Long Story Short
My quick intro post
Hi! I’m Tamara Kidd, an Education Consultant, specialising in Home Education (est. 2007).
My work has been mostly over at Facebook. It seems to be where parents gathered! But even before that, in the MySpace days, I was already darting about helping newbie home ed peeps and school using parents. Multiple people per day, every day of the week! They were very busy times, mixing helping others and home educating my young children. All of that helping others work tended to be free, too! That’s what you do when you’re establishing yourself, right? (My friends say I’m established now, though).
The type of home ed help I offer is in my first article post.
Ooh! A Stock photo that looks like my current reality!
Now, why would I move part of my time over to here?
Well, I’ve been working on a massive writing project for the past 12 months and people are starting to ask how my books are going. To date, I have also published 42 Mentor Videos for Nurture Parenting Magazine and presented at about seven or so Summits, including Raising Happy Kids and the yearly Australian Homeschooling Summit.
So, here at Substack is where I will collate and update what I have already contributed, and then keep people updated with what I’m doing now.
There’s a lot of content to collate, and although over in FB-land it is very interactive and useful, content does risk falling down the back of the Facebook lounge!
Also, unlike most other business owners, and writers, I’ve got a secret!
That I’m happy to confess!
For all the years I’ve been consulting with parents, I’ve never added people to a mailing list. I’ve never wanted to keep people’s data! Privacy online is really important, especially when talking with a consultant about your family.
Substack allows me to start a mailing list with a purpose.
Clients can continue to connect with me, without compromising their privacy, and that very respected part of my business is maintained.
The aim of this Substack
1. Sharing Information
I’m here to share information about home education. Even with post graduate teaching qualifications, unless you’ve home educated your own children within the community, it’s hard to guess how amazing, hard, wonderful and challenging it is. 17 years, and counting I’ve been part of this community. What was the best teaching gig I’ll ever have has lasted 16.5 years, and then people have asked me to stick around, which is great. This community is where I feel most at home. With my home ed peeps.
2. What kind of community I'm looking to build here?
With home ed, learning is key and freedom is key to learning. It has been said that teaching when someone isn’t interested in learning, is like pegging marshmallows at someone’s head and calling it eating. Leave them on a plate and wait for the student to eat|learn. Choosing to participate is up to you. I’ll share all I’m doing, all the help I can, and you’re welcome to share too. I hope to learn from you all, but most of all, I hope to host the kind of awesome, welcoming place that my local home ed meetup place has been become, since starting it in 2009. Very chill, very informative, as interactive as you like.
3. How often will I be posting?
I want to share something for each section at least once a month, until the first of the books I’m currently writing are ready to publish. Other than today, you ought not be getting two emails on the same day!
A few per month and not on the same day, unless they are meant to be together.
4. A mailing list.
Another aim is to have a secure mailing list where I can post diverse content and have it embedded in a community setting, that has more security and flexibility than what I could do on my current website… which is only one of 3 websites. Maybe more about that another time. Maybe.
First, though, the books.
What books?
I’m currently writing 19 books!
9 Picture Books
4 Middle Grade books
4 YA books
2 Literature Novels
These 19 stories are about a group of about 113 home educators, with interlacing stories set over a 19-year span. My aim with them is twofold:
To provide our children with quality literature where they are authentically represented. I hope they critique me well!
An opportunity for those who haven’t home educated, to understand more about what it is really like. I hope those who have home educated critique me well!
Comments are open! Feel free to say anything you like!
This post won’t be archived. Feel free to drop me a comment at any time.
Chat soon!
The sections on offer:
