A Brave Writer's Life in Brief

Wake up the College Admissions Staff with an Awesome Essay!

College Admissions Essay Class

starts on August 25!

Don’t miss your chance to get your teen help!

If you’ve got college-bound high schoolers, it’s high time to work on that Common App or College Admissions Essay in time for early application deadlines.

Homeschoolers set themselves apart regularly through their powerful prose, demonstrating command of language and a wide range of unusual experiences. Grades for homeschoolers mean less to admissions officials. The essay is what gives your teen the chance to showcase homeschool in all its creative diversity!

Yet it can be hard to prioritize the writing of a killer essay when you are up to your elbows in the college hunt.

Are you in the midst of what I like to call “Operation Line-Up-Your-Ducks”? If so, you are visiting schools, taking tests, shopping online for the best popcorn popper, and filling out the Common App. Somewhere near you is a long to-do list. Some of the items on it take hours to complete. One of those items is “write my essay.”

Enter Brave Writer and our College Admissions Essay class, which begins August 25th and ends September 19th, and will send you into the fall with one item gloriously ticked off that list. Join us and create your essay with the enthusiastic support of Nancy Graham (our awesome instructor) and an online classroom of confrères (if you don’t know that word, look it up–your student may find it on the SAT).

Nancy is excited about this class because the college application essay prompts give you an opportunity to review your life up to this point and glean the moments that have made your student unique. Nancy gets to be the witness, goad, and cheerleader. It’ll be like spending an evening around a campfire near the top of a mountain, looking back down into the valley and sharing stories about the journey so far. Tell your teens to bring their laptops, memories, and a few s’mores.

The Essay as Capstone Project

The final results of this essay class will not only be exciting to college admissions officials, but to you, the parent–an amazing capstone project at the end of the wonderful homeschool years.

You’re nearing the end. (Sob!) Let’s celebrate together!

Read more here about how the class is structured.

Tuition: $229.00
4 Weeks: August 25 – September 19, 2014

Sign up today!

Fall Online Class Registration Opens TODAY!

Brave Writer is dedicated to the task of reuniting you and your kids in the joy of self-expression, captured in writing, using tools and practices that will absolutely overhaul how you experience each other and writing.

If you want to radically alter your homeschool, sign up for one of our writing classes this fall.

Truly Brave Writer classes are nothing like any other writing online class system out there. We’ve taught thousands of students and families from around the globe. We’ve been at it for 15+ years.

We know what we’re doing.

I am here to answer questions about classes, placement for your kids, and any other details that concern you. Please call me (I will answer, unless I am on the other line, in which case I will call you back asap). We do our best to ensure you get the right fit.

Our online classes require no change in your schedule to participate (you participate when you are alert, your kids are fed, and you have daylight in your time zone, if that’s what you prefer). They are taught by professional writers who also happen to homeschool or were homeschooled themselves (they know your life!).

The classes involve all students so you get to read their work, and the instructor feedback on ALL work in the class too—creating a supportive writing workshop environment.

Email: julie AT bravewriter DOT com

Or use the “Chat with us” option in the bottom right corner of our home page

Don’t delay! Some classes fill up quickly!

UPDATE: We are closing KIDSWRITE BASIC for August.

However, WE STILL HAVE SPACE in September (starts the day after Labor Day—9/02/14). Sign up before it fills too! We’ve got space right now, but I can’t promise how long it will last.

Image by Brad Flickinger (cc)

We’re really excited about Fall!

We have such a great line up this year and more offerings than ever. Don’t forget to consider classes like Nature Journaling, Photography and Writing, and Just So Stories.

We are not your usual writing company offering a school-like program that creates stress and performance anxiety.

We are all about HOME, convenience, personal attention, opportunity for un-graded risk and exploration in writing, support, affirmation, process, and satisfying progress.

Check out our line up of classes!

Also, if you need help with online class decisions, do contact me. I’ve got work to do at my desk and I’ll answer the phone or call you back. If you email me, I try to respond as quickly as possible (within 24 hours max, but often within the same day).

Image © Robert Byron | Dreamstime.com

It’s that time of year when we’re getting lots of email about online writing classes. We are different from what else is out there!

Here’s how:

1. We know what we’re doing. I started online classes in 1999 via email. We’ve had thousands of families go through our programs and what we do works. Period.

2. We offer classes for parents as well as their kids. We believe parents chose to homeschool because, well, they wanted to homeschool their kids. I wasn’t under the impression that parents who homeschooled wanted to find other people to do the teaching of their kids. Sure, we all want help (particularly in the upper grades in areas outside our skill set). But for the primary years in particular, most of us want to be home educators, not tutorial coordinators.

So, I decided to offer classes first to parents. They need to know how to teach writing even when they aren’t in a class. A core class, Brave Writer 101, teaches YOU how to be the best coach and ally to your child that you can be. Together, you and your kids learn to become a happy writing-editing team where your kids actually WANT your input and feedback (if you follow our plan, they’ll come back to you all the way to college to make sure they’ve had your set of eyes look over their work).

3. Our classes are only 3-6 weeks for a reason: you are busy homeschooling your children. We know how difficult it is to coordinate Select Soccer, dental surgery, your mother-in-law’s hip replacement, piano lessons, and moving to a new house with homeschool let alone a lengthy commitment to an online class with due dates!

Instead, you get to give a good quality burst of energy and commitment to a few weeks of quality, intense instruction and then take those lessons and apply them to your homeschooling practice once that session ends.

4. Our classes are not tutorials, but writing workshops with multiple students/families and one instructor. We create a support group atmosphere where everyone learns from each other—all questions, all feedback on all papers available for all to read. Suddenly feedback on work is normal—everyone needs it and gets it and it is shown to be supportive and valuable.

5. Our online classroom is asynchronous so everyone from around the world can participate during the hours you are most alert and ready to work. Why should you be tied to 10:00 a.m. every Monday and Wednesday? That’s like being in school. We are trying to accommodate home as much as possible. Log in when you are ready and the instructor will do the same. Questions get answered within 24 hours, feedback on papers within 48 hours (unless otherwise told—some high school work requires more time for feedback). All questions, any time of any day during the class session, are welcome and answered. That’s the whole point of the class.

6. We don’t use a video format because we want to strip down to words—reading words, writing words. It’s subversive really. Half the time your kids don’t realize they are writing. They are asking questions in writing, commenting in writing, discussing in writing. All that “typewritten thought” trains the mind to think, type, and write at once. When the student goes to actually produce a paper, suddenly they are aware that they know how to do it—they’ve been thinking and turning that thought into writing all along.

7. Our instructors are both professional writers AND home educators. We do more than teach writing. We coach you and your kids how to grow as learners, how to get along, how to maximize your homeschooling commitment. We’ve been there. We know how it is to work on writing with one out of seven kids while all h-e-double-toothpicks is breaking loose! We’re here to help.

8. We focus on writing voice first and add academic formats later. Easier to learn the formats with your voice in tact, than to go from formats to “injecting voice” later. Professional writers all know this.

So that’s it!

If you have more questions about our online writing program feel free to contact us at: [email protected]

Brave Writer Class Schedule