About Educational Trend

Sue and CC are a mother/daughter team who are passionate about home-schooling and believe it is a wonderful alternative to traditional schooling. They believe it is the future trend for education and want to support families who are endeavoring to provide their children with a well-rounded education that is tailored for each individual child, at home.

At present, the resources they offer are secondary science classes, but they hope to expand over the coming years.

Sue’s science background.

Sue has been a science educator for 30 years, beginning in 1988 when she won a national scholarship to undertake a postgraduate course at ANU in Science Communication. In that year she travelled to many parts of Australia with the Questacon Science Circus, spreading the wonder of science through fun and interactive demonstrations. That was the year the National Science and Technology Centre opened, for which Sue was one of the nine young graduate demonstrators.

Sue explaining the science behind an exhibit to the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Bob Hawke, at the official opening of the National Science and Technology Centre in Canberra, 1988.

Sue decided that she wanted to continue in education and so undertook a Postgraduate Diploma in Education but her Science Circus days always influenced her teaching style.  Practical classes were her forte.  She found that most students understood the theory of science better when they put it into practice.  Sue spent many years teaching high school science, specializing in Biology and Human Biology, including marking TEE exam papers for Human Biology.  She then spent a few years teaching primary school.  Her style was to teach with a thematic approach and her themes of course were mostly science orientated!

• When you hear you forget.
• When you see you remember.
• When you do you understand.

This old Chinese proverb underpins all Sue does in her science videos and classes.  Sue’s students invariably found her classes to be both enjoyable and educational.

About Science with Sue & CC

Science with Sue & CC began as a means to make Sue’s homeschooling science classes available to more people. Sue had been informally teaching science to small groups of friends for a few years during CC’s primary years, but when CC reached high-school, Sue decided she needed to provide something more thorough that would be in keeping with the Australian Curriculum. She figured that, if she was going to put that much effort into teaching CC, she should share it with other homeschoolers, and so began her science classes around Perth in 2016.

Families loved the practical nature of the classes but many found they could not make it to the classes or that the classes were full. And so the thought to put them on-line blossomed. CC, being technically minded and dramatic, added the IT skills and creative flare that provided Sue with the courage to give it a go.

Sue & CC’s homeschooling journey

Sue homeschooled CC from preprimary to year 8. They have both loved the journey and are really pleased with the strong foundation it laid for CC. CC is a very sociable person and so homeschooling for them always involved lots of activities with other people. A move to a new town in 2017 stimulated a change in education for CC and she began traditional schooling. Sue’s confidence in home-schooling grew even more as she observed how well CC adjusted to the new, challenging environment and how well she has achieved academically. CC is very happy to be going to school but is even more happy that she home-schooled until then. CC is a well rounded, articulate, friendly and outgoing young lady with an ability to cross generational barriers, which Sue is certain is largely due to her homeschooling journey.

Other areas of interest

Sue is also a photographer. Her photography business grew out of her passion for photography (which began in 1988 as she travelled Australia with the Questacon Science Circus – in the days of film!) and her love of taking photos of CC.  Soon all her friends were asking her to take photos of their babies and other friends were asking her to photograph their weddings. After 50 weddings and many more portrait sessions, Sue wound down photography to build up the on-line science classes.

Sue has also taught photography to homeschoolers and hopes to one day add video classes to the web site here.

Writing educational children’s books is another interest of Sue’s.  She likes to compose stories as she goes on holidays with CC and makes use of her photography from the trip to illustrate the stories.  Making them available through this website is another of her dreams.

Most importantly to Sue is her relationship with Jesus.  This is the reason she began homeschooling in the first place.  Sue felt convicted that it was her responsibility to raise CC, instructing her in the ways of the Lord, which was seeming to be increasingly difficult if CC was to be at school for most of her days. By homeschooling, Sue was able to place Bible study and character development as top priorities each day. Sue hopes to share some of this journey through her blogs and newsletter in order to encourage other’s in their home-schooling journey.