I'm Camille Rodriquez, Executive Director of National Homeschool Academy. My path to this role has been full of lessons learned, both the smart way, and the long way. I have always been involved in education on some level however, and after many years of doing things well, but not always easily, I came across a new way of approaching my children's education and thus, National Homeschool Academy was born.

In 1991, I began homeschooling my first child as "an experiment" when she was three years old. I was determined to see if there was anything to homeschooling and knew that if it didn't work, or it demanded too much of my time, then I could always send her off to school. What I found however, was that I loved seeing my daughter learn. I loved watching her grow and having the opportunity to be there when she mastered a skill or a concept. Soon, though, as other children came along and time passed, I began getting bogged down in lesson plans, the questions of my own limitations, the questions of one curricula over another, the burden of being the sole teacher of different subjects to different children, and the demands of a busy schedule for a family of six.

And as things happened, financial limitations began to affect my choices. Ultimately, I found myself reluctantly heading back to work to teach at a private school in the area, my three youngest children in tow. There were some positive experiences there, I will admit that. But I began to grieve the compromises I was making. I began to see my children lose their sense of "how" to learn and trade that for a project completion mindset. So after two years, I made the decision to return to the home setting for their education, but this time, with a twist.

In 2005, I encountered a program of learning that changed my life. I began to see opportunities to teach my children how to learn with this program, not just what to learn, in a way that allowed them to regain their footing academically, and even to excel. This program, called the Gateway Programme, is a learning system that allows students to increase their own brain power and apply specific strategies to whatever they are learning. This removed the burden from me, and removed the pain of students, both mine and others, who had the potential to learn much more if only they were taught how to do it. So in the fall of 2005, I opened a school of my own, using this learning system and doing so in my own home. Not only did this allow me to return to the homeschool environment I had so deeply missed, but I was able to look forward toward a future generation of independent, self-motivated students that now spread across this country and in other countries. This vision and the opportunities for your child can be yours, too - Let me show you how!