Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, I was a new mom, a big geek, and was just getting involved in this Internet thing. This was about 1997 and some unknown company called The Mining Company approached me to create a site about Cleveland, Ohio. I already had a Cleveland forum, which was an attempt to move my BBS system to the Internet. Well, long story short, they talked me into it and I became a Guide. I later became a Guide to Computer Action Games, as well. During my tenure, The Mining Company went through many changes, and became About.com. It also became less and less about writing, and more and more about how many ads they could stuff on a page. Fortunately, I cashed in my stock options and got out of there before the bottom dropped out.

What does this have to do with Homeschooling? Well, I met a number of very talented people when I was a guide, and one of them was Ann Zeise of A to Z Home's Cool. Back then she was called the Homeschooling Guide and the Milpitas Guide. At the time, I was a busy new mom and was not at all interested in homeschooling. I just mentioned to her what as shame it was that I never spent time at her site, because I may have started sooner with my children, rather than wasting their time in public school. I truly believe that my daughter only attends school because she is a social butterfly, and that she is learning almost nothing. My son is eager to learn, so he has absorbed more from public school than my daughter, but I honestly believe he learned more on his own, than he did sitting in classes that were far below his aptitude level.

Anyway, the point of this post is that Ann has an amazing resource in her site, A to Z Home's Cool and should be required reading for all new parents. I may not live long enough to visit every page and every great link on this site, but I can work on it, one day at a time.