About Us
An educator with experience in the classroom, online, and at home.
I’m Janet Goodrich, a former home educator and college English professor in the Northeast. I’ve taught at four different colleges in two different states, worked as an online writing tutor for an international educational company, and authored one book, but my most amazing experience has been homeschooling my two daughters.
Education
- M.A. & Ph.D. in English, University of Kentucky
- B.A. in English, Asbury University
- Micromaster’s Certificate, Instructional Design & Technology, University of Maryland Online
Teaching
- Asbury University
- University of Kentucky
- Pearson Education/Smarthinking (Online Writing Tutoring)
- SUNY Broome Community College
- Binghamton University
Homeschooling
As a child of public school teachers, I intended to send my children to public school. But as my oldest daughter finished her kindergarten year, I was underwhelmed.
- She spent most of her waking hours with people I didn’t know, and whose values I didn’t know
- She came home tired – too tired to create, and she was a creator – without much to show for it
- She was given movies to watch every day after lunch
Two things happened around that time. The first was that I met some homeschoolers who debunked all the stereotypes I had. (You know them all, I’m sure – especially the “s” word – socialization!)
The second was that I read Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Trained Mind and fell in love with the vision of home education. We started the next year on a “try it and see” basis, and ended up homeschooling both daughters all the way through to their high school graduation.
As I write this, one has graduated from college, and the other is starting her junior year. Our homeschool journey is complete. It’s been a wonderful ride, one that started with an educational vision but ended with an unforeseen treasure: rich family relationships, the kind that come from all that time together, and a deep gratitude for being able to live out this adventure.
Across the Page Courses
Now, my desire is to give back to the homeschool community by offering quality online English instruction for home educating families. By creating courses that hone attentive and thoughtful reading, deep thinking, and compelling writing, I hope to help others build on the strong foundation of homeschooling to develop young men and women that know who they are and can articulate it in a way that commands respect.
Across the Page Blog
My blog, started in 2007 , includes nearly 1,000 posts about books, poetry, faith, and our homeschooling experience.
Discovering Nature
I created a nature and photography blog in 2012 to record our family’s growing interest in nature study – a project that’s still ongoing.
“A sentence is both the opportunity and the limit of thought -- what we have to think with, and what we have to think in.”
Wendell Berry