About Passionate Homeschooler
Our Story
Deanna Heikkinen
Passionate Homeschooler was founded by Deanna Heikkinen, a former college professor turned homeschool teacher and advocate. After teaching community college for over ten years, Dr. Heikkinen decided to leave academia to pursue a new path of working with homeschool families as a private tutor and to develop an online enrichment co-op using curriculum she developed steeped in the greatness of Western Civilization.
As a Humanities and History professor, Deanna saw first-hand the assault on teaching the classics and the ideas of over 2,00 years of history of the West. Not only has there been a decline in teaching these works there has been a push to revise history to serve a particular agenda that casts these great works as antiquated obsolete, or even worse, immoral. Knowing that her love of classic literature, art, and using primary sources to teach history was under attack, she walked away and began working with homeschool students and building an enrichment curriculum that would celebrate the heroes of the past.
Not only has this path been rewarding to her, she has found that homeschool students are better prepared for learning, have more curiosity, and are truly engaged with their education. This realization has led her to also become a homeschool advocate where she offers free online webinars to help parents make the transition to homeschooling their children.
Passionate Homeschooler will be growing to include more instructors and more subjects that homeschool families can use to enrich the curriculum they are already using.