Glimpses into homeschool lives

Over the years Home Education Magazine has consistently offered glimpses into the lives of homeschoolers via articles written by many and closer looks via one on one interviews. Here are a few of those interviews along with a few updated resources.

I recall reading and being deeply touched by Helen Hegener’s Conversation with Michelle Wilbert: Living life “Close to the Root” in the September-October 2004 of HEM. Michelle Wilbert is a midwife, homeschooler and author of Close to the Root: A Handbook of Simple, Sustainable and Earthy Alternatives for Family and Community Life.

As I said earlier, I think that I started out thinking about the potential for cultural transformation that I found in these ideas. Early thinking about homeschooling and midwifery were located within a value system that was home and community centered, democratically oriented, staunchly independent of any ideas of government or public involvement or oversight and really wedded to concerns about changing society for the better and that was true whether people were Christian homeschoolers, hippies or eclectics. They might have had different societal goals in mind, but changing the world was definitely part of the package.

In addition to Conversation with Michelle Wilbert: Living life “Close to the Root” you can read more about and from Michelle Wilbert here:

• Kneelingwoman ~ Thinking, Living and Writing “Out of the Box
• Close to the Root Family and Community Resources

In An Interview with Cafi Cohen by Marsha Ransom we were given a glimpse into the Cohen household. Cafi wrote:

Jeff adds that he would never trade his homeschooling years for high school. He has commented more than once that he never would have been admitted to the Air Force Academy if he had not homeschooled. He feels homeschooling allowed him time to get a private pilot’s license, to act as commander of his Civil Air Patrol squadron and edit their newsletter, to practice piano, to teach piano, to participate on a world-class diving team, and much more. Eventually, it was all those activities (and close to 30 units of college classes taken concurrently with high school homeschooling) that he feels got him admitted.

My daughter Tamara now says, “I wouldn’t change anything about my homeschooling. Despite our easy-going approach, I have attended four different colleges in three different states and encountered nothing academic that I could not handle.” She adds that she loved the flexibility of homeschooling, graduating “early” and earning money to travel on a student-exchange program to Australia when she was 16.

Here are a few more interviews for your enjoyment:

• Interview with Deborah Stevenson - Judy Aron
• Interview with Linda Dobson - Helen Hegener
• Interview with Mary Griffith - Helen Hegener
• Interview with Patrick Farenga - Helen Hegener
• An Interview Leila Giles and Celeste Land – Mary Nix
• An Interview with John Munson – Mary Nix

There are many more interviews and articles from past issues that offer glimpses into homeschool lives, and you can access them via the HEM Archives. To avoid missing any future issues and interviews, you can subscribe to HEM here.

Tags: air force academy, Cafi Cohen, christian homeschoolers, Helen Hegener, Home Education, Home Education Magazine, homeschooler, Homeschooling, interviews, Marsha Ransom, Mary Nix, Michelle Wilbert, midwife, patrol squadron, root family, societal goals

This entry was posted on April 10, 2009 at 11:03 am and is filed under Homeschooling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.