The conference is a premier event for homeschool resources and ideas. This conference is known for its encouraging speakers and offers many vendors with high quality education curriculums along with many great networking oppurtunities.This year's keynote speaker was Kevin Swanson, who spoke on the topic of 'Cultivating Vision.' It was located at First Evangelical Free Church in Sioux Falls, SD.
Why Go to a Homeschooling Conference?
--hear speakers with ideas you may not have heard before
--get learning and resource ideas
--see (and purchase, if you so desire) books and materials from a variety of vendors specifically interested in addressing the needs of homeschoolers
--meet lots (and lots!) of other homeschooling families
It's hard to overstate the value of this last item. Even the most experienced and confident homeschoolers are often surprised at the boost in morale that seeing a thousand homeschoolers together in a group provides. Knowing intellectually that there are thousands of homeschoolers out there somewhere doesn't have quite the the same impact as actually seeing a good number of them in person.
Just to have a couple of days during which most of the people you see and talk to are people who believe that homeschooling is an obvious and natural educational choice is surprising. The effect is really quite astonishing--just find a nice, comfortable seat somewhere and listen to the bits of the conversations going by. You'll hear stories and debates and jokes and ideas and more stories, and underlying every one of them is the basic assumption that homeschooling is that obvious and reasonable choice. The lift you get from that kind of affirmation is difficult to describe, and I don't know where else you can experience it.
And if you're one of those of us who occasionally begins to feel like something of a community oddball--either the only homeschooler or the only "different" homeschooler in town--a good conference can be extremely comforting: No matter how offbeat you may feel, there will always be someone whose approach to education and learning you'll think is even more outlandish than your own.
So get the directions and get yourself there.
Have questions about the Conference?
Randy Stofferahn - Conference Coordinator : secheweb@gmail.com