Well, we are finally here. We began homeschooling when our daughter was in kindergarten, and nine years later, she is ready to enter high school. Seriously, how did that happen??

We've had many people asking us, "So, is she going to high school?" Our enthusiastic answer has been, "YES! At home!" While this is a point where many parents do choose to hang up the homeschool hat and send their children to private or public school, we are excited about continuing our homeschooling journey. It is amazing to watch our daughter's thoughts and skills unfold like a flower opening to the morning sun, and in this pivotal season, we are being careful to choose, and to help her choose, the academic input that will help guide her and prepare her for adulthood.

That said, high school feels BIGGER, doesn't it? Credits, transcripts, dual enrollment, CLEP, AP classes and testing, SAT, ACT, CLT, future plans - all of these can come together to make the most steadfast homeschool parent ask the big question, "AM I DOING THIS RIGHT?"

But like all of homeschool, and all of life, God is with us and provides us with the grace we need for the next step - and right now, that is ninth grade and choosing curriculum. Join me as I share what our ninth grader will be doing.

At the beginning of our homeschool journey, we decided to look for a co-op or other group program, believing that such would add an important element of social interaction for our children and support for me. There were a few programs near us. One was called Classical Conversations ("CC"). It met five minutes from our home and seemed to provide what I was looking for in that it was half a day and I could be involved, as opposed to a drop-off program we had also looked at. We paid our tuition and fees, and I even agreed to tutor that first year. Only a few months into our first year of homeschooling and first year with CC, I was approached about becoming the owner of a CC-affiliated tutoring program (aka "Foundations/Essentials Director"), which I did for the next five years. We left in 2019, primarily because of ethical and legal concerns about the CC business model, as well as growing concerns for the academics.

Classical Conversations, Inc., is a private company, founded and owned by Leigh Bortins and run by her son Robert Bortins, who is the CEO. In addition to CC, Inc., the Bortins family owns many other companies whose services are advertised on the main CC website: Math Map, LLC, Classical Conversations Multimedia Inc., and Homeschool Testing Services Inc. (now dissolved but still advertised on their Corporate website). They also own National Athletic Village, LLC, Twin Fields Farm LLC, a residential rental company called Bortins Enterprises LLC and a variety of other companies that seem to be inactive. Classical Conversations is best known for its affiliated "communities", or privately owned homeschool tutoring programs, that meet weekly during the academic year for ages 4 through high school.

I want to share here a clear review of the K4 through grade 6 Classical Conversations programs, Foundations and Essentials, which are the programs my children attended. (We did not ever enroll in the Challenge programs for grades 7 through 12, so while I have many concerns about those as well, I will leave others to review them). CC promotes its programs as "Classical Christian Community". How well do those terms truly describe this program?