About Us

Sonya Shafer

Simply CM Co-Founder

Sonya and her husband John have four daughters, whom they homeschooled all the way through with Charlotte Mason’s wonderful methods. Three have graduated, and now Sonya spends her time continuing to educate their youngest—who has special needs—and doing all she can to make it simple for you to use the Charlotte Mason Method.

Richele Baburina

Richele is the author of The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series and Brush Drawing: A Basic Course. Passionate about sharing how simple methods rest on profound principles throughout Charlotte’s philosophy of education, she presents on a variety of topics and is a regular contributor to homeschool magazines. Both her children have graduated using Miss Mason’s gospel-based philosophy of education. They reside in the foothills of the Appalachians in Northeast Tennessee, where they still go on nature walks together. Follow her journey on Instagram @rbaburina.

Christy Hissong

Christy discovered the work of Charlotte Mason over 20 years ago and has been actively learning, mentoring, and teaching from that wellspring ever since. She currently serves on Simply Charlotte Mason’s content creation team, and teaches high school students at Oak Cottage, a Charlotte Mason cottage school in northeast Tennessee. One of Christy’s personal passions is music, and she has led and participated in choirs and vocal ensembles all her life. She loves helping parents discover ways of implementing Charlotte Mason’s principles and methods in their own homes.

Kristin Keller

Kristin grew up in a military family, so she’s lived in six states but considers San Diego her hometown. She and her husband now live in central Illinois where they have homeschooled their two daughters from the very beginning. Home education and Charlotte Mason’s methods have added so much richness to their lives.

Always interested in literature, grammar, composition, and rhetoric, Kristin majored in English. She especially enjoyed coursework in literary analysis, poetry, Shakespeare, and British literature. It is a joy for her to use her skills and interest in English studies to create and edit curriculum content. When she’s not working, Kristin usually has her nose in a theology book or novel. She also leads an AHG troop, teaches in children’s church, and has led co-op classes.

Katie Thacker

Katie has a B.A. in Communications from Virginia Tech, and still lives in Southwest Virginia near the university with her husband and two girls. She has graduated one of her girls from her homeschool and is enjoying her time finishing up high school with her youngest. Using the Charlotte Mason method from the moment she brought her children home from public school, she is thankful for the wisdom and resources made available to families today. Her work experience includes various writing and editing positions, including a university research institute and software engineering firm. In addition, she has been teaching dance and gymnastics for over 25 years and teaches high school history and literature at her local Charlotte Mason homeschool co-op.

Linda Burklin

Linda Burklin was raised in Zambia by missionary parents, attended a British boarding school there, and was homeschooled herself before going on to American boarding schools. She homeschooled her seven children for a total of 30 years. She has a degree in English and for the last 25 years has taught English, Literature, and Social Studies classes to her own and other homeschooled students, both in co-op classes and in her home. She lives in East Texas with her husband and youngest son.

Rebekah Carlson

Rebekah Carlson is a second-generation homeschooler and has two delightful children, Ingrid and Jonah. She and her husband, who is an English Literature professor, found Charlotte Mason’s writings early on in their homeschooling journey, and for the past eight years, their family has enjoyed the rich life that a CM education affords. 

Rebekah holds a degree in Violin Performance from Wheaton College (IL) and has been a member of several professional orchestras. She is a registered violin teacher with the Suzuki Association of the Americas and has taken her students on performance tours to Austria, Germany, Italy, and Ireland. Rebekah loves music history and has a passion for demystifying the world of classical music to make it accessible to everyone! 

Karen Glass

Karen Glass has a BA in English and has been studying and learning about Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of education since 1994. She homeschooled her four children who are now all adult graduates, but her passion for this life-giving view of education has not diminished and she welcomes opportunities to share it with others. She has spoken at homeschool conferences, taught online classes, conducted teacher training at schools, and most recently acted as an adjunct professor to teach college-level classes. She is the author of several books based upon Charlotte Mason’s ideas, including Consider This, Know and Tell, In Vital Harmony, and most recently Much May Be Done with Sparrows. After living in Krakow, Poland for almost 25 years, she now lives in rural Indiana where she continues to read, learn, teach, and write.

Lanaya Gore

Lanaya Gore has written Laying Down the Rails for Children as well as other books that help homeschool families easily implement the Charlotte Mason method. She received a B. A. in Christian Education and also received a husband from the same institution. A quick poll of her children discloses that she enjoys Making Lists, Cleaning, and Getting Things Done, to which she would add: reading, nature walks, hot teas, coffee, and blogging about her family. Lanaya and her husband currently live in rural Missouri. They have homeschooled their children using the Charlotte Mason method from the beginning—two having graduated and two still in progress.

Larry Hunt

Larry Hunt is a professor of English at Harding University in Arkansas where he lives with his wife, Janet, and their two children. Both he and Janet are passionate believers in homeschooling and are grateful for the experience of being involved in Cross Creek Cottage, a wonderful Charlotte Mason co-op where Larry teaches classes in Plutarch, high school literature, and Latin. He loves gardening and writing and is the author of Conversations on Character, a series of guides and videos to Plutarch’s Lives, which are inspired by the experience of teaching at the co-op.

Emily Kiser

Emily Kiser is mother to four unique born persons whom she has been homeschooling with the Charlotte Mason Method for the last ten years. Additionally, she has operated a private lending library full of living books for local families in northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia for the last eighteen years. Emily has hosted A Delectable Education podcast for the last ten years and it is her great delight to put her B.A. in studio art to use producing the Picture Study Portfolios and Bible Picture Portfolios for Simply Charlotte Mason. As a perpetual student, Emily can imagine no greater joy than to share in the educational journey of her own four children as they enjoy the feast of ideas and build relationships in as many directions as possible under the ultimate guidance of the Holy Spirit—the Supreme Educator of Mankind.

Michele Jahncke

Growing up taking mental pictures of the NE Iowa landscape then going on to get a degree in photography, Michele Jahncke was thrilled to find that Charlotte Mason encouraged the same sort of rapt attention in viewing a scene in order have beautiful pictures to hang in the gallery of one’s mind.

Having found Miss Mason’s ideas when her children were young, she went on to graduate four of her five children implementing the methods and philosophy of education she found to be so life-giving and Christ-centered. Drawing on her 20+ years of experience, she has tutored, taught in a co-op setting, and enjoyed instructing children and teens at a Charlotte Mason Cottage School.

Nestled in NE Tennessee, Michele continues her education helping those with learning differences, studying Miss Mason’s practical principles, writing, and filling the gallery of her mind.

Lorene Lambert

Lorene Lambert is a historian, teacher and writer, as well as the mother of three adult children, all of whom were homeschooled using Charlotte Mason’s wise and practical methods. Now in her third decade of teaching in both homeschool and classroom environments, Lorene cherishes the opportunities she’s been given to engage her students with a feast of living books and ideas. As the author of numerous middle-grade history books, she seeks to tell the stories of the past with truth and grace, hoping to inspire her readers to dig deeper and quest further.

Lorene currently resides in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her husband and the World’s Friendliest Dog; along with teaching and writing, she spends her time treasure-seeking in local bookshops, savoring the outdoors, and serving her church and local community.

Julie Ryle

Julie Ryle is a homeschooling mom to four, three by the miracle of birth and one by the miracle of adoption. She received her doctorate in mathematics in 2009 from the University of Alabama. Following that, she intended to stay home with her children just until they were all “in school,” when she could continue teaching math at the collegiate level. However, she fell in love with homeschooling when her eldest was five years old, discovered Charlotte Mason’s philosophies the following year, and is still enjoying learning alongside her children! She has always found outlets for sharing her passion for math and has taught for more than twenty years in differing capacities, ranging from gifted middle school “competitive” math to collegiate courses. She now shares her love of math with homeschoolers through online classes with Climbing Higher Math and writing geometry textbooks for Simply Charlotte Mason.

Rebekah Shafer

Rebekah was homeschooled with the Charlotte Mason Method all the way up through high school graduation with an emphasis on arts and creative writing, which she has applied to write the Shakespeare in Three Steps series. Over the years she has developed her business skills alongside creative work and uses them to earn a living and keep her two cats in treats.

Jordan Smith

Jordan is a second-generation Charlotte Mason homeschool dad, joining his lovely wife Ruth as much as he can in the joy of teaching their four daughters. He loves to bring Charlotte Mason’s wonderful methods and educational philosophy to others by making things simple. As a church music team leader, guitarist, and self-described hymns nerd, he brought his passion for church music to the book Singing the Great Hymns.

Ruth Smith

Ruth Smith is a wife, a mother, and a home educator of four girls. Raised according to Charlotte Mason principles herself, she is passionate about helping children form their own connections with the great works of poets, artists, and authors.

Tabitha Wirges

Tabitha Wirges is the mother of three teenage boys, the wife of an adventurous husband, and a daughter of Christ. She believes that “a person’s a person no matter how small” and that every person has a math brain in their own unique way. Her journey of homeschooling their boys began in 2020, shortly after earning her bachelor’s in math at the University of Central Arkansas. Soon she was diving into Charlotte Mason’s enlightening teaching philosophy. Teaching others has always been a passion of hers, and Mason’s philosophy resonated with that passion. Since then, she has been blessed with opportunities to help students see the beauty of math; including tutoring and teaching middle school math at Crestwood Day School, a private Charlotte Mason school. Working with Dr. Julie Ryle in writing geometry books and creating Climbing Higher Math has been another outlet for her passion and is such a huge blessing!