In this video, we’re going to look at over 20 different terms used in home education programming. If you would like to follow along with these terms, please download the PDF document that I’ve included as a download. You’ll find that link just below this video on the website. So, let’s get started.

Programming Terminology

The first grouping of terms has to do with the different kinds of programs here in Alberta. The education programs can be broadly categorized into two different categories: **parent-directed** and **teacher-directed**. Parent-directed, as the name sounds, is directed by the parent. The parent makes all the decisions as to what is studied, when it’s studied, how it’s studied, which resources are used, the scope and sequence, all of the evaluation—all of those things. On the teacher-directed side, the teacher makes those kinds of decisions. Teacher-directed follows the Program of Studies of Alberta Education, whereas parent-directed doesn’t have to. In home education, the parent can follow the Program of Studies of Alberta Education, but the parent can also create his or her own program. That is why it’s parent-directed. Teacher-directed is what you’d find in a traditional school or high school. Teacher-directed is for the courses that end up with course credits, whereas parent-directed is **home education**.

All the education programs in Alberta will fall into one of those two categories. Home education, which is sometimes called **traditional home education**, falls into the parent-directed programming. It’s called “traditional” just to set it apart from other terminology that can kind of muddy the water in terms of what people consider to be home education or homeschooling. So, parent-directed is home education, and home education is parent-directed.

Another term is **homeschooling**. That’s a term—let me go back to home education—that is the official term recognized by Alberta Education. The term homeschooling is not an official term recognized by Alberta Education. I use homeschooling and home education interchangeably, as do most people in Alberta. However, if you want to be official and technically correct, home education is the correct term to describe parent-directed learning. Homeschooling is a generic term; it just means that the learning is happening at home. The learning could be teacher-directed at home, and that would be the next term on the list: **online learning**. Online learning is sometimes called homeschooling just because the parent thinks, “Well, my child was at home and he or she is learning from my school, so that’s homeschool.” Fine. Homeschooling is not an officially defined term, so it can mean a lot of different things. Just know, if you really want to be technically proficient and accurate, home education is parent-directed; homeschooling can be lots of different things.

The other programming option in Alberta is a combination of parent-directed and teacher-directed. If you have a little bit of parent-directed and a little bit of teacher-directed, that’s what’s called **shared responsibility**. In the recent past, that programming was called **blended**, but now it’s called shared responsibility. That is a combining or sharing of responsibility; some responsibilities for the child’s learning will be fulfilled by the parent, and some of the responsibilities will be fulfilled by a teacher. So you have both parent-directed and teacher-directed all under one roof, and that’s why they call it shared responsibility.

The next term is **aligned programming**. The aligned program is actually not an official term. It is not recognized by Alberta Education. It’s more like a marketing or advertising term that describes several different programs. Because it’s not an official term or an official program, it gets referred to quite often as if it’s an official program recognized by Alberta Education and included in the Program of Studies, but it’s not. So that term can mean anything a school wants it to mean. I’m not going to go into “aligned”—I don’t have a high opinion of it—but just know that aligned programming is not an officially recognized program. There’s a lot behind that, but we won’t go into that at this time.

Registration Terminology

The next grouping of terms has to do with the registration process. The first term on the list is **associate board**. An associate board is any public or separate school board, a school division, that is offering home education. The other term is **associate private school** or **associate accredited and funded private school**. A home ed program can be offered by a public school/separate school or a private school. Technically speaking, Alberta Education has set it up so that the home ed program is actually being offered through a school board if that program is being offered by a public school or a separate Catholic school, or it’s being offered by an associate private school if it’s a private school. An associate board is the actual school division that’s offering this home ed program, and that school division can be public or separate.

A home ed program can be offered by a private school, and that term is an “associate” because these schools or boards that are offering a home ed program are your associate. The Alberta Education Act recognizes and establishes your homeschooling program as a school, so that truth is reflected in this term, “associate board” and “associate private school,” because they are associates with you in this process. The term “associate board” and the term “associate private school” recognizes your authority as a home-educating parent and the authority of a school that the Education Act recognizes, so they are your associate. Hopefully, that describes clearly what an associate board is or an associate private school. A home ed program can come from a school, and so you don’t have to go to the school division to find the home ed program within a school division. For example, our Saint Isidore Learning Center is the school that offers the home ed program, but our school is part of Elk Island Catholic Schools, the school division. So, our associate board is Elk Island Catholic Schools, even though the home ed program is offered through the school called Saint Isidore Learning Center. Whereas, let’s say Wisdom is a home ed program that’s offered through an associate private school. So, both programs, THEE and Wisdom, are offered through schools, but in the case of THEE, it’s through the school but ultimately offered by the associate board of Elk Island Catholic, whereas with Wisdom, the home ed program is Wisdom offered through the school Trinity Christian but ultimately through their society, so their school.

There’s some background on those two terms. The next term is **resident board**. Your resident board is the school division, the public school division, for your geographical area. I live in Sherwood Park, and so my resident board is Elk Island Public Schools. If I were filling out a form that asked for my resident school board, I would fill in Elk Island Public Schools. Now, if I register as a Catholic member on the on your property tax form, then I can say my actually my resident board is Elk Island Catholic Schools, but again, your resident board is where you reside. Resident board is where you reside geographically. You can obviously go to a resident school, and as a matter of fact, the resident school board is obligated to take you as a public school student.

I would say that is in comparison to our next term, which is a **willing non-resident board**. You have a resident board, which is where you reside; the non-resident is, as the name implies, not in your residential area. So, a willing non-resident board, as it applies to home education, means that I can I could register my child as a homeschooling student from a program down in Calgary if I wanted to, if I could find an associate private school or an associate board that is a willing non-resident board, or willing non-resident school authority. The term means that that school is willing to accept my student, who is a non-resident of their area. That’s where the term willing non-resident board comes from. Here in Alberta, a home ed student can register with a home ed program that’s being run from a school or board that is outside of that family’s residential or geographical area. So that’s what a willing non-resident board means. Of course, then you have a **public school board**, and that just means that is your, it can be a resident school board or a willing non-resident school board, but the “public” is just that. You have public here in Alberta, and this may be obvious for people who have grown up here in Alberta, but if you’re new to Alberta, Alberta has public schooling and separate. Public schooling is just that, it’s public, secular. Then you have your separate schools, which would be your Catholic school system.

The next term is **notification form**. A notification form is the form that home education students will use to register. Some people just call it an enrollment form or registration form, but technically speaking, it’s the notification form. I like to use the word “notification form” for all the reasons that I explained in the first video where I talked about the importance of the name. For now, with this glossary video, suffice it to say that’s a notification form, along with the next term, **education program plan**. Those two documents form registration. Notification form is your registration form. The education program plan is a document that’s required for registration, due at the same time, well, due before September 30th, which is the deadline, the **count date**, which is our next term, for registering for a home education. The program plan is going to ask for which outcomes, and we’ll look at the definition of what an outcome is here in a moment, but it’s going to list, or you’re going to list or select, the outcomes that you will teach your children. You’ll list the topics, the subjects, the resources, the methods, strategies, things like that, and you’re just telling the school, you’re telling Alberta Ed what your plan will entail for the school year for your child. So, notification form and education program plan together form registration. That registration, if you want funding for the school year, needs to be completed by the count date, and the count date is the school term for September 30th, which is the last day for registering for funding. Wherever your child is is registered on the count date, or on September 30th, and if the count, if September 30th lands on a weekend, then you back it up to where the last school day of September, wherever your child is on that day, that’s where your funding will go. So the count date is really the deadline date. That’s the count, so that’s the numerical count that Alberta Ed will use to determine funding. So they count how many homeschoolers or how many whatever students are in a particular program, and that’s the number Alberta Ed uses to establish funding. If you don’t get your registration in by the count date, you can still home educate, like, right, you can you can be at one school on the count date, and your funding will go to that school, and let’s say it’s a teacher-directed school program in your resident school board, your resident local elementary, and then two months later it’s not working out for whatever reason, you want to change to home education. You can change mid-year, you have that right as a parent. You can always change programs. It’s just that you won’t get funding because you have changed after the count date. So the importance of the count date has to do with funding. That’s what a count date means.

Funding and Support Terminology

Speaking of funding, let’s go right into that. The next term for funding is **home education funding**. Here in Alberta, home education students are funded, and that funding is to help reimburse or help defray the many costs that you, the parent, will pay for learning materials. It could be tutoring, could be group lessons, all sorts of things you can be reimbursed, and those reimbursements come from each child’s funding. That funding is per child, but I think all home ed programs here in Alberta will pool into a family into a family account the funding from each child. So if you, let’s say you have three children, that’s three children times the funding amount for that school year, that total amount goes into your family fund so that you can spend the total amount how you determine. We don’t track it, I don’t think any program in Alberta tracks the dollars per student. It’s dollars for the family. So let’s say one child has high expenses for some real expensive resources, that’s fine. You have family funding per student if that makes sense. Again, you don’t have to track, you know, so many dollars for Johnny and so many dollars for Susie and so many dollars for Robert, right? All three are just combined into one pool, the family account from which you can spend that reimbursement funding. With THEE, as is most programs, you can’t spend that funding by, I’m getting a little off-topic from glossary of terms, but you can spend the money directly, so out-of-pocket, get reimbursed, or with purchase order numbers. But you do have that funding per child in a pooled family account. There is reimbursement; there are criteria items for your reimbursement. You can’t spend the money on just anything, and so on our website, you can find a full list of learning resources and tutoring and things like that, all anything that can be reimbursed. The list is my best effort to determine on a year-to-year basis what Alberta Ed will allow. Now, Alberta Ed a few years ago came out with a document called the **Standards**, and they tried to use that document to create a standard by which all the home ed programs could determine which learning item is reimbursable and which is not. It’s not that helpful, so I try to create a list that is helpful, and you can find that from our website in the “How it Works” under “Funding,” you can see that list, but again, you can’t spend the money on just anything. There are some limits and criteria set.

The next thing on the list, **returning to the school**, any item that’s not really a term, but it’s more of a rule, and that is that Alberta Ed has allowed or is allowing home ed programs, the school, the associate board, or the associate private school, to actually require you, the parent, to return to the school any material object that you purchased with your homeschooling funding if the school requires it. We don’t require it, and I, very few actually do. Some of the programs though that offer an aligned program do require you to return materials that you’ve purchased with home ed money, and there are conditions, you know, “If you leave after one year, they said, ‘Well, you have to return the computer,’ or ‘you have to, say, three years, if you’re going to keep the computer,’ or something like that.” So just know, maybe that’s something for you to ask as well when you’re trying to figure out which program you want to go with: does that school require you to return the materials that you’ve purchased with your home ed money? The answer from us is no, it is yours. You are going to be able to keep that.

Home Education Roles and Documents

Alright, let’s go on here to number four, or category number four, the **home ed teacher**. According to regulation, the school that you choose are, all the associate board or associate private school will assign a teacher who is supportive of home education. That’s actually written in the regulation: to provide two evaluations or to evaluate your son or daughter twice a year. For us, it’s once in the first minute, actually for it, just about everybody’s once in the first semester and once in the second semester. Because we, and again, many home ed programs believe this too, they they definitely recognize the parent is the teacher. Our home ed teacher is the **facilitator**. So you, even though according to the Education Act, yes, certified Alberta teacher, but we refer to that teacher as a facilitator, so whenever you hear the term a facilitator, just know that that’s your home ed teacher. And that home ed teacher or facilitator is there technically and minimally to conduct two evaluations that are required by the regulation, but really, practically speaking, I think if done well and correctly, your home ed teacher or your home ed facilitator is your consultant, your support person, and your counselor, just your idea person if you if you’re looking for ideas. So your facilitator is your support and you, and also you usually your liaison to the school. So you’ll get to form a usually really good working relationship with that facilitator, and oftentimes if if you have a really good working relationship, you’ll have the same facilitator for all your children and for years and years, and it’s any friendship that that will develop with your facilitator. So that is what the term facilitator means.

The next item on this list is the **Schedule of Outcomes**, and you’ll find this at the end of the home ed regulation. It’s just a list of outcomes or goals that Alberta Ed would like you the parent to have, or some people would say they require you to have. But these outcomes are incredibly general, things like teaching your children how to read for enjoyment and for information, learning to work as an individual and as part of a team. Very general outcomes. The term sounds a little lofty, “Schedule of Outcomes,” but it just means that it’s been tucked at the end of the home ed regulation as an index, so don’t let the title make it sound more daunting. It’s not daunting at all. But when people talk about the Schedule of Outcomes or if you see it in the the program plan or you see it on the notification form itself, just know that we’ve talked about the Schedule of Outcomes, it’s just talking about a list of goals that are listed in the back of the home ed regulation. So Leonard A to T, if you really want to see it, you can go to our website and how it works page, and you’ll find it there. So again, you you will see the outcomes listed, not listed but mentioned and referenced in both the education program plan and then the evaluation template that we have, and then again in the notification form. So you’ll want to be familiar with the term, maybe even look at the list so you know what it is and it doesn’t, it’s not a mystery.

Additional Terminology

Alright, so the last item is the **Guide to Education**. The Guide to Education is, I’m going to say, somewhere between policy and regulation. It’s Alberta Ed’s handbook. It is the rulebook by which Alberta Ed expects all schools to play. So if you ever needed to know a policy on something, these are guest policy rules that support the regulation. Guide to Education again is like is like a handbook. So, rules that would cover challenge exams, for example, a challenge exam, a student can only write a challenge exam for a particular course one time, so all your eggs are in that one basket. You write the exam, let’s say for English 21, you get one shot. You, as a student, get one chance to write the challenge exam for English 21, and if you fail the test or the exam, you can’t write it again. You have to enroll in the course. So where that’s a rule that’s not my rule, that’s Alberta Ed’s rule. Where can you find it? In the Guide to Education. So those kind of things are in the Guide to Education. Again, it’s a it’s a handbook from Alberta Ed that schools will take and then form their own local policies based on the guide to ed.

So there you have it. If you learn all of those terms, then you’ll be able to speak just like a true home schooler.