Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Ni­ki Ro­drigues, nee Miller, grew up with a sin­gle moth­er, a younger sis­ter, and her grand­moth­er. Now, many years lat­er, Ro­drigues has a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent fam­i­ly struc­ture as the moth­er of eight, a proud wife, and al­so a busi­ness own­er/en­tre­pre­neur. Be­tween man­ag­ing her house­hold, grow­ing her mul­ti­ple busi­ness­es, and home­school­ing her chil­dren, she is an ex­tra­or­di­nary woman.

Cred­it­ing her moth­er’s ex­am­ple as a ma­jor in­flu­ence in her life, she con­sid­ers her up­bring­ing around strong women “as a tes­ta­ment to the strength that peo­ple see in me right now.” In ad­di­tion, she al­so cites her strong faith as a Chris­t­ian along with her hus­band’s de­vo­tion to their fam­i­ly as her oth­er pil­lars of strength in her var­i­ous pur­suits.

Af­ter com­plet­ing sec­ondary school at St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege, Ro­drigues ini­tial­ly worked in the bank­ing in­dus­try for sev­er­al years. Con­vinced at the time she was in­ter­est­ed in bank­ing and fi­nance, up­on fur­ther re­flec­tion, she ac­knowl­edged that her love for fash­ion had a part to play in her ca­reer choice.

“I think I liked it just be­cause I loved the uni­form.” Laugh­ing at the mem­o­ry, she con­sid­ers it an ear­ly in­di­ca­tion that fash­ion was one of her in­trin­sic pas­sions.

Suf­fer­ing from en­dometrio­sis and hav­ing to spend all day stand­ing as front­line staff at the bank, she even­tu­al­ly re­signed, be­cause it was tak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant toll on her body and health.

By the time she left the bank­ing in­dus­try in her ear­ly twen­ties, she was seek­ing a new path and stum­bled on an ad­ver­tise­ment from the then BWIA, look­ing for flight at­ten­dants.

Fresh­ly mar­ried, she re­called that her hus­band was “all for it” and en­cour­aged her to ap­ply. Ro­drigues met her hus­band, Jim Ro­drigues, dur­ing her late teenage years in the church, and they wed at 21 and 22 years old, re­spec­tive­ly, af­ter three years of court­ing. “We have been mar­ried for 26 years,” she says. “We grew up to­geth­er, learn­ing about life and adult­hood to­geth­er, and we would have it no oth­er way. Not on­ly are we still in love, we still like each oth­er; we are best friends.”

Three years af­ter they wed, Ro­drigues had their first ba­by and con­tin­ued to work as a flight at­ten­dant with the sup­port of her hus­band and moth­er-in-law. When her sec­ond child was on the way, she sought coun­sel from fam­i­ly, friends, and old­er flight at­ten­dants, who en­cour­aged her to stay at home with her chil­dren if pos­si­ble.

“I re­al­ly en­joyed the ca­reer and trav­el­ling,” she rem­i­nisces, “but this was a new sea­son in my life, and I would still choose my chil­dren over a ca­reer any day.”

“The life that I have now ex­ceeds my ex­pec­ta­tions,” she mus­es. “God or­ches­trat­ed our lives and our paths to get here.”

Af­ter her first two chil­dren, she be­gan teach­ing in a school in their neigh­bour­hood and was able to have the best of both worlds, not trav­el­ling the thou­sands of miles as she did pre­vi­ous­ly for work, and be­ing able to spend the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion at home with her chil­dren.

Af­ter her first two chil­dren, Ro­drigues and her hus­band would go on to have six more, round­ing out with eight in to­tal, but she laughs that “the tran­si­tion from two to three was the biggest jump. We were out­num­bered!” Thus, when she had her third child three-and-a-half years af­ter the sec­ond, she de­cid­ed to leave her teach­ing post and stay at home with them.

Even­tu­al­ly drawn back in­to teach­ing on a part-time ba­sis, she had a sig­nif­i­cant ground­ing in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, which ul­ti­mate­ly pre­pared her to un­der­stand the ben­e­fits and draw­backs of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem when she was get­ting ready to home­school her own chil­dren.

In fact, it was in April 2009, when she was teach­ing at Diego Mar­tin Sec­ondary School, she heard about home­school­ing from one of the oth­er teach­ers. At the time, her old­est sons were at­tend­ing a pri­vate school, and Ro­drigues and her hus­band were faced with climb­ing school fees each term with­out see­ing sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments in the school. “Not to men­tion,” she says, “I al­so did not like the way our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, and more gen­er­al­ly, many schools in the West­ern hemi­sphere teach sole­ly to pass ex­ams. It doesn’t fo­cus on giv­ing chil­dren a well-round­ed ed­u­ca­tion.”

With these con­cerns in mind, want­i­ng a more holis­tic ed­u­ca­tion for her chil­dren’s “mind, body and soul,” she de­cid­ed to pull them from school and home­school them.

Ini­tial­ly hav­ing to nav­i­gate home­school­ing was nerve-wrack­ing for Ro­drigues, es­pe­cial­ly when it was time for her first son, Matthew, to write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am.

Fol­low­ing a Chris­t­ian Amer­i­can home­school cur­ricu­lum de­vel­oped with holis­tic ed­u­ca­tion in mind, she did/does a mix­ture of tra­di­tion­al home­school­ing and, on a very small scale, “world­school­ing”.

Es­sen­tial­ly, her dom­i­nant ap­proach is tra­di­tion­al, where she “brings the class­room home,” teach­ing the cur­ricu­lum her­self. How­ev­er, to a small ex­tent, where she has to trav­el, she takes her chil­dren with her, teach­ing them a host of valu­able life skills.

These in­clude en­tre­pre­neur­ship, busi­ness eti­quette, and nav­i­gat­ing air­ports and for­eign coun­tries, among oth­ers, ce­ment­ed by her be­lief that “life, in fact, is the class­room.”

Equipped with his moth­er’s ster­ling abil­i­ty to ed­u­cate, Matthew wrote the SEA and passed for his first choice, Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege.

Ro­drigues is now the proud moth­er of many suc­cess­ful chil­dren, the el­dest ones now in their twen­ties with ca­reers in­clud­ing writ­ing and en­tre­pre­neur­ship, with two of her girls hav­ing their own reg­is­tered busi­ness­es as teenagers.

Lead­ing the pack is Ro­drigues her­self, with pur­suits in­clud­ing her Daugh­ters of the King bou­tique, Made in His Im­age im­age con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices for pro­fes­sion­als, and her page, Liv­ing Large on Face­book, which she start­ed in May 2020.

Liv­ing Large is a hub for peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in home­school­ing, life as a large Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly, par­ent­ing, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, home de­sign, and dai­ly dos­es of in­spi­ra­tion. She al­so has a pod­cast that was launched in 2020, “Home­school­ing Mat­ters,” to give peo­ple in­for­ma­tion on home­school­ing that pro­vid­ed com­fort for par­ents dur­ing COVID who had to teach their chil­dren at home.

A woman of many gifts, her great­est de­vo­tion has been the rais­ing and teach­ing of her chil­dren. She has tak­en the “op­por­tu­ni­ty to teach the chil­dren that I have, as each one learns dif­fer­ent­ly,” of­fer­ing them the space they need to thrive and grow their mul­ti­ple in­tel­li­gences.

Her ap­proach to par­ent­ing and ed­u­ca­tion is deeply root­ed in un­der­stand­ing the unique strengths and weak­ness­es of each child, cre­at­ing a stim­u­lat­ing and sup­port­ive en­vi­ron­ment, and cham­pi­oning their paths to suc­cess.