Eight years ago, I sat across from a school principal and heard something that stopped me cold.
She told me — matter-of-factly, as if it were simply good strategy — that she instructs her teachers to pay less attention to the gifted students and the ones who are struggling, and to focus almost entirely on the middle-of-the-road kids. The ones most likely to nudge the school's standardized test scores up. The ones who would bring in more tax dollars.
My children were not in that middle. And apparently, neither were a lot of kids.
What made that moment even more striking is that my husband had taken a job at a public school the year before. He saw firsthand what life inside those walls looked like — the pressures teachers faced, the priorities that got set, the kids who fell through the cracks. After a year of that, he came home and asked me to consider homeschooling our children. I wasn't sure at first.
Eight Years In
That was eight years and three kids ago. Homeschooling has become one of the greatest adventures of our lives. We've read thousands of books together. We've dissected owl pellets, played piano until the neighbors probably wanted to move, painted watercolors that now cover our walls, and done science experiments that may or may not have permanently stained the grout.
We love books. We love music. We love science and art. Our house is full of all of it — stacked on shelves, piled on nightstands, spread across the dining room table on any given Tuesday.
We follow a blend of Classical and Charlotte Mason approaches, which means we care deeply about great literature, nature study, living ideas, and the kind of education that forms the whole child — not just the parts that show up on a test.
The Planner Problem
A few years into our homeschool journey, I went looking for a planner. Not a teacher's planner with a new cover slapped on it. Not a generic weekly calendar with a "homeschool" label. I wanted something built for the actual life of a homeschool family.
I wanted reading lists and personal goals. Chore charts and meal planners. Lesson plans for multiple kids at different grade levels. Summer activity pages. A babysitter information sheet. A date night planner (because homeschool parents need those too). Party planning pages. Something that understood that homeschool life doesn't stop at 3pm — it's woven into everything.
I couldn't find it. So I built it.
Why Autumn Road
I have a Master's degree in Educational Leadership from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. I understand how schools work, how curriculum is designed, and how children actually learn. And I can tell you with confidence: the best education happens when a child is seen, known, and taught as an individual.
That's what Autumn Road is built on. Every product I create is designed for real homeschool families doing the real, beautiful, sometimes chaotic work of educating their children at home. Families who believe their kids deserve more than the middle of the road.
If that's you — welcome. I'm so glad you're here.
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