Calvert School Honors Outstanding Home Educators
by Jim Brown
November 18, 2004
(AgapePress) - The nation's first formal home school curriculum provider is seeking nominees for its third annual "Homeschooling's Best Awards." Baltimore, Maryland-based Calvert School is looking to honor people who have made a difference in home schooling this year. Jean Halle, president of Calvert Education Services, says efforts to improve home schooling often go unnoticed. "We recognize that the parents who are home schooling are really special people," she says, "and they deserve to be celebrated. We wish that we could celebrate each one of them."
The children of home educators usually get acknowledged, Halle notes, "because they're bright and they participate in spelling bees and geography bees and they impress the adults around them with their academic knowledge." But at the same time, she says, "the parents who are really making this happen are sort of the unsung heroes."
For that reason, each year since 2002, Calvert School has held its "Homeschooling's Best awards, selecting people whose efforts have enhanced the practice or profile of home schooling. Nominations are accepted from home schoolers and others each November. A committee of Calvert School's officials select recipients after thoroughly reviewing each nominee.
In past years, recipients have been honored for a wide range of improvements, which include developing new programs and support groups for home schoolers, promoting home schooling through the media, establishing an honor society for home schoolers, and assisting home school families that lost curriculum materials in wildfires.
Halle believes honoring these home school heroes is important, and not only "to the degree that you stop and recognize a neighbor or a friend or someone that has helped you get involved with home schooling," she says. The CES president also feels acknowledging the honorees is important for the public, which really needs to get a glimpse of the real people behind home education.
"What we're trying to say to the world at large is these are really interesting people that care about their communities," Halle says. "They're the kinds of people you'd like to invite to dinner, and we'd like to show that kind of face to America."
The Homeschooling's Best Awards are announced in December. Past honorees have been designated "Homeschoolings Best Pioneer, Best Voice, Best Hero, and Best Advocate. Halle says there is no limit to what dedicated home schoolers can do to improve their children's education.
