She Speaks!

 

Presentations


Mary is available to speak at a few events each year, both at homeschooling conferences and to general audiences. If you're interested in having Mary speak at your event, you can select from the following presentations. She is also happy to consider new topics to fit your needs. For specifics of dates and fees, please email.



For homeschooling audiences:


Viral Learning: Reflections on the Homeschooling Life

A look at homeschooling from the vantage point o f a parent whose children are now in college and beyond, thinking again about the ways we learned all these years and about the effects our homeschooling life has had, not just on our kids, but on all of us. What do we think about homeschooling once our kids are grown? Would we do it all again? How has it affected our lives? Our society? Can we truly ever be done with the insidious, infectious contagion that is homeschooling? Perhaps we should think of homeschooling as a cultural virus that changes, perhaps permanently, the ways we deal with the world.


Homeschooling for the Absolute Beginner

Just starting homeschooling this year or still only considering the possibility? Here’s just the workshop for you: homeschooling approaches, learning styles, support groups, finding help and resources, what’s worth worrying about and what’s not, from the author of the popular Homeschooling Handbook.


Unschooling: A Leap of Faith

Baffled but intrigued by phrases like "interest-initiated" and "child-led" learning? Find it hard to believe such a process actually works? If you're put off by packaged curricula and structured lessons, consider a less formal approach. An exploration of natural learning, where the student controls what and how and when she learns.


The Hidden Hazards of Homeschooling

We hear all the time of the positive aspects of homeschooling: how our kids become self-reliant, competent, and confident learners, but what about the other side? What aren't they telling us about homeschooling? A humorous look at common homeschooling foibles.


Care & Treatment for Parental Panic Attacks

Constantly fighting off the dreaded Parental Panic Attack, in which you worry that everyone else's kids are smarter, more talented, more independent, better behaved, multi-lingual, and otherwise superior to your own? The virtues of a variety of resources and strategems to help keep things in perspective.


The Final Prejudice

For all its value as an approach to learning, homeschooling is even more worthwhile as a tool for countering the "final prejudice": the assumption in our society that children are less deserving—simply because of their age—of the rights and respect that those of us who are older take for granted. Homeschooling demands that we look at children as individuals instead of as members of a presumably homogeneous age cohort.


Learning About Learning: What Homeschoolers Have Known for Years

A consideration of some of the lessons homeschooling offers about learning, about our children, and about ourselves



For general audiences


Myths & Fables of Homeschooling

An examination of some of the misconceptions and misunderstandings about homeschooling and homeschoolers.