Homeschool Helps was designed by Karen Koehler-Cesa, one homeschooling mom, during her 11th-14th years of homeschooling, co-op’ing and/or “Hybrid Schooling” (“once-a-week” or “university model” schooling for homeschoolers).

Karen holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Master's Degree from the Pennsylvania State University; both in the field of Speech-Language Pathology. She also holds a minor degree in the field of Linguistics. Prior to homeschooling, Karen gravitated within her field toward working exclusively with the deaf and hard-of-hearing. She designed a curriculum, authored a text and established a small publishing company to help rectify some of the issues associated with poor speech skills and lower literacy rates among the deaf population.

She and her husband, Glenn Cesa, homeschooled their four children from 1994 through 2006, then taking a “homeschool hiatus” until 2008 when they returned to homeschooling. Once entering the homeschool arena, Karen became involved in orchestrating many programs for homeschoolers, field trip activities, and she served several years on local support group councils. She also has provided workshops and seminars on various topics within the local homeschool community. In the early years of her homeschooling, Karen provided a small-scale co-operative in her home in which she taught various subjects for four years. As her family and homeschool needs grew, she helped develop, establish and run a larger scale Classical Co-op, teaching primarily Latin and Critical Thinking Skills at various grade levels. This parent-teacher co-op then evolved to provide an additional extension program of a professional-teacher “Hybrid School”. The “Helps” provided at Homeschool Helps have come from these years of personal homeschooling, co-op’ing, running a Hybrid School and speaking at Homeschool engagements.

Over a few years, Karen developed this site, and she eventually hopes to invite others in her academic co-op to contribute some of their “Helps” as well. All of the contributed Helps have been “field tested” by being used beneficially in personal and/or in co-op and Hybrid School settings by homeschooling parents/teachers.

The primary purpose of creating this site was to make available to other homeschoolers some of the tips, ideas, plans, mnemonic devices, charts, forms, chants, curriculum syllabi, and more that have used and benefited homeschoolers over the past years of homeschooling.

Homeschool Helps is starting off with only a few of its pages actually ready for viewing/purchasing, but it is the hope to continue to complete the remaining pages on a steady basis, and as consumers request them, making all the listed Helps available to the homeschooling community.

Karen Koehler-Cesa, M.Sc. CCC-SLP, K-C Publications