Classical Conversations  

Art Reed has more than twelve years of Saxon teaching experience at a rural high school in Enid, Oklahoma. Using John Saxon's math books, he taught high school mathematics from Algebra ½ through Calculus . He was instrumental in raising the school's average math ACT scores from 13.4 to 21.9 in just four years. The school's scores were above the national average of 20.2 – and this was more than fifteen years ago! Besides exceeding the national averages in math ACT scores, the high school also had more than ninety percent of their seniors taking math courses that were above algebra one. Additionally, the actual number of high school students taking the ACT tests had tripled! During the past nine years, Art Reed has become well known for his sound curriculum advice to homeschool parents. He has come to be known as an experienced curriculum advisor for John Saxon's math textbooks from Math 76 through Calculus and Physics . Homeschool parents using Saxon math textbooks have come to ask for him by name to seek his valued advice and assistance. He has established the same professional reputation among school administrators and teachers for his assistance in helping them establish a quality Saxon math program within their school districts. Art Reed was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1936. He attended private Lutheran schools in Chicago through high school, graduating in 1954. In the fall of that same year, he enlisted in the United States Army. He spent more than twenty-seven years in the U.S. Army. Art and his wife Judy have been married for more than forty years. They reside in Enid, Oklahoma, as do their two daughters and their families, which include five grandchildren.

Pam Lopes lives in Fredericksburg, VA with her husband, Chris, and their three children. Pam was raised in Hersey Pennsylvania, She graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Broadcast Journalism. After a year in television, she enjoyed a career in Christian radio as an Announcer and Program Director for 8 years before she married. Pam joined CC in 2003 with two other families in Fredericksburg to establish the FIRST Virginia CC community. She is part of the CC Audio Team and has voice recorded and produced the Memory Work CD's for Cycles 1-3. Pam has been a Foundation's Tutor and Director, an Essential's tutor, and a Challenge A Director. Last year, Pam became part of the Program Manager Team as the PM for Challenge A. Passionate about home-based education, Pam looks forward to teaching her children through high school as a member of a CC community. One day she hopes to achieve a degree in Biblical Counseling. Last summer, Pam was diagnosed with breast cancer and has been on a journey of recovery and healing. She has been through months of chemotherapy and is now having radiation treatments. Her prognosis is good and she looks forward to Celebrating God's goodness with her family and friends once her treatments are completed. She desires to give glory to God for His faithful provision during this trial. Pam sees this journey as ordained by the Lord to teach adn discipline her, but also to show her the immeasurable depths of God's love and forgiveness.

Attorney Mike Smith is the President of Home School Legal Defense Association, an organization that he helped found in 1983. Established to protect the right of parents to teach their children at home, HSLDA now represents over 80,000 member families. Mike and his wife Elizabeth began homeschooling their children in 1981. He has been defending families for 24 years. Mike has been speaking to homeschool audiences for 23 years. His columns on home education appear regularly in the Washington Times, and he has been a guest on numerous television and radio programs, including Focus on the Family with Jim Dobson and Hannity and Colmes on Fox News. He believes that there is a revival taking place in America through the homeschool movement and that, through the second and third generation of homeschoolers, there is great potential to return America to its moral and religious foundation

Homeschooling parents DO NOT WANT to miss Leigh's talk with Kate Deddens! She is an outstanding mom and wife. Kate has been 'officially teaching' in her family's Classical Christian Homeschool for a decade, but she knows that all homeschooling truly begins at birth (and all parents homeschool in some fashion whether they recognize it or not). She homeschools at the rhetoric level with her high school junior daughter, at the grammar-going-on-logic stage with her fifth grade daughter, and at the grammar stage with her second grade son and one year old son. Kate has been enormously blessed during this academic year as Director of a Classical Conversations' Foundations program in Owensboro, Kentucky. In addition to her husband and children, Kate helps care for her 84 year old mother-in-law (diagnosed with dementia and bedridden) who lives in the home with Kate's family. Kate is active in her Missouri Synod Lutheran Church congregation, and has a passion for her faith, Classical Christian education, homeschooling, good literature, music, and fellowship, writing, traveling, and being a Mom. Kate and her husband Ted celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary last summer. Ted designs, sculpts and manufactures his own handmade line of military miniatures (www.tedtoy.com). They also operate a military miniatures, toys, and books shop in downtown Owensboro, Kentucky. Ted and Kate relocated to Kentucky fifteen years ago from Annapolis, Maryland, where they had both graduated with BAs from the St. John's College Great Books Program. Before committing to homeschooling her children when her eldest was six, Kate worked in a variety of fields (a librarian, a freelance writer and editor, in financial consulting, in management for an international building products corporation, and in counseling) and earned an MA in Mental Health Counseling from Western Kentucky University. Kate was born in Tehran, Iran, the sixth child in an American Presbyterian missionary famil

PLEASE join Leigh! as she talks with Dr. George Wiedmaier on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. EST. Dr. George Wiedmaier is the new Parenting Outreach Director for Focus on the Family. In addition to bringing a passion for the centrality and importance of parenting in our culture, he brings a unique, rich and intimate knowledge of parenting. He and his wife served as surrogate parents to 42 children and youth of poverty from urban NYC, Philadelphia, rural Pennsylvania, California, Washington and other regions of the U.S. Some of the daily activities included teaching academic enrichment programs, social skills curriculums, character education modules, daily devotions and personal health programs while modeling and living with school age youth as their surrogate parents. Dr. Wiedmaier received his master’s in Counseling from Alfred University and received his doctoral degree from the NOVA Southeastern University. His dissertation and research interest have surrounded parental education programs. His doctoral work delivered an extensive qualitative description of parents increasing personal awareness of their parenting style’s efficacy in motivating individual youth. As the work concentrated on surrogate parents, an emphasis and passion of his work resides in the topic of breaking the cycle of poverty and disadvantage through the medium of surrogate parenting. Dr. Wiedmaier lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Allysia and two daughters. This is an episode of blogtalkradio with 1SmartMama that you WILL NOT WANT TO MISS!

Rea Berg founded Beautiful Feet Books in 1984 to encourage the use of classic and historic literature in the home schooling community. She has written numerous guides for teaching history through literature that have been popular with parents and students alike. She and her husband Russ have brought back into print many notable children's works. Rea has a BA in English from Simmons College and recently earned a Master's Degree in Children’s Literature at the Center for the Study of Children's Literature in Boston where she was named a Virginia Haviland Scholar. She can be emailed at rea@bfbooks.com. The Beautiful Feet website is: www.bfbooks.com