Bachelor Nation’s Bekah Martinez is opening up about her family’s decision to take a break from homeschooling.
“I made four transitions in and out of being homeschooled throughout my own childhood,” Martinez, 31, wrote via Instagram on Wednesday, September 9. “My mom and dad always took schooling decisions year by year, child by child. I had 8 years of homeschooling in total, 3 years of private school, 2 of public.”
She continued, “One might think this would feel unpredictable or chaotic. Instead, I felt deeply safe in the knowledge that my parents cared more [about] our shifting needs than others’ opinions about consistency. I knew that I needed a break this year. I’m not sure what next year will look like, but I know that homeschooling and our family will meet again when the time is right. 🕯️⭐️.”
Alongside the message, Martinez shared images that read, “We’re not saying goodbye to homeschooling. We’re saying see you later.”
Bachelor Nation first met Martinez when she appeared as a contestant on Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season of The Bachelor in 2018. While Lukendyk Jr. ultimately found The One in Lauren Burnham, Martinez found love offscreen with Grayston Leonard. The pair made their romance Instagram official in July 2018.
After three months of dating Leonard, Martinez learned that she was pregnant with the couple’s first child. She ultimately gave birth to daughter Ruth in 2019. Later that year, Martinez shared with Us that she has dreams of expanding her and Leonard’s brood.
“I would be fine with five or six [children],” she said to Us at the time “Maybe just five. But for now, we want to keep it just [Ruth] for a couple of years. We can travel with her really easily, so we want to stick with her and then go for the rest.”
The following year, the pair added son Franklin to their family. Martinez and Leonard later shared their engagement in 2022 before welcoming their third child, son Ernest, the next year. In 2025, Martinez gave her followers a peek at homeschooling her kids.
“Back to school— we’ve got a kindergartener and first grader in the house 🍎,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. “Last year was a bit of trial and error with my first year teaching Ruth; I was inconsistent and a bit bogged down by trying too many different curriculums.”
Martinez went on to share that she utilizes the match with confidence curriculum, which requires “very little prep” on her end. For reading, she borrows “BOB books for Franklin and various Level 1 reading books for Ruth from the library” and uses the Reading.com app.
“I like the Charlotte Mason approach to history, which is basically just using regular picture books and historical fiction stories to teach about events throughout time,” she wrote. “It was important to me to find a curriculum that included perspectives outside of the traditional colonialist narrative and without a heavily religious slant, and I was struggling!”
As for science, Martinez explained that the family is using books from the library and children’s nature magazines, while they use the Handwriting Without Tears workbooks. While sharing the details, Martinez also uploaded several photos of her eldest kids smiling beside a stack of books.
