Speaking Schedule

Julie's speaking schedule fills quickly. 

Please contact her at [email protected] asap if you want to host her in 2025.

See me in 2024!  #

VA Homeschoolers [un]Convention

Location: Richmond VA—Virginia Museum of History and Culture
Date: Saturday, May 18
Registration Fee: $59 for members, $99 for non-members

Get $10 OFF registration when you use the code UNCON10 and register here.

• Nurturing Brave Writers Workshops
• In-Person Events
• Julie Bogart offers day-long workshops when her schedule permits to interested homeschooling organizations. Any parent or homeschooling group interested in hosting an event is invited to contact us at: [email protected]
• Via Webinar
• Julie also offers webinars covering a variety of topics for charter school communities as well as homeschool groups. Webinar topics are tailored to the needs of the organization. These webinars are conducted live with replays available to your community. For more information, contact us at: [email protected]
• Sample: Workshop Description for an in-person event
• The Nurturing Brave Writers Workshop is an in-service training for parents who homeschool their kids. But why limit it to homeschool? This workshop will empower any parent to be the best writing coach and ally they can be during the crucial developmental years of 8-18. We'll spend a Friday evening and all day Saturday together not just listening to Julie talk, but working together through various exercises, learning how to make use of the tools that enhance your children's writing abilities and most importantly, tackling that beast called writer's block that thwarts even the most passionate writers from time to time.
• Our time together will look like this:
• Friday night:
  Rescuing Reluctant Writers
  6:00 – 9:00 p.m.
• Saturday:
  Natural Stages of Growth in Writing
  9:30 – 10:45
• Brave Writer Lifestyle
  11:00 – 12:00
• LUNCH
  12:00 – 1:00 (local fast food options for off-site meal)
• Language Arts
  1:00 – 1:45
• Help for High School Writing
  2:00 – 3:00 (optional session for parents with older kids)
• Relaxed interaction, discussion, sales
  3:00 – 4:00
• Friday Night: Rescuing Reluctant Writers It seems everyone has one reluctant writer. And even the "natural writers" give their parents fits (they write run-ons and never finish their stories and hate assigned writing but love to keep journals…) The Friday Night Workshop is devoted to stripping away myths about writing and the teaching of it.
• Are you under the impression that kids need to write every day?
• Do you wonder why your 12 year old is a bad speller?
• How much help can you give before the writing is no longer an original product and is yours instead?
• How do you foster an environment of safety and risk at the same time?
• When should I worry that my child is behind in writing? What should I do then?
• We'll look at how relying on the old adages about writing actually cripples your writers, or damages their authentic voices. Not only will we look at your writers' struggles, but also your insecurities about teaching writing. Friday night is both therapy and practical support in liberating your writing program from the oppression of wrong thinking about writing. Don't miss it!
• Saturday Morning: The Natural Stages of Development in Writing Saturday morning we click along.
• Wonder whether your child should be writing essays or short stories, cartoons with captions or villanelles?
• Have you tried to edit/revise your child's writing only to be shut down by tears or resistance?
• By mid-morning you'll be able to identify what developmental phase of writing each of your children is in. We'll look at practices and principles that will help you to shape a tailor-made curricula that will give both you and your children confidence that progress is being made. And yes, you'll do some writing to help foster that understanding. Natch!
• Midday: The Brave Writer Lifestyle
  Once you have a sense of how the writing process works and how to apply it to your unique child, we'll show you how to create a lifestyle that makes writing as natural as learning to speak.
• Poetry
• Spelling
• Art
• Nature study
• Grammar
• Shakespeare
• Copywork
• Dictation
• Grammar
• Reading
• Teatimes, art museum visits, nature hikes
• And more….!
• This is where writing gets fun!
• Afternoon: Help for High School
  At the end of the day, I'll show you the "down and dirty guide" to getting through high school writing with the minimum fuss and maximum results.
• The three writing formats essential to success in high school
• Preparation for the SAT/ACT writing portions of the tests
• How to ensure a properly rounded composition/literature curricula over four years
• Nurturing Brave Writers is the hands down best way to transform your writing program in one fell-swoop. Not only that, we have such a great time together! You'll love meeting other Brave Writer moms (who happen to be among the most genuinely kind, earnestly caring mothers I've ever met) and you'll get a chance to pick my brain. Bring your favorite pen and a fat notepad (or laptop!). We'll work together to write, write, write and change how your homeschool functions for good.
• I want to share a story that for me typifies what the "Nurturing Brave Writers" Workshop is all about.
• One of the participants at a workshop in 2008 shared how much her daughter hated writing. This mom felt like helping her daughter with her writing projects would be to give in to her daughter's bad attitude. So she punished her daughter by sending her to school (took away the privilege of homeschooling!). Yet this mom came to the workshop anyway, hoping to glean some ideas of what could be done to help her daughter grow as a writer even while in school.
• After our time together and a good personal conversation over lunch, this mom went home with a new mission: to support her daughter with interest, practical help and affirmation. The next morning, her daughter had to produce a report for English. Rather than simply writing a report on a sheet of notebook paper, this mother chose to help her daughter create a lapbook. They took an entire day cutting out pictures, doing research, typing up information, creating interesting flaps for the book. About two-thirds of the way through their work together, the daughter (age 10) turned to her mother with a big smile on her face and said, "This is so much fun. You must really love me." Gulp.
• The mom sent me an email the next morning to say: "I got it." She suddenly saw that woven throughout our work with our children is another message: They are lovable. They deserve our time. Their voices are worth preserving in writing.

• The Nurturing Brave Writers Workshop is specially designed for homeschooling groups of 40-100 participants. To host one in your community, you will need to be able to provide the following:
• A Venue (place to hold the event: YMCA, a room in a library, a church, a homeschool building, a hotel conference room)
• Advertising to homeschool groups in your area (announcements, contacting leaders, emailing to list serves, posting notices in places where homeschoolers congregate, etc.)
• We need a minimum of 50 participants.
• The Nurturing Brave Writers Workshop covers the following material:
• Understanding the role of empathetic nurturing in releasing writing. Both reluctant writers and prolific writers are in need of that special support that gives them the self-confidence to take writing risks. In the Friday night session, we interact through paired sharing, writing, using the whiteboard and lecture material.
• Learning what the natural stages of growth are in a writer's life and how to specifically apply those to your children.
• We look at how to create a rich language arts environment as well as how copywork and dictation function in the Brave Writer Lifestyle. Grammar, spelling, punctuation and mechanics are all addressed.
• The afternoon session on Saturday is devoted to high school and academic writing to help take the mystery and intimidation out of it.
• These workshops are more than a set of formulas to follow when you get home. We aim to transform not just how you understand the writing process, but how you relate to your interesting, quirky, endlessly fascinating children who have so much to say, yet have not discovered the power of putting their words into writing. There are ways to unleash that writer within your child. It's up to you to foster the empathetic, nurturing environment that creates that safe context. By the end of our workshop, you'll go home knowing that you are the perfect person to lead your children into the writer's jungle.
• To set up a workshop in your area, email [email protected]