Catherine Levison

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Catherine Levison is the author of four books. She is also a public speaker to parenting, homeschooling and educational audiences throughout the United States and Canada. She is also a columnist for The Link [1] magazine. Levison lives with her family in the Puget Sound region of Washington state.

Contents

Career

Levison's workshops, articles, books and seminars are based on her extensive research into the teaching methods and educational philosophies of Charlotte Mason, a British educator from the last century whose techniques are currently receiving renewed interested, especially in American private and home schools.

"Homeschooling and parenting are intertwined in such a way that they can hardly be seen as separate concepts. ... As one overlaps with the other, we find that all parents are home educators to some degree." ~Catherine Levison [2]

Levison is a frequent workshop presenter and keynote speaker at homeschooling conventions. She also conducts all-day educational how-to seminars [3] throughout the United States and Canada for parents, teachers, and home educators.

Publications

Related Research Articles

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Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an online teacher, many homeschool families use less formal, more personalized and individualized methods of learning that are not always found in schools. The actual practice of homeschooling can look very different. The spectrum ranges from highly structured forms based on traditional school lessons to more open, free forms such as unschooling, which is a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling. Some families who initially attended a school go through a deschool phase to break away from school habits and prepare for homeschooling. While "homeschooling" is the term commonly used in North America, "home education" is primarily used in Europe and many Commonwealth countries. Homeschooling should not be confused with distance education, which generally refers to the arrangement where the student is educated by and conforms to the requirements of an online school, rather than being educated independently and unrestrictedly by their parents or by themselves.

Unschooling Educational method and philosophy; form of homeschooling

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John Holt (educator) American writer and educator (1923–1985)

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<i>Charlottes Web</i> Childrens novel by E. B. White

Charlotte's Web is a book of children's literature by American author E. B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams; it was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper & Brothers. The novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.

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Deschooling is a term invented by Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich. Today, the word is mainly used by homeschoolers, especially unschoolers, to refer to the transition process that children and parents go through when they leave the school system in order to start homeschooling. It is a crucial process that is the basis for homeschooling to work, in which children should slowly break out of their school routine and mentality, develop the ability to learn via self-determination again, and find interests to decide what they want to learn in their first homeschool days. Depending on the type of person and time the child spent in the school system, this phase can last different lengths of time and may have different effects on the behavior of children. Especially in the first days of deschooling, it is often the case that children mainly want to recover from the school surroundings and therefore will generally sleep very long and refuse any kind of intentional learning and instead search for substitute satisfactions like watching TV or playing video games, very similar to the behavior during early school holidays. Moving on in this transition process, children may feel bored or cannot cope well with the missing daily structure, until they eventually find out how to make use of their time and freedom to find interests, which in the best case results in them voluntarily informing themselves about certain things they are interested in, whereupon homeschooling can start.

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Homeschooling in the United States Overview of the situation of homeschooling in the United States of America

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Charlotte Mason British educator and reformer

Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason was a British educator and reformer in England at the turn of the twentieth century. She proposed to base the education of children upon a wide and liberal curriculum. She was inspired by the writings of the Bible, John Amos Comenius, Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin.

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References

  1. "The Link Homeschool News Network - Realistic Charlotte Mason Index". Archived from the original on 2008-09-13. Retrieved 2008-09-04.
  2. "Catherine Levison | Author". www.catherinelevison.com. Archived from the original on 2012-05-11.
  3. "Educational how-to workshop coming to White River Presbyterian Church - Auburn Reporter". Archived from the original on 2011-05-22. Retrieved 2008-09-04.