Leigh Bar-Yaakov
Attachment – the Key to Successful Homeschooling
Leigh Bar-Yakov, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and parenting consultant who specializes in developmental attachment based therapy. She offers consultation, seminars and courses to parents, educators, and professionals both online and in person. She has homeschooled her four children for over 18 years. She aims to help parents safeguard their children’s’ hearts – “The heart of man is very much like the sea, it has its storms, it has its tides, and in its depths it has its pearls too” (Vincent Van Gogh).
Amy Bodkin
Homeschooling Special Needs Using a Developmental Approach
Amy Bodkin is an Autistc Adult, School Psychologist, and Homeschool Mom to her two Autistic kids. She consults primarily with homeschool families as the Special Needs Consultant at A Charlotte Mason Plenary. She works with families who have experienced chronic health conditions, disabilities, trauma, asynchronous development, etc. Her practice is guided by Charlotte Mason’s idea that “Children are born persons” and makes it her goal to see each child as an individual, not a diagnosis.
Melissa Brander
Using Your Passion for Easier Homeschooling
Melissa Brander is a homeschooling mom of two boys and the founder of Pocket Homeschool (pockethomeschool.com). She enjoys helping people navigate the homeschooling world. She believes that the uniqueness of our passions make for a wonderful homeschool! Her passions include libraries and history.
Karen Cadera
The Immense Benefits of Piano for Kids and How Your Homeschooling Children Can Succeed at Piano Even When Blessed with Non-musical Parents
Karen Cadera is a veteran piano, general music and language arts teacher. She provides parents (who’ve had no formal training in music) with all the tools and guidance they need to teach their kids to play the piano. Karen’s flagship Homeschool Piano Curriculum is a comprehensive course, covering areas such as composition, ear training, music theory, rhythm/beat, and repertoire, on top of helping kids become proficient at playing the piano.
Holly Chubb
Getting Started with Homeschooling: First Steps
Holly is a homeschool mom of three. She runs At Home With Holly, and she founded the Digital Homeschool Convention. She’s a fan of iced coffee, nature walks, and her backyard chickens. When she’s not working on helping new homeschoolers, you will find her in the garden, reading or chasing after her kids at the local nature park.
Lauren Giordano
Follow The Child
Lauren is a home educating mama of 2 and owner of Chickie & Roo shop. She believes that all of life is school and emphasizes child-led learning.
Tal Hoover
Homeschooling Multiple Children Simplified
Tal Hoover is the founder of Blessed Grove Homeschooling and Academy online. Tal is a professional educator, curriculum writer, and homeschool mother of 7 children. She has a Bachelor’s degree, certificates in legal studies, and a TEFL endorsement for teaching ESL. Tal has over 15 years of home education experience and nearly a decade of experience in tutoring, online instruction and instructional design and business coaching and development. She specializes in teaching Biblical and world history, multicultural studies, comparative religions, art history, and of course, professional artisan cookie decorating. She also teaches and encourages parents in home based entrepreneurship. Her spare time is spent teaching, singing, writing, reading and operating her baking business.
Meaghan Jackson
The Heart of Homeschooling – Learn to Create a Homeschooling Journey that is Unique for Your Family
Meaghan Jackson of Joyful Mud Puddles is a Parenting and Homeschool Coach. She has taken her passion for bringing peaceful calm to family life and pairs that with her background in education to help parents become more confident and well equipped. What better way to describe the messy, fun exciting life of a mom with three boys than Joyful Mud Puddles!
Rob James
How To Make a Homeschool Dad
A Kansas native, Rob is a dad of four and husband to one. He’s been a stay at home father for 14 years, but this will be his 10th year homeschooling! For the last five years, Rob has conducted an active ministry and advocacy for dads struggling or entering the home-space. A former high school English teacher, Rob struggled with the stifling bureaucracy and intensified focus on testing and data mining. He quit his job to focus on raising his children at home. After moving to Idaho, he and his family connected with several homeschool groups and decided to homeschool their own children. They now live in Texas where they continue following this path while coaching others to do the same!
Rachel Lebowitz
What Kind of Education Do We Want for Our Children? How the Charlotte Mason Method Fosters Joy, Beauty, and Relationship-building in Your Homeschool
Rachel Lebowitz is an expert in the Charlotte Mason method of education. She has years of experience helping homeschool families find a rhythm that suits their individual needs. She has developed wonderful resources to enhance the homeschooling experience for everyone in the family.
Rachel and her husband have always homeschooled their two children using the Charlotte Mason method.
Her motto is “Easier, Simpler, Your Way” because she believes that homeschooling should be “Easier, Simpler, and done Your Way.” You can find Rachel at cmplenary.com.
Yehudis Litvak
Information Overload? Where do I go from here?
Yehudis Litvak is the co-founder of Ani VeAmi, the Jewish Living Education curriculum, and the author of its curriculum guides. She has been homeschooling for more than eleven years. Her oldest child graduated high school last year. She is passionate about giving every child an opportunity to thrive socially, emotionally, and academically in a homeschool environment. Yehudis loves to read and write living books, and she is the author of a Young Adult historical fiction trilogy, as well as numerous short stories. You can find her at Ani veAmi and Amazon.com.
Dachelle McVey
How to Add Enchantment to Your Homeschool
Dachelle is a homeschooling mom of 3 in the South. She loves chocolate and has been known to hide it from her children. She can often be found reading a good book (or even sometimes just an okay book) and enjoying a jar of Nutella — don’t judge. She blogs at HideTheChocolate.com when she’s not planning and creating online book clubs at Literary Adventures for Kids. You can find her on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and, occasionally, YouTube (she has an innate fear of live video!).
Elizabeth Porter
Performance Based Learning Through Thematic Unit Studies
Elizabeth Porter is a National Board Certified Teacher with a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education and a Bachelor’s in French and Applied Linguistics. Elizabeth also holds a French Degree in called a DEUG Français Langue Étrangère (FLE) from the Université de Caen in Normandy, France.
Elizabeth began her career teaching elementary and middle school English in Normandy France, then returned to the United States in 2002 where she taught for three years at the French Immersion School of Washington. Elizabeth then taught high school French and was a World Languages Curriculum Specialist in Washington State and Iowa. She has nearly 20 years of experience working in education. She opened Bon Voyage World Languages Academy in 2016, a non-profit online language school with the mission of fostering open minds and compassionate hearts through linguistic and global education.
Elizabeth is the author of “Pathways to Language Fluency: Changing How We Think About Language in the United States,” and “The Performance Based Solution.” She writes Performance Based Learning curriculum for World Languages, Social Studies, and English Language Arts. She is also the host of the podcast “Language with the Five Senses Education,” highlighting the Language with the Five Senses Method, Performance Based Learning, Brain-Friendly Learning, and Choice in Education.
Elizabeth is a dynamic teacher who is passionate about language, education, and how our brains are naturally wired for learning.
Elizabeth lives in Washington State with her husband David, her two sons Daniel and Noah, and her dog Oscar. She loves France and all things French.
Susan Reed
Choosing Curriculum the FAMILY Way
Susan Reed is the founder of Texas HOME Educators, a homeschool speaker, author, and blogger at myhappyhomeschool.blogspot.com whose heart’s desire is to encourage the homeschool mom to live out God’s calling and stay the course. She empathizes with new homeschoolers faced with an overwhelming array of choices and provides the perspectives and tools they need to choose curriculum the FAMILY way. In this talk, she encourages you to consider several aspects of homeschooling – Faith, Assessments, Methods, Income, Learning Styles, and Your State Requirements – and she explains each aspect to help you choose curriculum for your family.
Kelila Siciliano
Getting Out from behind the Screen
Kelila has spent most of her life working with babies and children. She started as a mother’s helper at age 11 and continuously garnered knowledge from the parents she helped not only in how in to be a role model to their children but in learning everything she could about teaching children.
When the time came for Kelila and her husband to embark on becoming parents to their own children, Kelila and her husband decided she would be a stay at home mother as well as a homeschool mom when their children were ready to start school. Teaching her own children has been challenging but more rewarding than she ever could have imagined.
Tara Wohlford
They Call That School?! Leisurely Afternoons of Learning
Tara Wohlford is a homeschool mom who lives in Music City, a.k.a. Nashville, TN, with her family of 5. Having always had a passion for children and learning, she earned a B.A. in Elementary Education with an emphasis on Creative Arts, and an M.A. as a Reading Specialist (Yay books!). After spending ten years in the public school classroom, Tara worked in children’s ministry for two years. Next, she found her favorite profession–homeschooling her own brood of three and equipping others to find joy in homeschooling. She also has a couple of side gigs teaching ESL online and writing for the Children’s ministry at church. Visit Tara at MinivanMinistries.com and hang out with her on FaceBook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube.