HomeschoolToGo Brings ‘Holistic,’ Bilingual Education to Homeschooling Families
FREDERICTON – Houlie Duque, the founder and CEO of HomeschoolToGo, is creating a new form of homeschool education. Based in Fredericton, she wants to help homeschooling families worldwide with HomeschoolToGo.
HomeschoolToGo is a holistic and bilingual in Spanish and English homeschooling program, which Duque says is the only one of its kind worldwide.
The inspiration behind it all
Duque says she decided to start HomeschoolToGo after working in private schools for roughly seven years and wanting a different style of education for her child; she found that she could never truly help each child reach their potential when working in a large classroom.
“When you’re having to tend to [lots of] kids, you can’t really give each one of them what they really need because each child learns differently and has different talents,” Duque tells Huddle.
She wanted to help children reach their true potential at their own pace and with their interests in mind. Then, after the birth of her son, she decided that this was something she had to put into motion right away.
Duque started creating the curriculum for HomeschoolToGo in 2020, as soon as her son was born. She realized that by the time he was in kindergarten, she needed to have a holistic homeschooling program not only in motion, but established.
“By holistic, I mean that it goes beyond core academics,” she says. “[This means] emotional development, conflict resolution, character formation, hands-on lessons.”
However, a holistic education was not the only important aspect to her child’s education that she sought. Having grown up speaking both English and Spanish, she wanted to make sure that her child would be able to communicate in her mother tongue. This led to the inclusion of bilingualism in HomeschoolToGo.
So, what is HomeschoolToGo?
HomeschoolToGo is a homeschooling program that focuses on meeting children at their level of education to help them learn in an engaging environment while bonding with their parents as the teachers.
In no more than 10 hours of homeschooling per week, the program is completely customizable for every family. Duque says that with HomeschoolToGo, parent involvement is the key to success.
“We’re trying to break down the taboo that being involved is actually [difficult],” says Duque. “Our learning [is all] through games and projects.” She claims that this hands-on style of learning allows for not only parent engagement with their children, but also an interesting, fun, and stimulating environment for students.
Duque says that there are currently three teachers with HomeschoolToGo, however they are not so much typical teachers and more so support for the parents. They create and publish the curriculum for the parents, and then they provide a form of support for the parents and the children.
HomeschoolToGo believes that having lessons and projects done behind a desk is only needed for 1 – 2 hours per day, and no more than that. This is the part that they provide with hands-on lessons, projects, and games. However, Duque says that the true learning happens when children are out in the world living their lives.
“We teach the parents, we give them ideas on how whatever concept they’re learning, they can extrapolate to their daily life,” she says. “Really, the learning takes place while you’re living life.”
What’s to come?
HomeschoolToGo is on track to reach 100 students by September 2023. Currently, they have about 30 students but have big plans starting in the fall with the return to school.
Duque says that HomeschoolToGo is working on a partnership with a group of schools in Colombia, getting roughly another 50 students per school. They will first be testing this in one of the schools, and if that goes well, they will move into each of the 22 schools. They will also be hiring several new teachers, all of them bilingual in English and Spanish.
Along with this, Duque says that although they currently focus on elementary-aged homeschooling programs, they may debate introducing higher school aged programs at a later date. These would not be done in the same way as elementary aged homeschooling, but rather in specialized projects that students could partake in.
“We’re thinking it’s a possibility maybe, we would do stuff that most middle-schoolers would like, but not like right now with our full-time program,” says Duque. “But it’s up for debate, honestly.”
Currently staying focused on elementary aged students, Duque is excited to introduce HomeschoolToGo to even more families around the world. With a desire to improve the education of young children, she is proud to have begun a homeschooling business that is unlike any other.
Ryley Roach is a Huddle student intern, based in Fredericton. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected]