We are Jenni & Jody, and we hope you’ll think of us as friends. It’s so easy to confuse our names, so we will do our best to introduce you to each of us separately, but it’s okay if you mix us up. It happens all the time, and because of that, most people just call us J & J. Recently, a friend called us the “J Girls” -- we thought that was kind of cute.
Our Mission
To help families raise kids with passion and purpose and to educate with the end result in mind! To help families specially tailor to each child’s education to their own unique calling. We’ll show you how we have done it for our own kids and how we’ve helped many others too. We call it the C2C Education Method, and you can learn more about it here.
Here’s what you can expect from us
We always do our best to be the real girls, which means you can expect raw honesty. You can also expect gentle but firm empowerment, and tried and true, practical tools (which really work) that you can use in your real life with your real kids from two very real homeschool moms.
Between our two families, we have 10 children, including one on the autism spectrum, one grandchild, and more than 30 combined years of homeschooling experience. So as you can imagine, with all that, we have a boatload of BIG success stories and amazing testimonies, and we have a boatload of EPIC failures. But the cool thing about raising our kids and educating them with God by our side is that even some of biggest failures have ended with beautiful testimonies.
A snapshot of the J & J resume
- We co-hosted a weekly parenting radio show for more than six years
- For three years, our radio show was syndicated in different markets around the U.S.
- We wrote a syndicated weekly parenting newspaper column for six years
- We’ve written freelance articles for a wide range of publications including The Old Schoolhouse magazine, Focus on the Family’s Clubhouse and Clubhouse Jr magazines and a wide range of regional magazines and newspapers
- We co-own a Florida-state-registered umbrella school that provides a legal covering for Florida homeschool families
- We currently sit on the board of directors of our local homeschool group
- We consult with families throughout the U.S. and in Canada about wide range of parenting and homeschooling issues
- We began traveling around the U.S. and Canada speaking about homeschooling after Jody posted her son’s homeschool story on our (now closed) parenting website, and it went viral! You can read that story here and be inspired by their fascinating journey.
- We’ve written a few e-books and some curriculum
- We are about to launch a podcast and a YouTube Channel...stay tuned.
A few fun J & J Facts
- We are epic besties (our friendship is really the stuff of legend)
- We live six houses apart (not on purpose -- God’s plan)
- Jenni’s second child and Jody’s third were childhood besties
- We are currently BOTH raising toddler girls who are also besties
- Our husbands are besties
- The Stahlmanns and Hagamans do life together like one (very big) family
Meet Jenni
Jenni Stahlmann and her husband Matthew have seven kids (ages 2 to 21), including one on the autism spectrum. The Stahlmanns started homeschooling in 2004, when it was apparent that their second child was struggling in kindergarten. Sky was an obedient kid, but she was also bursting with energy, and the intense social stimulation in her classroom was so distracting that within the first few weeks of school, she started bringing home “yellow cards” for “misbehavior.” It was obviously affecting her self image, so Jenni and Matt pulled her out early in the year and started homeschooling her.
Had she stayed in school, Matt and Jenni are certain that Sky would have been labeled with some kind of attention disorder, but in spite of her energy (she has always been a firecracker), Sky was a bright girl, and the Stahlmanns didn’t want to see her spark dwindle. Sky graduated from homeschool in 2017 with 63 college credits and 4.0 GPA and is about to enter her senior year at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. You can read more about her here and meet the rest of the Stahlmann Clan too. If you have a special needs child, be sure to swing by and meet Griffyn, the oldest Stahlmann kid. We think you’ll be pretty inspired by his story.
Jenni has been a journalist for more than 20 years. She’s covered government, business, and family issues for a wide range of magazines and newspapers. She is currently the Public Relations Director for their local homeschool organization Learning & Families in Sarasota, Florida. Her husband Mathew is a software developer. He handles most of the J & J media. Click here to meet him.
Meet Jody
Jody Hagaman and her husband Tony have three kids (ages 20 to 31) and one feisty two-year-old granddaughter. The Hagamans started homeschooling in 2000 when their oldest child, who was in 7th grade at the time, asked to be homeschooled. His story has inspired tens of thousands of families, when Jody posted a blog about it on the previous J & J website and it went viral. You can read that powerful story here. Although the Hagamans started out with no idea of how they could possibly educate their son at home, they found their way, and Chase is now a successful attorney, serving as the New England Regional Director for a bi-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility in government. He also hosts a weekly radio show in Concord, New Hampshire. You can read more about Chase here and his beautiful wife Megan here.
In 2017, Jody graduated her third child from homeschool, but now she has the great privilege of educating the next generation as she starts the homeschool journey over again with her first grandchild, Ariana Rose. And what an enormous blessing it is that Jenni and Jody get to homeschool together once again because Jenni’s youngest Rhema Joy is the same age as little Ari! Jody also homeschooled her daughter’s fiance in his senior year of high school, and now she is homeschooling his 10-year-old brother.
As a community leader, Jody has served on the board of directors of many local non-profit organizations. She is currently serving as President of her local homeschool group. Her work experience as a corrections officer on a crisis intervention team inspired her to make a difference in the lives of the next generation. Jody’s husband Tony is a physical therapist and the Director of Rehabilitation for an assisted living facility in Sarasota, Florida.