Introduction to the 2018-19 Academic Year
Categories: Léo’s Insights 2018-2019 Academic Year
Welcome to this, our sixth year of blogging! That is a lot of blabbing over a long time!
At first the blog was only presented in a text format. I remember sometimes having to quickly compose something the night before as I was not only the writer of the blog, but the manager of everything, as well. Some of you may remember the occasional time when you went to the blog on Monday morning to discover that the “manager” had mismanaged!
But things have changed. Besides the fact that I am obviously six years older than when I began blogging, I now have a team of very competent people helping me write, rewrite, proofread, record, edit, process and upload the final product in text, audio and video formats. I am very thankful for having these professionals working with me.
This year will be our third year of offering the blogs in audio and video formats, which means that we are more experienced and therefore anticipating improved results from when we first began.
Now, times may have changed, but I have not! I am still as passionate about separating natural learning from institutional learning. I am still faithful in expressing a Christian perspective to learning and education. And I want to make the greatest possible impact in a world that is desperate for answers to a seemingly growing number of newly minted issues brought about by changing perspectives.
This is not meant to sound like you can anticipate the same old, same old. Indeed, I would expect that being a year older than last year we should have all grown by one year in every way. To not have advanced from our experiences is to have missed opportunity to learn from them.
We will fill this entire fall with a series of blogs on the topic of special needs or learning challenges. As part of this series, I finally got to write a “chapter” I always said would be part of “the book,” if ever I wrote one. It is simply called Matthew and I am sure you will be blessed by it.
Starting in the New Year, we plan to bring you more insightful information to help, encourage and even challenge you in your home education journey.
Now, I want to start this year with a blog celebrating an important milestone. Two years ago, we celebrated the completion of my fortieth year as part of the education “industry.” Last year we celebrated thirty years as part of the Alberta home education community. This year we are celebrating our twentieth year of service to the home education community of Alberta as Education Unlimited.
Twenty years ago, my wife, Faye, and I found ourselves working for an agency far more interested in marketing than ministry. I could not, indeed would not, see children as a commodity and so left the original agency (which continues to this day) and started Education Unlimited in the summer of 1999.
What motivated us to start yet another third party home education provider was that I clearly saw the direction being taken within the home education community was leading away from trusting God, to putting confidence in man.
Trusting God sets us free while putting confidence in man leads us right back to the bondage the home education community was trying to escape.
We wanted to provide an alternative to the status quo and so started with the objective of setting families free to train and teach their children in a way that fit the family. We also wanted to direct families away from a money focus, knowing that it would be used as a lure to bring children back into government control.
Focusing on how to best serve the home education community rather than on how to best capitalize on it, we grew in number while developing into the most technologically advanced of any home education provider in the province. And we accomplished this while maintaining a high level of integrity and dedication to principle.
Twenty years later, Education Unlimited continues to minister to home educating families in Alberta and, through the power of the internet, all over the world as well. Today, we are travelling on the same principled ethical road that we started on, albeit now under the authority of the Independent Baptist Christian Education Society and Harvest Baptist Academy.
Education Unlimited now ministers to the day to day home education needs through its web site, educationunlimited.ca and continues to offer professional philosophical and faith based wisdom through this blog and other helpful tools at leogaumont.com.
As we start a new academic year, know that the team of professionals working through Education Unlimited on behalf of Harvest Baptist Academy will continue to serve as ambassadors of our school, our faith and of home education in this province. We will continue to advance Faith, Freedom and Family in our effort to help parents come to the knowledge of the truth.
Finally, I want to thank those of you who have taken the time to comment on my past efforts. I trust and pray that you are blessed by this year’s effort to return the home education community’s focus to the training and teaching of children.
Have a great year of replacing institutional ideology with truth!
Next Post: Learning Challenges (Part 1)