June/July Letter

About CHEACT

Beliefs and Biblical Basis
What we believe and why we believe it

Benefits
How CHEACT supports you

Volunteer
There are plenty of opportunities to jump in and make things happen for home schoolers in central Texas

Finger on the Pulse

June/July, 2001

Greetings!

For most of our membership, the school year will be over by the time this newsletter hits your mailbox. If your family is anything like mine, your kids are out running barefoot and leaving the door open so the whole neighborhood can benefit from your air conditioning (again). While you get back from closing it, and sit down with that tall glass of lemonade, I'd like to give you an update on what CHEACT is doing over the summer.

From our mission statement, you know that our intent is to serve ALL Central Texas families who seek to "Home School for the Glory of God." CHEACT is especially interested in serving each family's ENTIRE home school journey. This includes five phases:

Becoming Aware of Home Schooling
Gathering Facts
Deciding to Home School
Home Educating Your Children (pre-Kindergarten through College)
Giving Back

There are some 4000 home school families in our region. But for the past few years, we have hovered between 500-600 member families. We tend to lose veteran members about as fast as we sign up new home school families. Why is that? We want to help each of them connect. Evidently, while CHEACT has value to part of your journey, we do not add value to your entire journey yet.

Previous letters have discussed how we are consolidating current positions to free us up to be better stewards of this mission. With that process well under way, our first step is to get our "finger on the pulse" of Central Texas home schooling families. Richard and Margaret Marques, our current Membership Officers, have agreed to initiate this work. We will be making better use of technology and available support staff to minimize the day-to-day impact of membership administration, so Richard & Margaret can take on this leadership role. We want and need to know what the needs of these families are, and what CHEACT can do to serve them.

There are quite a few initiatives aimed at serving these families underway this summer, and we are continually looking for new ways to help. CHEACT membership… It's not just a newsletter any more!

First, you should all have received a new CHEACT membership card in the mail. This card will be your ticket to real membership value in the months and years to come. Membership cards will help us offer valuable discounts to you at our conferences and activities. By providing membership value well beyond the newsletter, we hope to stay in contact with all of you for your entire home school journey - to enable us to keep our "finger on the pulse" of your needs, and to steward CHEACT resources to support the needs of the Central Texas home school community at large.

One need we already see is support for home schooling teens. While a comprehensive understanding of what we can do is still under investigation, we are able to offer an opportunity for high school students who would like to learn how to develop and publish a web site. David Correa, current CHEACT Webmaster, instructor from ACC Visual Communications Design Dept and Home School Dad, will be teaching this class over the summer. For a nominal fee, your student(s) can learn how to use state-of-the-art development tools while helping to develop the cheact.org web site. This is a win-win offering for you and CHEACT. We hope that some of these students will form the nucleus of a new web site club that will assume responsibility for the CHEACT site in the fall. The class began at the end of May, but latecomers are welcome! Equipment & snacks are provided. Details are on the web site under "Excellence Programs", or email David directly: dcorrea@austin.cc.tx.us

Next, you may be wondering when you will receive your new CHEACT Membership Directory. With the prospect of receiving an immediate discount at the summer conference, we expect many new families to join CHEACT over the summer. To better support these new members, and to give you the most accurate information we have before the school year begins, we will publish the Directory at the end of the summer. That way, you will get all the information you need, right when you need it.

Finally, we are all looking forward to the "14th Annual Homeschool Educators Conference & Book Fair" on Friday June 29th and Saturday June 30th. Besides having our regular lineup of quality curriculum and book vendors, we are offering three full tracks of seminars. We are fortunate to be welcoming Dennis Gunderson this year as our keynote speaker. He will be speaking on a range of topics of benefit to those just starting out on their home school journey, as well providing valuable insight for seasoned veterans on issues that impact the whole family. This summer's conference is shaping up to be a valuable resource to every central Texas home school family.

As the excitement builds for the upcoming conference, we have decided to extend the deadline for receiving entries for our essay contest, "Home Schooling for the Glory of God - What this means to my family and me", to June 20th. This will allow more time to complete your entry, while giving us enough time to judge each entry and notify prizewinners before the conference. What?!? Did you say, "Prize"?!? That's right, folks! Children ages 5-18 can win Savings Bonds. Moms and Dads can win cold hard CASH to spend at the summer conference!

But don't let the money fool you. It is critical that CHEACT gain a solid working definition of what it means to home school for the Glory of God. We care what you think. I am particularly interested in the perspectives of you Dads. "For the Glory of God" is not simply a trite phrase to us, nor do we think our faith necessarily infuses our home schooling with Glory to God. It is intentional. Certainly, many of you have thought this through. We all need to know… even if you don't need the money ; )

In addition to the opportunity to win big with the essay contest, we are offering a significant door discount to all CHEACT members this year. Plus there will be great prize drawings and giveaways at the door and in each seminar. If you have not already done so, mark your calendar now and invite a friend, and bring your membership card! If your friend would like to join, they may do so at the door.

See you there!

" "
Brett Adams
Chairman, CHEACT

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