to 12 days in Vancouver and Portland area and then a few more days in California.

Brooklyn:          Yes.

Yvette:             It costs a lot of money to do that. We would love your help. We don’t very often ask for this. We would love it if you guys would be willing to come alongside of us and just help support us financially so that we can get to Washington, hire the crew that we need to finish filming, get the movie done, and then we can move into post-production.

We’re looking at some investors, talking to a couple of investors, but those people will come in for the post-production part to fund that part of it because that’s a big huge chunk of money.

If you would be willing to just pray about it and just see if the Lord might put it on your heart to help support the rest of filming for the movie so that we can get this part of it done and then move into post-production. We would love that.

Brooklyn:          That’d be a huge blessing.

Yvette:             That would be a huge blessing. We know God is going to provide. He provides miraculously. I mean, again, we have so many stories of what he’s done and how he has provided. Where can people go to find out more about helping with Schoolhouse Rocked? Schoolhouse Rocked dot com.

Brooklyn:          Schoolhouse Rocked dot com. She totally likes those lines.

Yvette:             I did. Though, you would have known that if I hadn’t said that, right? Would you have known to say that?

Brooklyn:          Yeah.

Yvette:             Go to Schoolhouse Rocked dot com. Right on the front page you’ll see a button that says support … I think it says support.

Brooklyn:          Yeah.

Yvette:             Just click on that. You can actually make a donation to Schoolhouse Rocked. Then, of course, pray for us. There is just so much more to be done. We continue to be in awe of what God has called us to do. We feel very honored that God has called our family to make this documentary and very humbled. It’s all for his glory.

It’s not for our recognition or our glory but it’s really to change the hearts of parents and call people to bring their kids out of the public school system, out of private schools, if that’s where they’re called to, and bring them home and disciple their children. Homeschooling is a blessing.

Brooklyn:          It is.

Yvette:             It’s fun. Do you enjoy being homeschooled?

Brooklyn:          I love being homeschooled. I love being homeschooled.

Yvette:             I didn’t pay you to say that either.

Brooklyn:          No. She didn’t. I really genuinely love being homeschooled. Real fast, while you were saying the support thing, the other thing you can do to support is send us emails. Send us encouraging emails. That really helps keep us going.

Yvette:             Yes.

Brooklyn:          It’s like send us texts, send us emails. Those are really a blessing. I don’t think people know how much of a blessing that is to us. That really lifts our spirits and it helps us keep going.

Yvette:             Yes. Well said, Brooklyn. That is true. People will randomly just send messages either on Facebook or email or sometimes they’ll leave reviews for the podcast.

Brooklyn:          Do that too.

Yvette:             Do that too. Yes, that is an easy way that you can just let us know that you’re praying for us, that you’re standing with us. Sometimes people can’t afford to support us financially but you can certainly afford to support us through prayer. We would love that. Thank you for saying that.

Brooklyn:          You’re welcome.

Yvette:             I appreciate that. Yeah. That’s where we’re at. Keep up with us this summer. If you are on our Facebook page it’s The Schoolhouse Rocked Facebook page. You can keep up with us there and we’ll keep up to date on where we are and what we’re doing. We’ll be doing Facebook Lives, especially while we’re filming because that’s just fun.

Brooklyn:          Oh, yeah.

Yvette:             We’ll give you updates on what God is doing and how he’s providing. If you would like to just be part of that we would love to have you on our team and just have you to be part of the Schoolhouse Rocked crew by being some of the prayer and financial backing that we need.

Thank you, guys, for listening and if you’re watching this on video thank you for watching. We are praying for you guys. We pray all the time that the Lord would use this movie to be a blessing to you and that it would just honor him and serve his kingdom well.

We love you guys. Thank you for your support. Thank you, Brooklyn, for being my guest today.

Brooklyn:          I kind of asked for this.

Yvette:             You did ask for it. She keeps asking if she can record something with me.

Brooklyn:          Yeah. Be on the podcast.

Yvette:             Be on the podcast. Here you have it.

Brooklyn:          Yay!

Yvette:             I’m glad that we get to do this together.

Brooklyn:          Me too.

Yvette:             All right, you guys. Have a great day. Bye.

Brooklyn:          Bye.

Overcoming Feelings of Inadequacy in your Homeschool – Yvette Hampton on the Joy in the Journey Podcast

Schoolhouse Rocked producer, Yvette Hampton, recently appeared on the Joy in the Journey Podcast to talk with host, Misty Bailey about overcoming the feelings of inadequacy that so many homeschool moms face.

Click here to listen to this encouraging episode of the Joy in the Journey Podcast.

Married for twenty-three years, and a homeschool mom for seven, Yvette has a heart for building up other homeschool moms. She has heard the stories of how unprepared many moms feel to handle the education of their children, in fact, she has shared (and shares) many of those same insecurities. Now, she has embraced the idea of slowing down, focusing on what is truly important, and enjoying the privilege of investing in her children every day.

I am sure you will be encouraged in your own homeschooling journey when you listen.

 “Salt and Light” in the Public Schools? 

Yvette and Misty also talked recently, about another important issue. In a recent episode of the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast they talked about whether our kids have the responsibility of being “salt and light” in public schools. Are we missing an opportunity to evangelize when we remove our kids from public schools, and if they do not have the responsibility of being “salt and light” there, who does? Finally, they discussed how, when, and where our kids should be “salt and light”, and how we can prepare them.

You can find Misty at https://www.findingjoyinthejourney.net.

For more on this subject, pic up a copy of the excellent book, Already Gone by Ken Ham, Britt Beamer, and Todd Hillard.

The Best Accident Ever! Listen the Heidi St. John Podcast, featuring Yvette Hampton of Schoolhouse Rocked

On Episode 656 of The Heidi St. John Podcast, Heidi had a great conversation with Schoolhouse Rocked producer, Yvette Hampton about being an “accidental homeschooler”, and how homeschooling was the best accident that ever happened to them. Don’t miss this encouraging show!

For those of you who can’t get enough of Heidi St. John, don’t miss her on next week’s episode of The Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast. She will be appearing, Monday, September 10th in episode 11.

Schoolhouse Rocked Backstage Pass members can see Heidi St. John’s full interview for Schoolhouse Rocked. Subscribe for free and get immediate access to great video clips, featuring helpful homeschooling tips and encouragement from the cast of Schoolhouse Rocked. You will also get a free gift when you subscribe! Download 90 minutes of exclusive videos from Heidi St. John, Sam Sorbo, Andrew Kern, and Colleen Kessler – yours to keep!

Garritt and Yvette on Israel Wayne’s Family Renewal Podcast

Garritt and Yvette Hampton, director and producer/host of Schoolhouse Rocked were recent guests on Israel Wayne’s excellent Family Renewal podcast, where they got to talk about homeschooling and the production of this important homeschooling documentary. Listen to the show here.

On the monthly Family Renewal Podcast Israel Wayne discusses life, theology, Christian Apologetics, education, family and cultural issues from a Biblical worldview. Israel is a national speaker and the author of several books including Education: Does God Have an Opinion? and his newest book, Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask. Israel appeared in the excellent documentary, Indoctrination, and we were very excited to interview him for Schoolhouse Rocked. The Family Renewal Podcast is featured on the Ultimate Homeschool Radio Network.

We are giving away a two copies of Answers for Homeschooling: Top 25 Questions Critics Ask, by Israel Wayne. Listen to Episode 4 of the Schoolhouse Rocked Podcast, where we interview Israel about Godly parenting and the blessings that homeschooling brings. This special hour-long episode is a filled with practical advice and wisdom from the original “homeschool guy”!

 

Schoolhouse Rocked Production Update – Nashville, 2018


Happy Easter!! We pray that you’re enjoying Spring so far. Our family just returned from a month-long trip to Franklin, Tennessee where we got to watch God work in amazing ways. While we were there, we were able to finish the interview process for Schoolhouse Rocked and had the privilege of interviewing Heidi St. John, Carol Swain, Ginger Hubbard, Israel Wayne, Rachael Carman, Mary Jo Tate, Leslie Nunnery, and several others. We also did several Facebook Live interviews which you can see on the Schoolhouse Rocked Facebook page (we’d love for you to follow us there if you haven’t already).

Most of our filming took place at the Teach Them Diligently homeschool convention held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, where we were blessed to witness thousands of families eager to gain wisdom and training on how to reach the hearts of their children through homeschooling. We’ve attended many homeschool conventions over the past 8 years and this was definitely one of our favorites.

We were also incredibly to be able to attend the Christian Worldview Filmmakers Guild and Film Festival where we received excellent Biblical teaching from the Kendrick Brothers, as well as several other experts in the Christian filmmaking industry. Our girls were so excited to meet Mike Nawrocki, the voice of Larry the Cucumber from VeggieTales. He was incredibly nice and didn’t hesitate to speak in his Larry voice! If you are interested in participating in any aspect of the Christian film industry, this event is a MUST!

I’d love to share with you just a few ways in which we saw the mighty hand of God move on our behalf…

While we were planning for our trip to Tennessee, we knew we needed to be there for a little over four weeks, but we didn’t have a place to stay and renting an Airbnb or hotel for that length of time was out of the question. So we prayed…and God answered! An incredibly sweet and hospitable family offered for us to stay in their two-bedroom apartment that they have built into a building on their 4-acre farm. So, for a month, we city folk got to live on a farm. It was a BLAST! We cannot thank the White family enough for their generosity. And, more importantly, God developed a beautiful friendship between our families!

Prior to going, we still had several important interviews that we really needed to capture in order to complete the filming portion of the documentary. So we prayed…and God provided! We got them all, and then some. We are so blessed by the wisdom, experience, and transparency that these people provided. We are certain that many lives will be changed because of them.

There were still several people we needed to have join our team and work along side us in order to complete this movie with excellence and ensure a successful theatrical release. So we prayed…and God directed! (are you seeing a theme here?!?!) We met with several experts and companies specifically within the Christian film industry who we are very excited to be working with.

Whenever we return from being on the road and filming, we always come home with a huge list of things that need to be accomplished. This time was no different. We are working with a great deal of enthusiasm as we continue to take steps toward completing this important task that God has entrusted to us. At the top of our list now is to launch our crowdfunding campaign. Please pray with us as we work with our team to put this campaign together. We are anxious to see how God will work to provide.

We are so grateful for each one of you. Thank you for the continued encouragement, prayers, and support. We are still more than a year away from the release of the movie, but each day we move one step closer. Enjoy these few pictures that will give you a small glimpse into our time in Tennessee.

Soli Deo gloria.

Yvette Hampton, Host and Producer