A Podcast for Questioning Parents
A conversation for parents brave enough to ask harder questions — about school, screens, and what it really means to raise a thinking child today.
Hosted by Dr. Stephen E. Saddow and Vaine A. Saddow — a renowned engineering professor and entrepreneur, seven years into one of the most honest experiments in modern parenting.
"Most parenting advice assumes you've already accepted the world as it is. This show is for the parents who haven't."
Off the Lesson Plan — Episode 1
This Show Is For You If
"It's 2am and I can't stop thinking about whether I'm doing right by my kids."
"I sit in the school pickup line wondering if there's a better way."
"I watch my teenager disappear into their phone and feel like I'm losing them."
"I don't know enough to homeschool — but I'm not sure I can keep doing this either."
We are not here to tell you what to do.
We are here to show you what's possible.
Off the Lesson Plan is a weekly conversation about education, technology, and the quiet courage it takes to raise children intentionally in a world moving too fast. Hosted by Dr. Stephen E. Saddow — engineering professor — and Vaine A. Saddow — entrepreneur and business educator — we've been inside public school, charter school, and seven years of homeschooling. We've road-schooled across the country. We went back to traditional school for a year and made the decision to leave again. We're not theorists. We're parents with living proof walking around our house.
Your Hosts
We didn't set out to be podcasters. We set out to raise our children with intention — and seven years later, we have more to say about that journey than we can keep to ourselves.
Co-Host & Driving Force
Renowned Engineering Professor, PhD
A career spent at the highest levels of academic research and engineering education gave Stephen an insider's view of what the traditional system produces — and what it quietly fails to develop. He didn't leave academia. He brought its rigor home. The result is a science curriculum built not on educational theory but on decades of watching how humans actually learn to think, discover, and solve real problems.
Co-Host & Heart of the Show
Entrepreneur & Business Educator
Vaine made a decision most entrepreneurs never consider — to use her own business as her children's classroom. For years she has been teaching her teenagers how companies actually grow, how markets work, and what it means to build something from nothing. Her entrepreneurship curriculum isn't theoretical. It's been field-tested in her own home, in a real business. She is also the voice every questioning parent will recognize — warm, honest, and completely unafraid of the hard days.
"A renowned engineering professor and an entrepreneur who teaches business through her own company. Together they've spent seven years building a rigorous, real-world alternative to traditional education — with two teenagers as living proof. Off the Lesson Plan is the most honest conversation happening in education today."
What We Talk About
Something isn't working in how we're educating children. We name it, examine it, and refuse to look away from it.
Should I homeschool? What about socialization? Am I qualified? We answer the questions that keep parents up at night — honestly.
Screen addiction, AI, and the hyperconnected world our teenagers are navigating. What intentional parenting actually looks like in response.
What happens when you choose differently. Real weeks, real wins, real hard days — and what raising entrepreneurial, curious children actually looks like.
Our Journey
Seven years. Five education models. Two teenagers. One return to traditional school — and the decision to leave again. This is not a highlight reel. It's a map.
Where the questions began. What we observed. Why something felt off.
The first leap. What we got wrong. What surprised us. What worked.
Learning on the road. What travel taught our children that no classroom could.
We returned for one year. What happened. Why we left again.
Co-op twice a week. Real-life learning every day. Where we are now.
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