Dr. Laura Brunner

Laura grew up in Ohio and decided to become a physician after spending countless hours in the hospital with one of her childhood best friends who had Cystic Fibrosis. During school, she actually hated middle school science because it was boring, but she fell in love with the sciences in high school where they were able to actually learn about “real stuff” and not just get a fluffy overview of things. She joined a BS/MD program and majored in combined science (biology and chemistry). She started medical school in Ohio, but after meeting her husband, Alex, in her first year, her life was changed for the better. They were married a year and a half later, and miraculously she was able to transfer to Vanderbilt Medical School to finish her MD (it's a cool story that only God could put together). She completed a residency in Pediatrics at Vanderbilt and had her first daughter 24 hours after leaving the hospital her last day of residency. After residency, the Brunner family lived in a rural village in the middle of the Andes mountains in Peru, where her husband worked at a mission hospital, and she washed a lot of cloth diapers and learned to cook from scratch. During that time, her second daughter was born, and God was hard at work sharpening her focus on serving her family for His glory. After returning to middle TN, another daughter and three sons were born, as was the idea of “trying out” homeschooling, which stuck. She now lives on a small farm south of Franklin where homeschool happens, and where she pretends to be a farmer with sheep, cows, chickens, rabbits, cats, and a dog running around. These days her stethoscope and otoscope mostly live on the shelf, and she can be found cooking or baking with her girls, folding epic amounts of laundry, reading up on animal husbandry, and on a good day, knitting or spinning wool from the sheep. Surrounded by barn chores and nature, there are plenty of opportunities to observe science in action, and this has been one of her favorite parts of homeschooling. She loves science because creation is absolutely full of God’s fingerprints! She feels strongly that it is very important to observe and learn about science as a Christian because it gives us a unique understanding and appreciation of the wisdom of our creator when we study His creation. She is excited to teach biology this year, highlighting some of those fingerprints for the students to see and hopefully inspiring them to love their Creator more.