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WHY choose me for your consultant or evaluator?
Because I am walking in your shoes! My homeschooled children are both middle schoolers now, and I understand your joys, your frustrations and your questions. I come to you with over twenty years experience as an educator and have taught all grade levels from elementary to high school (and adult ed!) in both public and private schools. I currently am a part-time online instructor for special-needs hospital/homebound students. I have been doing homeschool consulting and evaluations since 2008. I have a passion for ALL students; especially those with special needs of all kinds, and I have a deep respect those of you who unschool. When you have have a portfolio evaluation with me, I ask that in addition to sending me your child’s portfolio, that you will also bring along any questions or concerns that you have so that we can discuss those. Once your portfolio evaluation appointment is over, that is not the end of our relationship until the next year! I am here to answer your questions or offer support all year long via email. See my testimonials page to see what others have said about working with me. 🙂 |
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Consulting
Consulting appointments are available for $30 per half hour to anyone who is not a current portfolio evaluation client. Please send an email which details the issue you’d like to discuss before our phone call. We take consulting appointments for issues regarding instruction, curriculum, special needs, and more. Click below to make your appointment. If you would like an hour, please be sure to choose TWO blocks of time on our appointment scheduler. * Please note that if you are a current portfolio evaluation client, you receive free consultations by email all year. If you would prefer to pay for a phone consult, please use the link below. |
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How Do Portfolio Evaluations Work?Great Question! If this is your first time having your student’s portfolio evaluated, you might be a little nervous. This is to be expected. After all, we homeschooling parents put our hearts and souls into our children’s education! Not to worry. A portfolio evaluation with me is casual and informative. You will come away feeling encouraged and empowered. Oh, and please bring along any questions you may have for me, general or specific. Please contact me with any questions! Q. What is required for a portfolio review? I must look at portfolio of your student’s work, your log of academic activities, and have a conversation with your student in order to satisfy the requirements of a portfolio review. Q. What is a “log of academic activities”? This means your homeschool plans, which can take many forms. Some people use a traditional plan book. Others simply make a list of broad concepts covered during the year. Still others list extracurricular activities that their children took part in and describe how each of these taught academic concepts. It is really up to you. I’ve seen unschoolers keep a portfolio of pictures of projects and places they’ve been which relate to the academic concepts they’ve studied that year. I’ve seen other families keep very detailed logs of everything their children did each ay. Both (and everything in between) are acceptable. The thing to know is that you must keep these with your children’s work samples to make the portfolio complete. Q.How much work do I have to show you? I encourage you to organize your student’s work for your own sake, and then choose various samples from each subject area to send me. Choose samples from the beginning, middle and end of the year. I highly recommend that you have your student assist with the choice of work to send me, or if you student is old enough, have them put together the portfolio themselves. This helps your student take ownership of his/her learning and becomes a yearly “rite of passage”. It is not required by Florida law, however, I love to see pictures too! You might send pictures of: any fun projects or experiments I love to put a name (and voice) to a face! Q. What will the phone portion be like? Q. I have a special needs student. I am not sure how much work I can show. I also don’t know how well they will communicate with you via phone. I have evaluated dozens of special needs students over the years. Just as the curriculum is modified for your student, we also understand that the evaluation may look a little different from that of another student. What we have to note as evaluators is “progress commensurate to his/her ability.” We understand that your special needs students portfolio may look different from that of another student. As far as the conversation goes; always remember that this is a time for us to have a casual chat and a time for you, as the parent to ask questions. Some students communicate more than others. This is expected. Simply choose the best day and time for you below. |
