About
At TLA, we believe that you, the parent, are your child’s primary educator and that you know your child best. We support your choices and goals for your child’s learning and recognize that your child is a unique individual. We consider it a privilege to partner with you in their educational journey.
Flexible, caring, friendly, passionate about learning, and dynamic are just some of the adjectives that best describe TLA’s SchoolAtHome program and its team.
Click to view 'Our Mission'
The mission of TLA Online is to assist parents in making wise and informed choices for their children’s education at home. Whether through traditional homeschooling or through our DL program, students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 learn successfully in the context of the family, and our role is to support parents’ choice in how to educate their children.
We achieve this by providing counseling for families who are considering home education options. Families who choose to traditionally homeschool have full access to the resources and activities we offer, such as book rental, classes, fieldtrips and online resources. In our DL program, families are served by BC-certified teachers who provide professional curriculum advice, guidance, support, and evaluation, so that students will meet the provincial learning outcomes, while retaining the unique context of learning at home. Our motto is “family first”, and we strive to facilitate learning within a multitude of family settings and philosophies, whilst still upholding, and often exceeding, the provincial standards. We maintain a Christian worldview among the staff, which provides a consistent model and unified approach to education. We welcome and support families from all backgrounds.
We emphasize supportive, collaborative, and professional working relationships between staff, parents, and students, and we endeavour to build an effective learning community across BC. Our DL program home teachers, for the most part, live in the communities of the K-9 students they support. We also employ a wide variety of communications technologies to ensure that relationships are built and maintained, both locally and at a distance across Grades K-12. Our online-course teachers are subject experts and experienced teachers with a passion for home education in high school.
Our DL program is divided in to the following departments:
K-9:
Students in K-9 are each assigned a home teacher to plan, oversee, facilitate and evaluate learning. The Vice Principal: K-9 oversees this program.
Junior High (8-9):
Grade 8 and 9 students have the option to take up to 6 courses online taught by subject specialist teachers, in addition to having a home teacher to oversee the whole program. The Junior High Coordinator provides counseling for students and parents in these grades.
Grad Program (10-12):
Students take online courses (with some paper based options) written and facilitated by subject specialist teachers. The Vice Principal: Grad Program oversees each student’s program and ensures that graduation requirements are met.
Special Needs (K-12):
Our special needs program provides students with Level 1, 2, or 3 special needs with individualized programs supported in the home. A Learning Assistance program also helps support students with moderate learning challenges. The Vice Principal: Special Needs oversees the program.
Click to view 'Our History'
Traditional Learning Academy was founded in response to pleas from parents for their children to be educated in a setting that ensured a high quality education, provided a spiritual environment and supported the family.
Allan Garneau, the founder of TLA, resigned his post as a principal with Vancouver Public Schools with the hope of fulfilling the wishes of these parents and in 1991 Traditional Learning Academy opened its doors.
From the beginning, TLA worked with homeschooling families not only to set up the registration process, but by offering support services. TLA pioneered the notion of allocating part of the Ministry grant to help parents obtain quality resources.
Over the years, TLA has consistently served about one third of homeschooling families in BC, and is renowned for its advocacy for homeschooling provisions in the School Act.
With a strong philosophical position of recognizing the role of parents as the primary educators of their children, TLA closely monitored the onset of DL programs in the public schools. Many of the programs were set up to bring homeschoolers back into the public system and families accepted accountability in return for teacher and financial support.
Parents soon discovered to their dismay that public programs could not allow the use of religious resources. TLA urged the Ministry to allow independent schools to start DL programs thereby allowing families who wanted to educate from a position of faith to partake in the DL option. We are proud to say that we were among the first five independent schools given permission to pilot the DL program.
TLA remains committed to serving families as traditional homeschoolers and in our well established DL and online program. Our teachers and office staff are committed to supporting you and your family in every aspect of your children’s learning.
Click to view 'Technology Requirements'
In order to sign up for TLA’s distributed learning program, you will need:
- a computer with Java and Flash installed
- internet access (preferably high-speed, or at least unlimited dial-up, although even limited dial-up access will do)
- a parental e-mail address (any students requiring access to the system will be provided with their own @schoolathome.ca e-mail addresses)
- a word-processing program that can open and save in MS Word format (the free OpenOffice.org program will do)
- a PDF viewing program (Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader is good)
A few of our product offerings, such as SuccessMaker and Auralog, require access to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web-browser. Our main TLA Online site will work with any modern web-browser.
Click to view 'FAQs'
More details about ‘FAQs’ coming soon…
Employment Opportunities Available
Position
Part-time office assistant with the possibility of expanding to full-time in the future.
Responsibilities
- Front office reception
- Data entry and manipulation
- Photocopying, filing, faxing and other administration duties
- Provide assistance to the secretary, principal and vice principals as required
Qualifications
- Be committed to Christian values.
- Have at least two years of office experience, preferably in an educational environment.
- Be highly personable with a good telephone manner.
- Have excellent computer skills particularly with spreadsheet, publishing software and online tool.
- Have strong problem solving and time management skills including the ability to prioritize effectively.
- Be able to work independently and in a team environment.
- Be able to take initiative and be proactive with anticipating needs, dealing with deadlines and priorities and fluctuating workload.
- Pay close attention to detail and ability to focus on multiple projects.
- Be able to work to a flexible time schedule.
Applicants should submit a resume, cover letter and statement of faith by e-mail to kgledhill@schoolathome.ca.
Position
Special needs teacher for the 2012-13 school year.
Qualifications
- Be a BC Certified Teacher.
- Have an affinity for home schooling families.
- Have strong computer skills (eg. Word, Excel, google docs, google sites, Moodle).
- Have strong administrative skills (eg. reporting, budgeting).
- Able to read and understand psycho-educational assessments and medical reports.
- Have experience writing individual education plans.
- Have experience working with students with autism and severe behaviour.
- Be familiar with the supports, strategies, and resources needed to design effective individualized education programs for special needs students (K-12).
Applicants should submit a resume, cover letter and statement of faith by e-mail to kgledhill@schoolathome.ca.
Applications are always welcome as TLA may need additional teaching staff and SEAs as we grow. We have two main categories of teaching staff:
Home Teachers
- Develop, in collaboration with parents, each student’s learning plan
- Develop, in collaboration with parents, a process for each student’s evaluation
- Maintain weekly communication with parents and students, face to face, and through technological means, and keep a log of all such communication
- Assign periodic individual assignments for students to validate at home progress
- Arrange periodic group lessons, field trips and or discussions/forums
- Facilitate the administration of Ministry and TLA standardized testing
- Prepare three formal written reports on each student
Subject Specialist Teachers
- Provide support for students in specific subjects
- Monitor students progress in courses and provide online and/or face to face teaching as required
- Provide regular reporting to parents on progress of student
- Develop and update online courses
Please note that teachers may fulfill responsibilities in one or more areas.