Welcome to the Community!
So, you’re online looking for home school information.
Whether you call it Home Education, Homeschooling, Unschooling, deschooling, Worldschooling, Natural Learning, school at home, Distance Education… we are a Community of learners, and we help each other out.
Ultimately, we’re all aiming for the same thing; helping children to learn outside the standardised school system. Adopting a home school program could look logical, but it could also be a big waste of money.
NO, you do NOT need to buy a curriculum!
Veterans of home education suggest that the very first thing you do is recover from any school experience you have been through. After that, or if you don’t need to, the next step is discovering how your child learns best. Not what you think is best, but what actually works. If school didn’t work, school at home won’t work either. The good news is that you are best placed to learn what them learning best looks like. It’s a return to life before you used schools, and takes some time, and deschooling, to make that visible.
I call it Home Education, or “getting on with life and learning as though schools doesn’t exist!” After living and learning outside the system, you can forget about it and get on with learning about the world, from the world. It’s also a lifestyle, and what I also call “the best teaching gig I’ll ever have.”
My name is Tamara. Formally, Tamara Kidd B.Teach (Primary)/B.A. (History), Grad Cert Ed. My area of research has been in Comparative and International Education (CIE). I’ve been working as an Education Consultant since 2007. I’m based near Newcastle, NSW, Australia specialising in helping families find bespoke solutions for their bespoke concerns, difficulties, challenges or when they find themselves in fenced off and need help to find the gates. Which is an interesting way of putting what many experience as a ‘gatekeeping’ feeling when trying to help their own child when they are in a system of schooling, rather than a place of education. Helping you to help your child continues to be my focus.
We have a lot of help available; a whole community of help. Let me introduce you to your community and show you the path in. I’ve been doing this through my business since 2007 for people who choose to use a school, and since 2009 for everyone else. And there are A LOT of people who choose to not use a school.
I home educated my children from June 2006 to January 2023. For 16.5 years we enjoyed a wonderful life of learning together, using a mixture of Montessori and Unschooling. Both children completed TAFE qualifications.
My eldest completed a Certificate III, and Diploma, won scholarships based on the quality of their work, all by 17 and has been working full-time since. My youngest completed two Certificate III and a Certificate IV in Tertiary Education Preparation (TEP), obtaining high results and offered a university placement. He is now in the 2nd year at the University of Newcastle (UON).They are now 23 and 20, respectively, and home educating certainly has prepared for their independent lives.
Home Education is child centred. We as educating parents co-create their education with them. Agency is what makes it work. Lack of agency in schools is what blocks learning.
I’ve not just tested the legitimacy of this education choice as a parent, I have assessed it as a teacher as well. This applies not just for parents like myself who have teaching qualifications, but for the thousands of other families who home educate in their own unique way without teaching qualifications. I know that this way of learning about the world in the world is second to none. It’s not something people choose on a whim, and for those that know it’s not going to work, even after asking for help, the children return to school.
Does school work for everyone? Of course not, and home education doesn’t work for all students either. For either scenario, it doesn’t when needs are not being met. You need to identify the needs, and then pursue solutions with the student. Agency is key. The freedom to learn is key.
For those that persist through their own deschooling growing pains, and then find solutions that work, the results will be there. It has been the best teaching gig I’ll ever have, and I have no regrets that we chose this pathway. I love helping parents to find their way, to make it work for everyone.
I also know, through my experience volunteering to support others, and working as a paid Educational Consultant, how to make it work, for all the many different ways we choose to run our families. I’m not one to say “do it like me”, because that won’t work. School doesn’t work for everyone. Paid curriculum won’t work for everyone. Instead, I listen to what your experience is and listen between the problems to hear the solutions you’re having trouble isolating. You’ll know if it will work for you pretty quickly because it will be your truth mirrored back to you. Look at my reviews for how I’m going.
Over the years I’ve met and helped thousands of Home Educators, presented at conferences, summits, run workshops, assisted with writing countless plans and helped people with record keeping. I’ve started meetup groups, run home education events and camps, and in general have done ‘what I can, when I can’ as is the nature of what we do. That now includes YOU!
Today, I continue to be a part of the Home Education Community and hope to be for many years to come. I still run a local meetup group, present at summits and mentor through Nurture Parenting Magazine live videos fortnightly.
During 2024 I’m working on 19 interconnected books to authentically represent our community in literature. It can’t be summed up in one book, based on one family; we’re too diverse for that. This is a project I began in 2023, and I’m at the stage where I need to focus on writing and making illustrations. Therefore, I am not available for one-on-one consultations. Instead, I’m available through Summits, Substack, and as the Home Education Mentor for Nurture Parenting Magazine. If you have a burning question that you need answered, I’ll happily do that over at the Magazine’s Facebook page, where you’ll find 51 Mentor Videos already uploaded. You might find I’ve already answered it! Their link is here: Nurture Parenting Magazine
If you want me to recommend a group or person to help you one-on-one, use my contact form, and I’ll find someone I trust who will help you.
The 2024 Summit was a wonderful time and you can still access it. My session was Common Barriers to Learning: How to Remove Obstacles, so your Child is Free to Learn.
Did you want access to previous Summits?
ALL ACCESS MEMBERSHIP to all 214 workshops!
Made available courtesy of Micarlé from Fearless Homeschool
The Australian Homeschooling Summits
(All links are affiliated, so thank you so much if you click on one of my links. You’re helping me to continue to do what I do)
Feel free to join me on my Substack. It’s where I will collate and update what I have already contributed, and then keep people updated with what I’m doing now. I’ve been working on a massive writing project for the past 12 months and people are starting to ask how my books are going.
To date, I have also published 51 Mentor Videos for Nurture Parenting Magazine and presented almost a dozen summits, including Raising Happy Kids, and the yearly Australian Homeschooling Summit.
Monthly updates on books, articles and a Podcast of home educators having a ChitChat… yes, updates ARE coming!
In collaboration with
and
Part 1 – The authors walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that that works for YOUR family, ticks all the registration boxes, and creates a solid foundation on which to grow your home educating experience! Designed to help build your confidence as an educating parent.
Part 2 – Learn how to help the kids get the most out of homeschooling with these tried and proven home educational strategies. Create your own lesson plans and unit studies to suit your individual children’s learning needs and watch them thrive as their motivation for learning grows! Packed with ideas and examples.
Part 3 – Learn how to record and use authentic and continuous assessment of your children’s learning to help plan and implement activities that meet their immediate learning needs. Real examples.
Ask me anything via email/in Nurture Parenting Magazine Facebook Group. Fortnightly LIVE mentor sessions. These are my Consultations.*
*Private consultations have paused for 2024 while I write books.
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