Short Version:

     Joanne has been married to her husband, Tim, for 24 years.
           They are the happy parents of 8 great kids:

                                  Nick ~ 19     Lauren ~ 18     Taylor ~ 17     Franklin ~ 15

                                  Olivia ~ 13     Adrienne ~ 10     Lydia ~ 9     Lilienne ~ 7

Longer Version:

Joanne graduated from Geneva College in 1985 with a degree in Elementary Education. After teaching in the classroom environment for a while, she and Tim decided to embark upon The Parenting Journey. Nicholas down through Lilie were born in just 12 years. (”No, I did not, not, not enjoy being pregnant for 72 months! Are you kidding?”)

Life at the Calderwood house was usually rather peaceful thanks to a loose schedule that was developed after YEARS of trying to have a spotless house as though no children at all ever came to visit let alone live there.

Once Joanne realized that it was okay to have a messy house sometimes, everybody’s life became just a little bit happier. (Do not underestimate the power of a mama’s attitude.)

Tim and Joanne decided early on that they simply could not put their children on a school bus and allow other people they did not even know to spend huge amounts of time with their flesh and blood. Thus, home schooling became a wonderful option.

Joanne instituted a self-teaching method of education in her home once the oldest child was about 9 years old. She did this out of necessity, as there were babies to feed, laundry mountains to contain, meals to cook, floors to sweep and mop, groceries needing to be bought, and little ones to be read to, held, loved on, and schooled. The other children followed the self-teaching model, freeing Joanne up to be mom instead of school marm.

The children thrived and learned masterfully on their own, so Joanne tossed out everything she ever learned about educating children via her college education and decided to allow her children to set their own goals with light supervision.  

While the course of study was designed still by mom, the Calderwood children were surprsingly motivated by working at their own speed with minimal “interference” from a teacher. In fact, they each claimed at the beginning of a new school year that they preferred to work independently, with just a touch of oversight from mom.

Results?

Time marched on, and Nick graduated from high school and was the valedictorian of his umbrella school, ranking#1 out of 1,054 seniors. His perfect SAT score his senior year clinched him a spot a full tuition scholarships at the university of his choice. He was nominated by the US Department of Education as a finalist in the prestigious Presidential Scholars Program. Isn't that kinda ironic? A homeschooler nominated by the US D of E? Nick is currently a sophomore at Belmont University in Nashville, TN, double majoring in music business and law.

Lauren graduated from high school ranked 9th in her class of 1,059 in May 2008, a National Merit Scholarship Finalist (as was Nick), and also able to attend the university of her choice. She will be a freshman at Lee University this fall and will actually be *making money* by going to college. We are talking $4,000 per year put into her bank account as a result of her academic scholarships and awards that exceed her actual college tuition and room and board costs!

The story of the other six children is continually developing. All are normal kids who on some days really don’t feel like doing their schoolwork. They know better than to complain, however.

They know what is expected in the course of a day, and they do their work and have a whole lot of free time in which to pursue other interests which range from team sports of any variety to community theater productions, karaoke until 2 am, wild games of dad’s mad libs, apples to apples, quiet reading time, writing songs, and yes, they even watch DVDs and play Game Cube. All of this before supper! Isn’t home schooling freakishly awesome?

It may be of interest to some of our readers to know that over the past five years, Joanne has been employed full time outside of the home for three of those years. (The eight children insisted on eating and wearing out their clothes! Sigh.)  Because of the foundation of self-teaching, homeschooling continued seamlessly in her absence.

While Tim and Joanne feel strongly that the best place for mom to be is at home, they have learned not to make any laws on subjects as sometimes things happen that we don’t understand. Nevertheless, it is possible to homeschool *and* have both parents working, or to be a single parent and homeschool.

Professional Milestones:

Tim and Joanne have written a ten volume SAT Vocab Prep Course that is an addendum to the Robinson Curriculum (although they do not use the Robinson Curriculum.) Joanne is also the author of The Self-Teaching Manual: I'm the Mom; I Don't Have to Know Calculus.

She has written articles for several homeschool magazines, most notably for Home School Enrichment Magazine where she is currently a columnist both in print and online. Home School Enrichment offers a free report on Self-learning, which is actually a compilation of articles Joanne has written for them over the past year or so. To get a free copy of this report, pop over to their site at www.HomeschoolEnrichment.com/resources/report.htm.

Joanne has done numerous teleseminars and has spoken at many a Homeschool Conference in the United States over the past 5 years. She would really love to visit Canada one of these days. (Hint, hint)

Joanne is opening up her schedule in 2009 to once again travel and speak to those who have an interest in learning about how to experience Homeschool Freedom in their own home schools. Feel free to visit www.JoanneCalderwood.com for a description of the compelling seminars she is offering for 2009 and for information on how to schedule a seminar or two. (Her site is being updated in November 2008, and the seminar topics may not be available until December 1st, 2008.)

Joanne is perhaps most well known for creating The Homeschool STUDENT Planners and The Essential High School Planners. By now you probably know where you can go to find out more about these two award-winning items.

Feel free to also visit Joanne's education blog at www.HomeschoolCoach.Wordpress.com which is regularly updated. You'll find more family pics there as well.

If you are interested in joining a free Yahoo Group on the topic of self-learning, you can sign up to become a member of RaisingSL4Life@yahoogroups.com just by logging in and creating a Yahoo account if you are lacking one currently.

More than anything, Joanne is passionate about mastery in education, self-teaching which produces mastery, and coaching others in how to get the most out of homeschooling while remaining “Underwhelmed” by it all.