Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

When a family is thinking about homeschooling, whom do they ask for advice? Many take their questions to a homeschooling friend or neighbor. Today on Home School Heartbeat, Mike Smith and his guest discuss how this personal approach can encourage more families to try home education.

Mike Smith:
Today we're joined by Bruce Shortt. This homeschooling dad is spearheading a new program designed to encourage more families to start homeschooling. Bruce, thanks for being on the show.

Bruce Shortt:
Mike, it's good to talk with you again.

Mike:
Bruce, the new program called "Homeschooling Family to Family." Tell us about it.

Bruce:
Well, Mike, Homeschooling Family to Family is a call for homeschool evangelism and outreach. If you've been homeschooling for a while, you know that every year you talk to parents who in some way or other demonstrate a clear interest in homeschooling. Too often though, we answer the questions about homeschooling, but we usually don't go to the next step of attempting to bring that family into homeschooling.

Homeschooling Family to Family asks experienced homeschoolers to reach out to bring a friend, neighbor, acquaintance, or a relative into homeschooling. There are now well over 700,000 homeschooling families with five or more years of experience. If just 25 percent of those families brought new families into homeschooling each year, we'd easily double the number of homeschoolers within a few years and vastly expand and strengthen our national, state, and especially local homeschooling organizations.

Our mission is to help grow homeschooling and strengthen our homeschool organizations.

Mike:
Thank you, Bruce. And until next time, I'm Mike Smith.