Classical Conversations  

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