Brave Learner Conference 2019

I was so thrilled to be able to travel to Cincinnati last weekend to be able to take part in the Brave Learner Conference 2019!  It was such a gift to meet Julie and the Brave Writer Homeschool Alliance coaches, Jeanne, Stephanie, and Heather in person!  Julie Bogart, author of Brave Writer curricula, has been encouraging and mentoring me for over two years in home education and parenting through her Brave Writer videos, podcasts, and the online Homeschool Alliance community through the Brave Writer website.

Meeting Julie Bogart at brunch!

The Brave Learner Conference celebrated Julie's newly released book, The Brave Learner, and was a culmination of her teachings from the book.  Members of the Homeschool Alliance online community and the BW Facebook pages have been discussing the book, sharing ideas about how it has shaped their home schools and their lives for a few months already.  This conference was a chance for over 300 “Brave” parent educators to unite, connect, and share our experiences.  We wholeheartedly enjoyed hearing from Julie in person and trying out some of her ideas, that very day. Julie worked very hard to be available to meet each person at the conference that weekend.  I waited until Saturday morning at brunch to get a chance to talk with her and she joined our table and sat next to me, talking with our whole table, for more than half an hour!  It felt like meeting an old friend.  Julie was so genuine and wanted to hear our thoughts and ideas about the book and the conference.  It was a real treat to spend time with her!  She poured herself out to all of us in every aspect of the conference and it created a fantastic experience that was meaningful and inspiring!

I enjoyed chatting with Homeschool Alliance coaches, Stephanie and Jeanne

I am thankful for this friendly, strong, brave, learning community.  I also got to meet these awesome coaches in the Homeschool Alliance!  Jeanne and Stephanie have been a huge help to me, encouraging me and reaffirming in me what I already know or giving me a new ideas to think about.  I am so grateful that I have already been a "Brave Learner" for a long time and didn’t realize it.  A huge part of parenting is learning and as our children grow older, another huge part of parenting is partnering with them, working alongside each other, and collaborating to learn new and challenging things.  As our children grow, we need to value our own, brave learning and growth, as well.

Reading Julie's book this year was very emotional for me as my oldest child was going through his senior year and we were preparing for graduation.  Julie’s inspiration and ideas for young families flooded my mind with thoughts of so many fun activities, games, wonderful stories and books, songs that we enjoyed, art and craft activities, funny attempts at science experiments, and sitting next to my children while we learned many difficult things - TOGETHER!  I am thankful for Julie's book that helped me re-live these memories and inspired me to make many more in the years ahead, even beyond home education after my children have graduated.

New friends and fellow "Brave Learners"

The Brave Learner Conference was more than a book release party, it was an amazing place to connect with other home educators of similar thinking.  We are from very different geographical regions, have children of a variety of ages, hold different faiths and come from many cultures, but we all came together to learn and to grow in how we educate our families.  It was an amazing group of women!  I met so many new friends from all different parts of North America and we had some incredible, big, juicy conversations. I have so many more insights to share about the Brave Learner Conference, so stay tuned for more posts!