Teacher Consultant

Yes, I retired from teaching public school at the end of June. With more than thirty years of teaching under my belt, either full time in the public system, substitute teaching in both private and public schools, and homeschooling my own children for nine years in a row, I felt the God nudge to spend more time doing other things – like writing.

Except… a new opportunity opened up before I had even finished closing up my classroom for the final time! I took a job as a consulting teacher for an online Christian school. Heritage Christian School is one of the larger online and distance learning schools in BC (and in Canada, or so I’m told) that allows parents to tailor the programs to their own children’s needs. (In my day we called it homeschooling, but the preferred title is ‘distance learning’.)

Basically, what I do is help families tailor a program to their own kids – everything from suggesting curriculum to discussing educational philosophy to writing up a student learning plan. (You’d be surprised how many different ways there are to teach the same thing, not to mention trends in education – some of them quite old, like the ‘Charlotte Mason’ method, for instance.) I do all this while keeping records and making sure they comply with the BC Ministry of Education Core Curricular Competencies. (Good thing I’m already familiar with the education-ese. Educators like to use a lot of ‘teacher-jargon’…)

I’m excited about working with families and feel pretty confident that I have something to offer given my background and experience. Still, the learning curve has been pretty steep with all the things that I need to do to get each student set up. In fact, at first, I thought to myself, “What have I gotten myself into?!”

So, even though I’m ‘retired’ from teaching, I’m actually not really retired at all. So much for more writing time! (Just kidding. I think this new job will fit in very well with my new lifestyle.)