Working with a reluctant writer? Wanting to inspire a resilient one? This workshop helps you become an effective writing coach and ally to your children through understanding the writing process. Julie first explores the relationship between how professional writers teach writing and how educators typically instruct students, then looks at the tactics that work—empowering you to sustain and enhance your relationship with your kids while they learn to write. The end result? An eight-week writing plan you can implement right away!

Your child struggles to get words on the page, yet you feel guilty about offering help. Is it cheating to do the handwriting for him? Shouldn’t you hold back and not interfere with her work? When your child revises a draft, is it okay for you, the parent, to make suggestions or contribute sentences and ideas? What do you do if your child “borrows” original material from another source and passes it off as his own? Partnership Writing is more than transcribing your child’s oral narratives. Partnering with your child in writing means to model, support and guide the writing process by supplying the appropriate amount of help to the evident level of need. Julie explores ways you can partner with your child from kindergarten all the way through the academic writing life of a high schooler. Don’t miss this essential workshop that transforms how you develop your writing-editing partnership with all of your children. Partnership Writing is the most overlooked stage of development in the natural stages of growth in writing. Learn how to be that partner your child needs and deserves.

When should my student learn to write an essay? Shall I teach the research paper? What if I’ve neglected writing until now? Is it too late? This session deals specifically with all the dynamics of high school writing: The necessary formats, the timing of that instruction, how you can effectively prepare your son or daughter for college and how to evaluate the work they do. Don’t despair! It’s not too late, and you are the right person for the job!

We all have one: that imagined dream homeschool where our children are relaxed, where we are at ease, where learning happens naturally and everyone gets along. Sometimes it seems as though a fantasy homeschool is a dream, never a reality. Yet what if you could create momentum in your homeschool? What if once a month or once a week, you shifted how you saw your life at home and took the risks necessary to foster the home education you long for? This session reveals the principles you need and the practical steps you take that protect you from too much risk but empowers you to trust your hunches and transform your dearest aspirations into reality.

The best way to cultivate writing in your home is to create a language-rich environment. Julie explores the role of nature study, art appreciation, film, poetry, literature and word play in the development of great writers. She looks at the concept of “party school” –how to research a report and turn it into a party! Don’t miss this workshop. It brings the “home“ back into your homeschool. Promise!

We all love dear Charlotte, but let’s face it. She didn’t have to contend with video games, Netflix, or cheap Van Gogh prints in McDonald’s restaurants. Moreover, the world has changed in a century. How do we translate all the good in her thinking and educational philosophy into a robust, technologically-current, globalized educational model that she’d applaud today? This seminar calls for an update—can we be brave enough to expand on Miss Mason’s fabulous, child-oriented, expansive vision of education? The answer is, “Yes, we can.”