About Me

Hi, I'm Rachel Staalsen and I want to tell you a little about myself.

I worked as an elementary school teacher for more than a decade. I loved teaching and poured myself into my job.

But when I had children of my own, I wasn't ready to send them off to school too quickly.  I decided to teach them for just one year...and then another...and before I knew it, my kids and I were enjoying homeschool so much, I couldn't bring myself to send them off in that little yellow school bus.

You see, I realized that my kids were getting a personalized education that fit THEM! They didn't have to waste time waiting for other kids to learn what they already knew, and they weren't learning bad habits from others. They were motivated to learn because they were interested in what we were studying.

It wasn't all easy! I had plenty of days where I was ready to quit! But I had a couple of mentors that encouraged me and some great homeschool co-op communities. I knew that my kids were getting more out of homeschool than they would in our public school.

We also focused on character education: helping neighbors, volunteering, Bible memory, and learning self discipline.

We took plenty of field trips that helped make learning come alive! But is was the deep personal relationships that I formed with my children that made a lasting impact.

Lev Vygotsky, an important psychology theorist, suggests that relationships are the primary method of knowledge acquisition. In other words: we learn most and best from relationships with others. There’s just nothing like homeschooling for building deep and lasting learning through relationships.

Our homeschool was so successful that our children graduated from high school with an average of two years of college credit each. They received multiple academic scholarship offers, and one of them was a National Merit Scholar!

My life was pretty sad and empty after we sent our kids off to college, so I returned to public school as a Gifted and Talented specialist and administrator. I had learned so much about tailoring learning to the interests of my own children that I did my best to replicate that with students. 

But it broke my heart to see how much of their time was wasted in school, how bored they were, and how sitting at desks for hours on end was so hard on kids. And I was horrified at the endless focus on standardized testing!

One of my jobs at the public school was to greet children each morning as they got out of their car. I wanted to scream at their parents: “No! Stop! Please take them back home to learn!” And that’s what I want to do for you: I want to use what I know and what I have learned to help YOU stay Home to Learn with your children. So follow me on Facebook or Instagram, or book a consultation on this website!