Hundreds Gather to Learn "What Matters Most"

Last week’s education conference sponsored by Latter-day Saint Home Educators (LDSHE) held at the Fredericksburg Expo Center encouraged discussion around a theme of “What Matters Most."

Families received information on the many tourism opportunities Fredericksburg offers and the LDSHE group set up several outings for fathers to take smaller kids on, such as hiking at Motts Reservoir and visiting the area battlefields. Some chose to tour downtown and one woman shared an experience touring Marye’s Heights and learning the history of the Fredericksburg Battlefield.

Things began with a special pre-event seminar with Susan Wise Bauer, co-author of The Well-Trained Mind.  Bauer, homeschooled herself, now encourages fellow home educators through her books and speaking engagements. In the morning she focused on helping teach writing. “Spelling is like North America and writing is Australia. There is a big space between them,” Bauer instructed a room of parents attending an elementary writing workshop. Later she spoke about college prep for parents with teenagers.

Concurrent to the Bauer seminar, those new to home education attended a group of classes that showed them what a typical day looked like for various families, testimonies of the power educating kids at home held, and browse the curricula that veterans use and love. One attendee remarked, “I feel so much better about my decision after hearing about other people’s days. I can’t wait to start in the fall.”

The main conference filled all of Thursday and Friday and several hundred attended from as far away as Switzerland.  Speakers began at 8:30 a.m. and classes were an hour in length. In a class entitled, “Joy of Science in a Busy Life," listeners heard about how speaker Kari Hilton worked science into every aspect of her home school. She talked about connecting science with history and math, not just treating subjects like they stood alone. Hilton joked that her kids said you cannot visit without your safety goggles.

Hilton was not the only speaker to talk about connections. Susannah Conrad spoke about “Connecting the Dots of History” and Laurie Muse also mentioned connecting subjects in her class entitled, “Making Family Learning P.O.P.”

The closing keynote speaker was local neurosurgeon, Jeff Poffenbarger. He tied in his experiences serving in Iraq to the theme of “The Things That Matter Most” in a way that engaged both youth and adults alike. His remarks ended with a standing ovation and several conversations across the ballroom.

Next year’s conference will be held at Southern Virginia University.