[Music]

Okay, welcome everybody to Alberta Homeschooling’s meet and greet. For this session, we get the privilege of chatting with THEE, and here to represent THEE is Brett Bowers, who’s going to lead you through today’s program of what they offer for this coming fall. So, Brett, thank you so much for coming and take it away.

Yeah, well, thanks, Judy, and thanks so much for scheduling these meet and greets and information sessions. I really appreciate the opportunity to present what we do at THEE and, of course, always enjoy talking about home education. So, just to cover the basics, THEE is a traditional homeschooling board. I guess I should say, technically, we’re not a board. We work with and for Elk Island Catholic Schools, and they are the board, and we administer their home education program. THEE has been around since 1992. We service all of Alberta, and we have 19 facilitators and a full staff here in the building.

With that out of the way, I’ll jump right into the presentation, and I’m going to assume for this presentation that the reason why most people are attending is because they’re looking for a home ed program to join. There are so many good programs here in Alberta for you to choose from, and for many families, it can be quite overwhelming. Just like it can be overwhelming deciding which learning resources to choose, it can be overwhelming also choosing your home ed program. So while I would love to say, “Hey, join THEE,” and I will say that, what I really want to do today is highlight what I believe are the criteria items that would be very helpful for you, the homeschooling parent, to use when you’re evaluating a potential home ed program to join.

So, let’s jump into that. My very first slide is going to be looking at the question, “Why are you homeschooling your child?” I think that’s really important, and I was thinking about this presentation earlier and trying to figure out a way perhaps to bring this into just your everyday life, you know, because oftentimes when I talk to people about these early steps, people oftentimes, unfortunately, want to skip these initial steps and dive right into making the choice. But what I would say is, answer this question really well for your own family because everybody’s got their own reasons and needs for homeschooling. So, just like you would go, or at least the advice is, to go to a grocery store with a pre-planned list of things to buy so that you don’t go and just wander through the aisles choosing anything. Especially, you’ve probably heard, “Don’t go to the grocery store for your shopping when you’re hungry,” because you load up on all kinds of things that eventually, maybe when you get home, you’re like, “I really didn’t need that.” So that’s my advice, similar advice to you this morning from me is, write down a list. Take time to write your own “grocery list,” as it were, of homeschooling, why you’re homeschooling, and then really nail that down. What’s the purpose? What’s the goal? What’s the overarching goal? Because what you don’t want to do is just start winging it through the year because, just like going to a grocery store when you’re hungry, so many things look good, and you get distracted from what you really need and what’s really important. So, write down the reason why you’re homeschooling, and then write down your main goal or goals for homeschooling, and then those answers will really guide everything that you’ll do. It guides what you plan, how you’ll be teaching, what you’ll be teaching, which kind of resources you’ll be using, just everything is affected by these, by your answers to these foundational questions. So, please take time to do that. And some reasons for homeschooling can be completely devoid and outside of academics. I’ve listed here things like, to nurture your child’s innate curiosity and to provide for them, care for their physical and emotional needs, for you the parent to be the primary influence in your child’s life, and then lastly, the personalized learning opportunities. But so many things need to be in place before the learning can even happen. So, please don’t think that homeschooling is just academics. Judy’s written several articles and is a big proponent of play, and I, just yesterday, was quite good timing, I was watching a YouTube video on the importance of play and how all these countless studies show, especially in the younger years, how play and family relationships really do affect the academics, and yet so oftentimes, especially in the school system, academics are placed first, and that’s, I think that’s unfortunate. So when you’re asked, when you’re answering your own question about why you’re homeschooling, what your goals are, please really focus on these non-academic foundational items because they truly are the foundation for everything that’s going to come later.

So, after that, let’s say you’ve got, you’ve done your little homework assignment of answering the question of why you and your family are homeschooling, what your goals are. You can also ask your question, ask yourself the question of, for your son or daughter, “What do they want to learn? What are their needs?” And you’ve gone through this preliminary set of questions, then you want to go to the next question which is, “Which home ed program is a really good fit for our family, what we want to do, and what our goals are and our methods?” Because you do need to iron out and decide those answers because those answers will not only affect your learning programs that you’ll follow for each of your children, they really will affect your decision or they should affect your decision for which home ed program to join, because not all home ed programs are the same. It’s very often, I do hear often from families when they ask me, “Well, how can one program really differ from another?” And the answer is, they can differ quite a bit. So not all programs support, say, an unschooling method. Not all programs will even support a high school course credits. So, you know, there’s just a lot of differences. Actually, here in the Sherwood Park area, the public school program, which doesn’t offer home ed anymore, they didn’t even allow for homeschoolers after grade nine. They did not allow a student to be homeschooling, home educating after grade nine. So there are many differences out there. So how do you go about finding the right fit?

The next slide is going to offer some ideas and suggestions about how to do that. So I would say the first question you need to ask of the program, or at least find out about the program, is the philosophy of the program. And then you want to go into asking about the supports what kind of supports does the program offer. And then what kind of programs or maybe special strengths are part of that program? Every, many programs in the province have a have a reputation for being good at a certain thing, so you’ll want to ask, but again, start with the philosophy of the program and then look at the supports that are provided and then look at the programs and special strengths. And we’ll be looking at, in the future slides here, we’ll be looking at each of these three, what I call significant differences that exist among all the home ed programs, and then the minor differences, I do want to mention them, would be some of the administrative procedures and the reimbursement procedures. I would say those are minor. I would definitely recommend focusing on the majors, or the significant differences, and we’ll start with philosophy. And that sounds like a vague term, “philosophy,” you know, “what’s your philosophy of home education?” What I would say about THEE, we, well, we answer that question of what is our philosophy, is we believe that the parent is absolutely in charge. We believe that the parent knows best for the child and children, and our role is not to be an agent of a school that’s going into your family and trying to tell you to do certain things. That’s not our philosophy. Our philosophy is to come alongside you and support you in your decisions, and if you don’t have a decision, if you’re still in that decision-making process, we will offer to you suggestions, and those suggestions are based on our own experience, and I’ll get to that in a second with in terms of the support. But our philosophy is based not only in the belief that the parent is in control and but but also that our philosophy is based on the fact that we are also home ed families. We’re homeschooling parents. All of our facilitators are either homeschooling their own children or have homeschooled their own children and now are, you know, those have adult children. So, again, the philosophy is really big. It’s not something that is minor. It’s not something that I would suggest that you that you ignore. So because, for example, there are some home ed programs that I know of, I’ve talked to their administrators who believe their home ed program is really just a feeder program to their online learning program or even their on-site program, right? Their goal is to convince the parent that homeschooling is really too hard and that the parent should choose an online learning program. I’ve heard them tell me this. So that exists. So that kind of philosophy is out there.

So you’ll want to ask, “who gets to decide?” Some families come to me and the facilitators and they that have bad experiences at other programs and they’ll ask if they can do this or if they can do that, and I tell the families right up front, “That’s not a legitimate question for me to even answer.” The family doesn’t have to ask permission from the home ed program to do anything. They, we certainly recommend families ask for ideas and suggestions, and we would love to tell you what’s worked in our own homeschooling, but we are not here to tell you, or certainly not here to give permission to you. You are your own school. Administratively, according to the school education act, you are running your own school. You have created your own school. So we believe very firmly that you are in control. You’re the principal, you’re the superintendent, you’re the board of trustees all rolled into one. You don’t have to ask permission from us to pursue any goal of yours. Also with philosophy, I want to just back up a little bit and say that we at THEE really want to make a big deal of the notification form, even the name “notification form.” We want people to know that they are in control. It’s not just an advertising or marketing slogan that we give. We point the family to the fact that the family is not enrolling their child into a home education program. They are actually notifying the government that the parent is not enrolling their child into a home ed program or a school but in fact is creating their own school. Home education is recognized in the education act as a school within Alberta. So you are creating your own school and that is, that’s, that’s fact, but our philosophy wants to highlight that fact, not gloss over it and let you know that you are absolutely in charge, that you’re creating your own education program there in your home. You’re not bringing school into your home. Your home is its own school and its own program. You get to decide 100% of the learning resources, your instructional methods, your teaching methods, the learning activities, what you do, when you do it, how you do it, and why you do it. All those questions are yours to answer. So, please keep that in mind that by the education act, by law, you have that authority, but not all programs will recognize that authority because of their philosophy on home education. So I feel very passionate about that, so I wanted to mention all those things in terms of philosophy.

The next thing that you’ll want to look at when you’re determining which program is a really good fit for you is look at the supports that the program will offer. In general, do they support home education? Sounds like a, maybe a question that shouldn’t even or an issue that shouldn’t even be there. “Like they’re offering home ed, of course they support it!” Not, not always. Again, some programs, I actually offer a home ed program only as a recruiting arm of their online learning programs or even an on-site program. So just because they offer a home ed program doesn’t necessarily mean that they, they like doing so. So what’s the general level of support? Are they friendly when you call them, you know, do they, do they really want to be there for you to answer your questions? The next item is on the support list is the facilitators. By regulation, every home ed program has to provide a facilitator or a home ed teacher. We call them facilitators because, going back to our philosophy, we recognize you the parent as the teacher. So we call our home ed supervising teachers a facilitator because that’s their role, is to facilitate and support you as you go about teaching your children at home. One other thing about facilitators, and I mentioned it before, our facilitators are all homeschooling parents or were homeschooling parents. Now they have adult children. So do ask about the facilitators of the program you’re interested in. Ask if they are personally home educating their own children or have they had a successful time home educating their own children. Not all programs in Alberta assign teachers to be facilitators who have personal and positive home education experience. I know of some programs that essentially give a teacher a 0.3 time to “do” the home ed program, but 0.7 other time is spent in a classroom. And so, you know, not saying that can’t work but but you don’t, I don’t know, that’s an indicator I think of the commitment level of that program to their, through their home educating families. The next support that we provide, or at least the support that I would ask you to look at when you’re deciding a program, is the communication. How strong of a communication system is there between the school program and the facilitators and the families? Here at THEE, I say we have two types of communication: one’s active and the other is passive. So active would be just phone calls and emails and just being really quick with response times. We’re not always going to answer an email or a phone call within 24 hours or right when you call, especially during the really busy times, but we do place a very high priority on communicating with you, especially when you’ve initiated that communication. So that’s active communication. Passive would be like our website and our newsletters and things like that. So I’ve made a big priority of communicating as many details about home education as possible through our, what I used to call, virtual open house. Now I’m calling it the video open house, and I’ve got 40-plus information videos there that talk about all kinds of things about home education because, and it’s open to everybody, so you don’t even have to be with THEE to access those videos. I definitely want to get that information out there because it’s not easy to find, and there’s a lot of information and there are a lot of questions, and it’s hard, well impossible, to give all that information in one phone call. So I’ve made these 40-plus videos. Actually, we’re making more even as I speak today, we’ve got two on the schedule to do. So we we definitely value communicating to you our practices, our policies, ideas, information, facts. We just want you the parent to be armed with this information so you can make the best decisions, whether it’s to to join THEE or not to join THEE or to join another program or to pursue this program or that program. We, you know, information about teaching methods and resources. All those things are addressed in those videos. So the next thing on support would be the systems in place, and this is probably the least of the four items I think in terms of importance, but systems like the, the registration. How is, how easy it is it to register, or I should say to notify your child with the school? Reimbursement is a big part of home education programming, and that’s that can be kind of a headache if not done well, and so you’ll definitely want to ask about the reimbursement system that the home ed program has in place. Those are just two quick examples of internal systems that just give that support, that administrative support to a home ed program that will make your life easier when you do need to interact with the office.

So I’m going to skip down to another item down, skipped a few slides down to the, the programs and special strengths. So the, the last of the big criteria that I would ask you to consider when you’re selecting your home ed board is what kind of programs or special strengths does the program offer. So here at THEE, I would say we’re known for our really strong homeschooling through high school services. A home ed student can earn a high school diploma and/or course credits by by earning those course credits through our course challenge program or through our new shared responsibility program. So if in high school, if earning course credits or the diploma is a priority for your son or daughter, that’s going to be a big area for you to ask because not all programs offer course challenge, and not all programs, certainly not all programs, offer a shared responsibility program. But those are two that we offer. We can certainly help as this little slide shows. The course challenges can be a portfolio assessment for electives and options, and then they would be challenge exams for the core courses. There’s no more Alberta Distance Learning Center, so if you want a teacher-directed course for, say, a math or language arts course in the high school, your only option now is to go with a and and if you want teacher directed for just part of the home ed program but then you the parent want to do the teaching for the rest, the only option you have is the shared responsibility option. So if that’s something that’s a priority for you and by that what I’m talking about is if you want a teacher to say teach physics and language arts and you’ll do everything else, then you’ll want to go with the board that’s offering either shared responsibility and/or challenge exams or course challenge so your son or daughter can earn those course credits toward high school and then of course the diploma.

All right, next slide. You’ll definitely, again, just wrapping up my comments about matching your “why you’re homeschooling” to the program that you’re going to select, just make sure that you are in charge of the how, the when, the where, and the why and every other detail that you can think of. So, with that, I want to close my spiel about the criteria that I’m recommending to you as you go about selecting your home ed program, and what I wanted to dive into now is just the different methods that we here at THEE support. So we support the learning method from, some people call it unschooling, some people have called it delight learning, some people even refer to it as unit studies, which not exactly unschooling but just all these terms to describe developing a program that’s not like school but a program that’s built around your child’s inherent, innate interest areas and skills. So sometimes that looks very much not like school, and that’s why we call it unschooling. So we support unschooling all the way to a teacher-directed program, which is shared responsibility, and anything in between. We can help you with you if you wanted to do like an unschooling approach with certain areas but then you wanted a more structured approach with another area, and we can help you with that. If you wanted all unschooling, we can help you with that. If you wanted to, more some people call it a traditional approach, I actually think unschooling is the traditional when you when you talk about tradition going back hundreds of years, to me unschooling is the traditional way of doing things. It’s only modern, the modern method which is to try to mimic or emulate the school environment at home. Nothing wrong with that, that’s how my wife and I started our program when we first began. We created a little classroom in our basement and very quickly made the transition to an unschooling method. But anyway, if you wanted to create a school environment at home where you buy a desk and you get that whiteboard or blackboard and you use flashcards and it’s just a very classroom environment but at home, that works too. You know, it’s what you want to do. It’s what works best for you and your child, and you could have that set up for one child and then a completely different approach for another. So it’s up to you to structure. You’re not bound by anything administratively from any program, no matter which program you go with, you can create your own learning environment. You get to choose the learning resources, the assessment items. That’s a big issue in homeschooling is the standard, you know, standardized testing or no testing or evaluation, no evaluation. How do you evaluate? Do you evaluate, you know, in which years, which grade levels? So those decisions are yours, but you’re not left alone to make those decisions on your own. If you don’t want to make those decisions on your own, we will certainly help with all those questions if you ask, but we’re definitely not here to tell you that only one way is the right way.

So that’s a lot of information, and that was all in what, 30 minutes? So, what I’d like to do now, Judy, is is open up to questions and just hear from those who are here if they had any, have any specific question in mind.

Alrighty. Great, thank you. We had a question from Christie. Christie, I’m going to unmute you. Hello, Christie?

Yep, I’m here. Hi. Hi, hi.

Christie, want to ask Brett your question?

I was just wondering for high school if to earn a high school Alberta high school diploma, can you use any curriculum or do you just have to use the books that Alberta Ed says you need to use?

That’s that’s a good question and there’s really no firm answer, and the reason why I say there’s no firm answer is because what what is required is for the students, the official answer is that the student needs to demonstrate understanding and achievement of the Alberta Ed outcomes for that course. So the problem that we encounter every year is is when a student who’s using a non-Alberta Ed resource, let’s say Saxon Math Algebra 1 or Teaching Textbooks or Math U See or, you know, whatever, it’s not an Alberta Ed resource but it’s a great resource, and there’s, let’s say they’re studying pre-calculus or trigonometry or whatever it is in Grade 11, Grade 12, and they want to write a challenge exam for Math 20-1 or 20-2. Well, they’re not going to be ready for Math 20-1 challenge exam if they’re studying, let’s say, Saxon Math. And when I say they’re not ready, they’re not fully ready for it. There are some gaps that they would need to fill in, and we can help with that, but, you know, Saxon’s is an apple, and Math 20-1 is an orange, and you’re comparing two different fruit. By themselves, they’re good, apple’s great and orange is great, but when you try to compare them, they’re two different fruits. So we have students who study, let’s say, Apologia Science, and then they go into writing the challenge exam for Biology 20 or Biology 30. And if they haven’t done some preparation to find out which gaps that exist and then address those gaps in just terms of content, they’re not going to do really well on that exam. So again, you’ve got two different worlds. You’ve got the home ed world, and then you got Alberta Ed world. And when you, when a student, when a home ed student wants to write a challenge exam or at least get credit for that Alberta Ed course, the student is leaving one world and entering the next. Now we at THEE take it pretty seriously when we assign a course challenge mark because we’re putting our, like I’m in charge of that, and I’m putting, I I take it very seriously because it should be serious. I’m putting my credentials as a teacher on the line when I say that let’s say Johnny has met and achieved the outcomes required for Math 20-1. Well, I have to know that, and there are some other programs in the province that don’t quite, they don’t take the same approach to this as I do, but I want to make sure that I am being completely honest and saying yes or no to that issue of has the student met the outcomes for the Alberta Ed course. I’ve seen, Cory, and I’ll, yeah, this is kind of a not a rant but a complaint of mine here in the province is that I’ve seen some other programs give a course challenge mark or allow a student to earn a course challenge mark for, say, Math 20-1 because that child finished Teaching Textbooks Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 or something like that, and that’s it. They did, they did no evaluation. Math 20-1 is not the same as any other American-based curriculum. It’s just not. And if there’s no due diligence behind that process, I really think that the system is being skirted, you know. That’s a long answer to your question. So a student can use Teaching Textbooks, can use Saxon Math, but that’s not going to be, usually that’s not enough because the content, again, going back to apples and oranges, you just have two completely different programs, two completely different courses that you’re that don’t match up. So we can help. We can certainly help fill in the gaps, but there are going to be gaps. And for us, the best way to evaluate whether or not a student has earned all the, learned all those outcomes is through an exam, and it’s not through, that’s why we do portfolio for options classes and exams for core courses.

Brett, I can weigh in on that. Actually, my child is doing Math 20-1 right now. Okay, great. And so he unschooled from Grades 1 to 9, and when you unschool, you you follow the home education outcomes, the 22 solo outcomes, but once they want credit, and and they can keep following those outcomes all the way through high school if they don’t want any credit, no problem, but if they want credit, they have to transfer over to checking off that they’re going to meet those Alberta programs as study outcomes for the courses because you can’t get credit anywhere else. But according to resources, yeah, we we found with that course it’s just better to follow the the Alberta Ed textbook, the Pre-Calculus 11, which is a pretty crappy textbook. Right? And and to make sure all the gaps are filled, then we use things like The Key or Problem Solve, which are geared to the Alberta and outcomes, right?

Um, but, Brett, I have a question for you. So if so, he’s going to write an exam on this. Is he allowed, or am I allowed as his teacher, well, it’s not me but it’s my husband as his teacher, is he allowed to see the exam to make sure that we’ve covered enough that he’s going to not encounter a question we haven’t covered? Like, are you, do you let parents see it, or is that a practice or not?

No, we we don’t do that, but but we definitely direct our students to Exam Bank, and we find, we find that the students who do the practices, write the pre-practice exams through Exam Bank, and like you mentioned, The Key, they do very well. It’s the students who don’t do any preparation and just show up saying, “Hey, I’ve done Algebra 2 or Pre-Calculus with Saxon Math, I’m ready for Math 20-1 or 30-1,” you’re like, “Probably not.” You might be an awesome, so that’s the thing. Some families get really personally offended when they hear me say this because they think I’m saying that their student isn’t smart in math or hasn’t accomplished a high level in math. I’m not saying that at all. You can accomplish a very high level of math by using non-Alberta and materials, absolutely, but again, that’s one world, and you’re asking for credit in another world. And Alberta Ed is a different world, and you’re asking me to evaluate what what your son or daughter has done in one world and and give you, give her him or her credit from another world. It’s just, you’re you’re trying, you’re walking over a bridge and um it’s just a different world that you’re coming into and wanting credit for it. So what we have done at THEE, we’ve, since we’re talking about math, is we’ve created an entire set from from Grade 7 to 12 of math tutorial videos that do follow Alberta Ed textbooks because math and science are the two subject areas, since we’re talking about high school, math and science are the two areas that are very Alberta Ed specific for challenge for content. Language arts and a lot of people would say social studies, too, but specifically math and science. And so what we’re doing now is finishing up all of our video tutorials for all the math and grades from 7 to 12. So our home ed students can study Alberta Ed math with a ton of video tutorials by an Alberta Ed teacher. I used to work with, he’s retired now, and he’s he’s amazing with his math tutorial videos, but you can study and a student can study these courses independently of a teacher directed program and then write, be completely ready, I am sure, for the challenge exam. Science, where that’s our next area to look at, starting next year we’ll be doing video tutorials for science, and then the next step after that will be social studies and then language arts at the end. And language arts will be at the end because I do need to say that in high school when you’re earning course credits through a challenge exam method, English language arts is the easiest to get, oh say they’re it’s easy, easiest to be prepared for because, you know, a five-paragraph essay is just that, you know, it works whether it’s from a US curriculum or a Canadian curriculum. So vocabulary, it’s the same. If you have strong vocabulary, you know, there’s no, there’s not like Alberta Ed specific vocabulary or Alberta Ed specific grammar, you know, or an Alberta Ed way of writing an essay, that doesn’t, those things don’t exist. So language arts is the the one course subject that’s very, very popular for challenge exams because you don’t have, you don’t have those outcome issues, right?

Yeah, and you do it with other subjects. Very much skill-based, too. And yeah, okay, that’s great. That’s good to know about the math, too. And and that’s just um so that’s available to home home education students? That’s awesome.

Yeah, right from our website. Just like the the video open house is open to everybody and our math tutorials are also available from the website to anybody. You don’t have to be with THEE. Matter of fact, I was talking to a facilitator from another home ed program, and she was even asking me when when the new videos would be ready for this one class. So, so we definitely here at THEE, we want to support families, you know, THEE’s not always going to be the best choice for certain families, and we recognize that. So, but we still want to help the homeschooling community as a whole. So those math tutorials are available to everyone.

Nice. I’m going to send my son. You’re you’re like the Canadian Khan Academy.

Yeah, I guess so. The only, the only thing he needs to do is download the software called Mathematica. Yes. Once he has Mathematica downloaded, he is off and running.

That’s great. Awesome.

Yeah. So one thing I wanted to mention, Judy, and Christy, you’re, because a lot of times families when they when they first start their homeschooling or home educating, um, even in Grade 1, they’re always asking, or at least they have their eye on high school. So oftentimes we tell families, “You know, you’ve got eight or nine years,” but good to ask in eight or nine years these policies from over it might change, but what hopefully won’t change is THEE’s commitment to helping students and parents remain in a home education program where they are in control. They can be the the captain of their own ship and yet have the opportunity, their son or daughter can have the opportunity for earning course credits. We want to be able to offer both. Right.

And that’s a big factor for I, that was a question, and I don’t know there are still school boards out there telling parents that they can’t get a diploma, their kids can’t get a diploma on home education, and um, and and your your board is doing a lot to to counter that and to help parents um fulfill those requirements. That’s great.

Yeah, let me mention something to piggyback on what you said because uh schools that don’t support home education, and unfortunately there are several, even those who offer a home ed program, they really don’t support home ed. They’re using it just as a way to recruit families into their other programs. When they tell a family that, like you mentioned, Judy, that a home ed student can’t earn a diploma, they’re telling a half truth, and it’s even in the notification form on, I think it’s the top of page three or page four, I can’t remember now, but there’s actually a place for the parent to to to read and and sign stating that they recognize and they realize that a home education student cannot earn course credits in high school for a home education learning. So that part’s true, but they don’t go on to say, “Oh, but you still as a home ed student have options.” You know, you can do the course challenge. The course challenge program is actually written into The Guide to Education, which is a quasi policy document from Alberta Ed. And according to The Guide to Education, every high school in the province is obligated to offer a course challenge program. Not all high schools do. Very few do because it takes extra work to do it. But getting back to my other statement, while it’s true that a home ed student, let’s say an unschooling student through high school, that unschooling student’s not going to earn the high school diploma by doing unschooling, but that doesn’t mean the unschooling student can’t earn course credits. It’s just a different step. Again, we’ve got to go back to the two different worlds. You’ve got the world of home education and unschooling, that’s one world, and then on the other side, you’ve got Alberta Ed. You can choose to remain in home ed unschooling and never cross over to Alberta Ed and have anything to do with Alberta, that’s your choice. But it doesn’t mean you don’t have the choice. You can always choose to write a course challenge or to participate in course challenge. At least with THEE you do. So I just want to say that the the official, the admin person isn’t lying, if that’s a strong word, isn’t lying when they say a home ed student can’t earn the diploma or can’t earn course credits, but what that person’s not saying is the full truth, which is by following a traditional home ed, you can’t earn a course credit, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t other options.

Yes, very, very true. And and we’ve been working on the government to add um to the government notification form that students still can write diploma exams and get those credits, you know, they want so we’re working on it. Right. Yeah, that’s a good distinction. Okay, Susan, you have your hand up. Would, hi Susan, did you have a question for Brett?

Yes, I do. So I currently am homeschooling high school for credits. Currently, my school board requires me to do a proposal at the beginning of the year, and it is evaluated at the end. Do I have to do a proposal to do the challenge exams?

No. I’m not sure what the proposal, like proposing your the courses and credits that you want your son or daughter to earn for the year? Again, a very detailed on what books I’m going to use, how it’s going to be marked, it’s very detailed, what’s required currently. Yeah, nope. No. Matter of fact, if you were with us and I hadn’t heard from you all year and tomorrow you sent me an email saying that your son was ready for Math 20-1 challenge exam, “please send the exam.” Okay, there it is. We yeah, that that kind of plans, it sounds, well, there’s so it sounds like a completely different approach to to the course challenge program that we have here. We don’t need, there’s not a whole lot of heads up that we need administratively. I mean, you’re in charge of your program. We don’t, you don’t have to prove to us that your son or daughter would be ready. We don’t, yeah, that’s not something that that we would need.

Okay. Now, where do these challenge exams take place?

They can take place in your home, so you the parent can be the supervisor. Now we’re looking at, just because of some pressure from Alberta to add and and I I do see their point in terms of proctoring. They they’re wanting a non-family member proctor, and they’re they’re not going so far as what ADLC would do, which is to say it has to be a certified teacher. I think that requirement is isn’t uncalled for, but what we’re looking at for next year is to to have a non-family member adult be the the exam proctor, but your son or daughter could write that challenge exam at your kitchen table on a Saturday.

Okay. If you wanted to, how successful have your parents and students been with your challenge exam program?

That’s a good question. I would say the one, the students who have done preparation do really well. The ones who just kind of show up last minute and they haven’t done the preparation, they haven’t looked at what the difference between Math 20-1 is, since we’re talking about math, uh let’s say that they they haven’t compared what Math 20-1 is going to require to what they’ve studied. And so those kind of students, when they just kind of they just show up for the exam and hope for the best, that’s kind of hit-and-miss. But even there, even with math and science, for the students you just kind of show up and and just see what happens, they still pass the exam. I’m just saying compared to those who do the preparation, yeah, those who do the preparation are scoring in the 80s and sometimes 90s. Those who kind of show up and just hope for the best usually in the 70s, sometimes 60s, but low 70s. And I’m thinking specifically, we have a lot of students who follow the Apologia Science series, which is a fan, we did that with our children, fantastic series, not necessarily matching what Alberta Ed is doing, so there is some preparation that you need to do to fill in the gaps, but we’ve had some students who don’t do their preparation and they still score in the 60s and low 70s with and I’m thinking specifically with the Apologia materials.

Brett, thank you. So do parents not submit any coursework? They just um not for the core courses. Oh, okay.

Yeah, now other programs, there are different ways of of managing and running a course challenge program. The regulation doesn’t require an exam. The the regulation, the Guide to Education requires the principal to evaluate and assess the learning. Very vague and very general, very broad, on purpose, which is good. It gives this individual school program the prerogative to decide how they’re going to do the assessing. My issue, well, the reason why I chose an exam is because there’s no way, I shouldn’t say “no way,” I think it would be very difficult to because of all the different learning resources that are available to our home ed families for all the four core courses and more. I mean, it’s not just the four core. You’ve got other topics as well. I don’t know Saxon Math so well or Teaching Textbooks so well or Math U See or Singapore Math or Life of Fred Math, whatever, so well that I can say, “Well, you know, if you’re following Life of Fred, you’re going to cover 70% of Alberta Ed’s Math 20-2, but you know, here are the other topics that Math of Fred doesn’t cover and so you’ll need to cover that.” So oftentimes what happens is a family wants to send me their school work, but there’s no, there’s a, in for me to evaluate their school work to say, “Well, yes or no, that covers the outcomes.” There’s no way. I I would say you go on a limb here and say there’s no way a student and I wouldn’t want to task the parent with this either. There’s no way a parent is able to send to me, short of sending me every single completed assignment from the entire textbook, so as to cover all the, like how many Judy outcomes are there in Alberta Ed? How many thousand? Well, they say 14. Well, I I don’t know for high school courses, but there’s like, there’s quite a few outcomes for Math 20. Yeah, hundreds, right? And I’m the regulation, if I’m to keep my integrity, I am to do what the regulation says and is I am to evaluate that the student is has achieved, has learned every single outcome that that Alberta Ed course requires. There’s no way I can determine that by a sampling of assignments sent to me. There’s no way. You can’t do it. And and even if a student sent to me every, did every single assignment in a textbook that’s not an Alberta Ed textbook and so you’re going to have gaps. So are you, am I going to, is is this other program going to require the parent to say, “Well, here are the gaps. Here’s what Saxon doesn’t cover. Send me assignments that show that your son or daughter has mastered those outcomes that aren’t included in Saxon but that are included in the Alberta Ed course.” That doesn’t happen either. So for me to keep my, to sleep better at night and keep my integrity in place, when I’m required to evaluate outcomes according to Alberta Ed, I will use Alberta Ed outcomes and Alberta Ed exams. And so I’ve that’s what I’ve done, and that’s what that to me is the best way to evaluate course curriculum from Alberta Ed from a homeschooling student. Yeah. Now that’s again just with core core courses. Now things like Phys Ed, there’s even a Phys Ed 10 that’s just for home ed. It’s pass fail, you know, that’s an anomaly. There’s only one course the entire program studies like that and that’s Phys Ed 10. But, you know, we have Phys Ed, we have Calm 20 that we have available through a special learning package of information. It used to be a Calm 20 course that I taught that I’ve created into a learning package. As you can do, you know, you have what’s called a external credential, like the Royal Conservatory of Music’s credit or grade levels. You have all kinds of of ways to get core our student has all kinds of ways to earn credits for the options electives. It’s just the core courses that we really have to be very tight on because that’s what Alberta, if Alberta Ed came in and audited our our course challenge program, I want to make sure that I can pass that audit. Right, right. I don’t want to put my students’ marks in jeopardy, you know.

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s, um, Susan, is are you good? That answered your questions?

Yes, that answered my questions. Thank you.

Okay. All right. Anybody else questions? Put up your hand if you want to talk or you can write them in the chat box. Um, well, oh, we have more questions here.

Okay, covered Chrissy. Okay, Stephanie says, “Do you offer online subscriptions or supplemental resources such as Raz-Kids or BrainPOP?”

The answer is no, we don’t. We don’t as a, like THEE doesn’t have a subscription that all of our families would take, uh, could use. We encourage our families to use their their funding. I mean, the family has $850 per student, and from that $850, the parent can pay for that subscription.

Um, the other thing, too, is, um, what you probably do, you probably have, do you give parents a passcode to get into Learn Alberta resources?

Yeah, yeah, we’re in Alberta, uh, well we, sorry, let me go back to to Stephanie’s question. Well we do, we, so we don’t we don’t have a THEE membership for those like Raz-Kids and and um other programs, but what we do offer at a school division level is free access to Office 365. So every one of our home ed students can have full access to the the full Microsoft Office suite. And some students, and I say “some” just because it’s a budget issue from the school division, but if you have a student who’s really into art or illustration, we have a special account for Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Suite, but we but not everybody just because it is expensive. So if someone, you know, where I’m talking, I haven’t been given a, you know, a limit, like five, a firm number from our school division. It’s just um, it is a limited number, but if you wanted Adobe Illustrator, that’s available too on a limited basis.

Great. Nice. That’s super nice. So one thing since we’re talking real quickly here in the last five minutes about reimbursement, one again, this your reimbursement admittedly is a lower priority in terms of deciding your home ed program. You know, you’re, I want to repeat, the philosophy is really the most important. But when you get to just the day-to-day administration, the the the one issue you’re going to interact with, likely I think on general, if I make a general statement, the the one topic that you’ll interact with your home ed program the most is reimbursement. And with THEE, we do have the advantage of being able to pay out your $850 as soon as we get the funding, which is in early October. And I say we’re able, I would say we’re able to. The funding is available to you. It’s not like October 2nd rolls around we can just start writing checks to everybody. There’s a, we actually made a video on this because there’s a lot more to it than just writing a check. So many things have to be in place first, but I wanted to say we do have the ability to pay out that $850 in one shot as early as possible. In the past, we were constrained by the funding from the smaller school that we were with, but we’re not with a small school anymore. Alberta Ed doesn’t pay out to the home ed program or to any school in the province a lump sum in October, like 100% lump sum. They they measure it out, and so with some programs, you’re only as a home ed parent, you’re only able to access your home ed funding and percentages throughout the year, and we don’t have that limitation here thankfully.

I think you’re the only one that offers that. That’s good. Amazing. There you go.

Um, I have a quickie question, just um because I’m asking all the boards this, but so does THEE offer any distance education? Like, once once parents have, you know, they they’ve decided, “Oh, I’m sick of home ed, I want to go, I want to put my kids online and be done.” Do they go through you or do they go through another division at Elk Island Catholic?

Yeah, good good question, and that question’s going to be asked probably more often now that ADLC is going away. We do offer here under, so THEE as a home ed program and any home ed program in the province can’t, cannot operate by its self by itself, right? A home ed program is a sub-program within another school, and that’s just how Alberta Ed has set up home education. So THEE is the home ed program of Elk Island Catholic Schools here in Sherwood Park. And so our school is Saint Isidore Learning Center, or SILC for short. So at SILC, Saint Isidore Learning Center, we have outreach, home education, online learning, and now we have shared responsibility. So if a parent says, “I can’t do this,” or “Maybe I just can’t do this for math and science or whatever,” you know, you don’t have to give up completely, but if you have that moment where as a parent you’re just thinking, “I just can’t keep doing this,” or “This I need to let something go,” or “This just isn’t working,” well, you do have the opportunity to go through the shared responsibility program here at SILC, and we can help with the home ed side, and then you would go through the SILC online learning side for the registration for the the course or two. There are probably two courses. There are there are requirements with shared responsibility, and I do have a video, I call it “the deep dive on shared responsibility,” because there are a lot of details that sometimes you don’t get until you’re in it and sometimes that’s too late because you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know this.” So if you’re interested in a teacher directed portion of home education, please watch that video. It’s a bit long, 20-something minutes, but it really is a deep dive into a lot of the details because it affects your funding as well, and I go through a lot of examples. They even have a document you can download and follow along because there are a lot of details with that. But yes, how I say yes, you have that option until a deadline that Alberta Ed has imposed. Unfortunately, it’s very early, I think early, too early into the first semester, which I believe, I don’t have the deadline on top of my head, but sometime in November you have to make the decision to participate in shared responsibility by November. It used to be March, which was a good date, but they moved it up to November. So after November, the answer, even though we have an online learning program and even though we have shared responsibility, after that cutoff date, that again, it’s not our deadline, it’s Alberta Ed’s deadline, then that program is not available to our home ed parents.

Okay, okay, good to know. Yeah, yeah, so there’s there’s a lot, a lot out there once you start um delving into, especially for high school, so that’s why I made the videos because, you know, we have an hour and we’re already up for our time and barely scratched the service on a lot of these issues. So, there are many, many hours of information videos at THEE’s website that is again, it’s open everybody. Some of the, many of the videos don’t apply just to THEE. It’s just general information that applies to any program.

Yeah. So for new people just starting out, yeah, I’m going to send them to you.

Yeah, there you go. Works for me. The videos are great. You can watch them. They’re short. Yeah, yeah, whenever.

Okay. Um, we got “thank you” from everybody, and I think we’re done questions. So, Brett, anything you haven’t covered yet? Any last Jesus?

I would say, yeah, I would just say to the parents, you can do this, you really can. It seems daunting, all these regulations, maybe a lot of forms, but any program that’s worth its salt will help you get started. They will talk you through all the forms, just all the details to get you up and running, and a really good home ed program, and there are several good ones, THEE’s not the only one, but there are some really good programs in here in the province that will walk you through the basic steps from that includes how to set up an unschooling program or how to set up a very school-looking type program, and there’s no judgment. You do what you need to do to get started. If you need that high structure, if you need it to look like a school because that’s what you’re comfortable with, do it. Don’t let anybody guilt you into doing it their way or saying, “Oh, you’re less of a home ed student, a parent if you do it this way or that.” Whatever you need to get started is right for you, and your home ed program should help you get started and however you decide.

Great, great. Thank you, Brett. Thank you so much. Thanks, Judy, for morning with us and giving us a bigger picture of THEE and all they offer. So, it was lovely talking to you again.

Yeah, good to see you, too, Judy. Well, thanks, everyone, for attending. Okay, I’m going to.