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Well, welcome back to another round of frequently asked questions. This is round number five. We’ve got, oh, I’d say around 12 questions here, and if you’d like to follow along with me, then you can download the the sheet that I’m referring to by clicking on the link that appears below this video, and you’ll see the PDF document and, yeah, you’ll see all the questions and some answers that I’ll be expounding on. So let’s start with number one.

General Support and Philosophy
1. What does a typical year of homeschooling with your board look like?

Well, as I mentioned here, that’s really hard to answer because “typical” and “homeschooling” really don’t belong in the same sentence. Every homeschooling program or home education program is unique to that individual family, so it’s hard to answer in terms of what does a typical year of homeschooling look like, other than the minimum, which would be the two required visits, evaluation visits with your facilitator, interactions with us for reimbursing your expenses. I mean, that’s the minimum. Other than that, I’m not really sure how to answer that, so I won’t try.

2. Do you support only parent-led or student-led as well?

So we support both. And so what I believe this parent is asking is, do you support of course parent-led home educating but student-led? So student-led would be something like unschooling, and we’re, we definitely support unschooling. We have several videos about unschooling, and we that’s definitely something that we support. Not only support but I would say I we encourage our families to consider the student-led, sometimes called delight-driven, yeah, student-led learning. We, but going back to our philosophy, we support it because the parent supports it and the parent is following it, so you make that decision and and we’re here to support it. So it’s certainly both are valid ways of learning and teaching.

3. This mom lives up in Fort McMurray. Being located in Fort McMurray, how will the two required facilitator meetings work? Can they be done virtually if need be?

Well, we have a facilitator in Fort McMurray, just like we have facilitators all over the province, so location usually is not an issue. We have a facilitator in your area, and so our normal way of doing things in terms of our evaluation meetings is to meet the family in the family’s home if the family is comfortable with that, and usually that is the case. But if the family wants to meet at a local restaurant, library, or some place like that, we’re certainly open to that as well. But we can also do things virtually: remote conferencing, video conferencing, Skype, Google Meet, Zoom, even. So we can certainly meet you in person and/or meet you virtually through video conferencing.

Plan and Adjustments
4. Being a first-time homeschooler, fully parent-led, will the facilitator assist with the education plan as I don’t know where to start?

Yes. By regulation, all home education programs must provide assistance to the parent in the formulation of the education program plan. So we obviously do that. Not all home ed programs do the same or provide the same quality of support. I think THEE does a great job of helping parents, especially new to homeschooling parents, create a program plan that’s very effective and, yeah, so we can definitely say yes to that.

5. What happens if I’m not able to fulfill what I have set out on the education plan?

Well, nothing really happens. There’s no, you know, you don’t lose points. Nothing happens if you don’t get to something on your program plan. You’ll, yeah, nothing happens. You know, life goes on. Nothing really happens. Your facilitator might note something in the evaluation form, especially if one of the things you didn’t get to was was a big priority for you. Your facilitator might say, “You know, this year just didn’t work out to pursue such and such,” but that’s that’s pretty much all that happens.

6. Can the plan, the education plan, be adjusted throughout the year?

Absolutely. And in our online, our new new-ish PowerSchool account for the parent, you the homeschooling parent can go into your program plan and make those changes directly. Now, on the topic of adjusting your program plan, according to the regulation, only significant changes, and that’s what the regulation says, “significant,” that’s the word the regulation uses, “significant.” Only a significant change needs to be noted. So if you change the textbook that you’re using, you know, any other minor detail, that’s not significant. You’re still pursuing math, you’re still pursuing literature. Whether you change the novel that you’ll be using doesn’t really matter for the program plan. That’s not something you need to change. A significant change would be like you’ve chosen to add an entire subject area to study. Let’s say your son or daughter wants to now learn Spanish or French. Well, that’s significant. That’s a whole other subject. So sure, you’ll want to add that to your program plan, or let’s say the opposite is true, you thought you’d be teaching French to your daughter or son and you chose not to. Well, then you want to take that off your program plan. That would be significant. Anything else really, you know, if you thought you were doing field trips and now you’re not, that’s not a significant change. If you have a question about what “significant” constitutes, what constitutes a significant change, you know, let us know, but hopefully that gives you some some insight as to how we’re defining it. The word “significant” is not defined anywhere in the regulation, so it’s really up to each individual program, home ed program, to define what a significant change is. For THEE, a significant change is a subject area if you’ve added or removed a subject area of study. Well, that’s significant. Anything else doesn’t mean, doesn’t ma it doesn’t meet the definition of significant.

7. Am I able to switch between the 22 solo outcomes and the 1,400 outcomes?

I say you can do whatever you want with your learning plan. I mean, that’s not meant to be a flippant, dismissive answer, but it’s true. You can do whatever you want with your learning plan. What this parent is referring to is, can you switch between the outcome, the Schedule of Outcomes, and that’s letters A to T in the home ed regulation, and that list is called the Schedule of Outcomes. So that schedule is what the notification form includes and refers to, and that’s what you choose when you’re completing your registration. You’ll you’ll indicate whether your home ed program is going to follow the Schedule of Outcomes, which are home ed outcomes, or your program’s going to follow the school-based or Alberta Ed-based outcomes according to the Program of Studies, and you can actually choose. You can you could choose to do both because it would be dependent. You know, maybe you’re going to do the home ed side for certain subjects but do a school-ish, Alberta Ed-type study on other subjects. So you can you can mix and you can go back and forth. The program plan is not that restricting to where you you’d be locked into any one way.

Other Questions
8. I understand you are a Christian-based board. Do you require religious teachings to be included within the education plan?

No. The program plan is yours to create and manage and execute. I have a video devoted specifically to this type of question in in the opening, you know, “how how to get started” section, where I answer this in detail, but no, we have no requirement because then we would be imposing on you a course of study in your home ed program, and home education, by definition, is parent-led. Going back to our philosophy, you’re in control, so it’s not our place to say, “Well, in your home ed program, even though you’re 100% in control, you have to do what we’re saying in this area.” That would be completely contradicting to our philosophy, so absolutely not.

9. I have two children that I will be doing parent-led with, one going into Grade 3 and other into Kindergarten. I understand that there’s no funding for the kindergartner student. Do I need to register her with the board?

No, there’s no home ed funding for kindergarten-age students. The home education program program officially begins when a student is in Grade 1, qualifies as a Grade 1 student in terms of age. So no, your kindergarten student, you don’t need to register your kindergarten student.

10. Are there any other costs I need to pay? Is there a charge for for the facilitator to come out and visit?

No, there are no other costs to pay, and no, there’s not a charge for the facilitator to come out and visit with you. So no fees in a home ed program. As a matter of fact, it’s just the opposite: you get funding, and there’s a whole section in the video in this video a virtual open house that talks about all the funding and all the the rules that go along with that and the procedures, but no, there are no fees.

11. Am I able to claim items like workbooks that I have already purchased during the summer?

Yes. Again, I’ll refer you to the section in our virtual open house page webpage that talks specifically about reimbursement and funding. We do not have a policy, which I understand other programs do, which states, elsewhere these other programs state that they’ll only reimburse you for a resource that you purchased after you’ve signed up with them. So anything you bought prior to joining them, they won’t recognize, they won’t reimburse that. To me, that doesn’t make any sense, and I’ve said in other places in these videos I think that’s more of a sales pressure tactic to get you to sign, you know, today.

Here at THEE, we honor and accept eligible items for reimbursement up until the from the previous school year. So a receipt could be a year old, up to a year old, but as long as that receipt is for an eligible learning resource, then we will reimburse it. There are some exceptions, like we wouldn’t take your ent, we wouldn’t accept your internet bill from the previous year because that’s a real-time, you can’t you can’t use that internet service from last year and this year’s learning plan, right? That’s that’s a time-sensitive item, so no, that wouldn’t be reimbursed. But if you bought a book, most oftentimes what happens is a homeschooling parent will buy something at a homeschooling conference like the AHEA convention in, you know, March or April, and they’ll buy those resources then in anticipation of using those resources in the upcoming school year. By all means, we would reimburse for those expenses. If you buy something during the summer for the upcoming school year, we will reimburse you for those expenses even if you haven’t registered with us yet. To us with the registration date, like, why is that even considered? The issue is the resource. Is it an eligible resource? If it’s eligible, then we will reimburse for it. It’s actually quite smart on your part to buy resources ahead of time, especially if they’re on sale, but just ahead of time. You don’t want to wait till late August and certainly not September to be buying your learning resources because the vendors are going to be sold out. You’ll they’ll be on back, these resources that you want will be on back order. So we definitely want to support you in getting the reimbursements to you, and that means honoring those receipts that you have and things you purchase well before the start of the next school year and certainly before you register with us.

And then part B to the question is, “Or is it only a certain time period, for example, after we have been accepted to the board?” No, we don’t have, again as I mentioned, we don’t have that policy. So, well, that’s it for this round five of frequently asked questions. Hopefully, these FAQ videos have been helpful. If you have questions that aren’t covered in any of these videos, please let me know. I will certainly answer them, and I’ll put that question in the next round of FAQ so more people can benefit from your question. So, again, thanks so much for watching the videos, and we encourage you to contact us with not only questions but but recommendations as well. So if you have ideas on how we can be doing things better, in addition to your questions, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.