The name Family Academy ® is the perfect name, directly paralleling “home” (family) “school “(academy).
Most of what family’s see of our organization is through the local Teacher Consultant and their Learning Center. Behind the scenes is the on-going support of the Family Academy ® resource network including homeschooling resources and the Family Academy® school infrastructure of school records, accreditation, and legal components. It’s the best of both worlds. Private school and homeschool, also known as a “school without walls.”
For those just beginning with us, you will discover a most distinctive approach to education. By combining the powerful meld of home-centered learning with a Family Academy ® Teacher Consultant and staff, you will find your student’s academic program greatly enhanced and supported. This isn’t purely homeschooling, and it isn’t exclusively a private school, but rather, the best of both. We call it “Family-Directed Education.”
Our program began in 1981 with a few homeschooling families and a couple of former classroom teachers who did not want to put their own children into the traditional system they had just left. They purposed not to be a regular school or correspondence school or a publisher peddling a specific curriculum. These each require students and parents to compromise individual learning styles and academic needs to fit the program. This is also true of many on-line schools. Additionally, over the four decades of service, we have seen that effective education takes place in the context of relationships – most people need personal contact to make the learning meaningful and relevant.
Family Academy ® believes real education empowers parents to raise their children to their full potential, academically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. This process is greatly helped when parents can consult with quality teachers who support the family’s learning program. Our staff and Teacher Consultants are Christians who have a living faith in Jesus Christ and implement a biblical worldview into the learning process. They believe in nurturing academic and personal excellence and have honed their experience and training to enrich the family’s homeschooling efforts.
For parents with students in secondary level (grades 6-12), they are discovering that their teens’ developmental clock begins to kick into a new stage requiring more autonomy. Spiritually, children move into the “age of accountability”. Often, many homeschoolers quit during junior high or high school due to academic challenges and this individuation process. In the ancient Jewish tradition, rabbis came along side while the older child/teen still worked and lived at home, learned a trade, and prepared for adulthood. In our program, the Family Academy ® Teacher Consultant [TC] comes along side to help parents and teens make this transition.
Students and parents can develop a relationship with that Teacher Consultant who helps to hold the student accountable for the planned coursework and credits. Parents can confer with their Teacher Consultant, so students stay challenged and motivated. Sometimes there is a team of Teacher Consultants and expert instructors working together. The goal, however, is to empower the student to be self-motivated, to mature in character and faith and become an independent learner.
Family Academy has expanded to include working with military families in other countries, away from home. Sometimes, their children can’t enroll in the local schools and have no choice but to homeschool. The military has its own guidelines of what is acceptable, and we strived to make that connection for those who serve. With 33 countries we have world language teachers and the new online presence we have established called Family Academy Online allows our Teacher Consultants to contact those military families and families outside their communities and walk alongside them.
We also work with Veterans who have not received a high school diploma (both alive and deceased) and we honor them at our graduations. We tell their story to friends and relatives and those who are graduating one last lesson. Beautifully woven into our graduation ceremonies we truly honor our brave men and women who served long ago.
Family Academy’s Teacher Consultants of America program invites dedicated home educators to become a part of our teacher crew and help families in their communities. It’s not necessary to hold a teaching certificate, as we believe parents can teach their own naturally.
What’s best of all, Family Academy puts the parents in the driver’s seat of their children’s education and can build confidence through our Able to Teach program that teaches them how to be an effective home educator. We have courses for parents, for those with disabilities and exclusive programs like MySciLearn from Carnegie Melon University.
We let the parents dictate the curriculum; however, we help them choose the right one for their student. Not everyone is a worksheet student, or an online student, some might be auditory learners, some visual learners. We help parents figure it out. We also have resources available that parents can tap into for a well-rounded educational experience.
As a private school in the State of Washington, now in 10 states, 33 countries and growing, we want to invite you to participate!
Contact us at 866-879-8919 or through email at info@family-academy.org for more information.
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