Home school classes at Labyrinth

Anybody can propose a class to teach at Labyrinth. See this page for examples. Instructors are paid per student, $20-40 per month, anywhere from 5 to 20 students per class, for teaching one hour-long class per week for the duration of the school year (Sept10-May27, 32 weeks). Proposals are due mid-February for the following school year.

Classes I could teach:

Financial Management for the Home and Small Business. Introduction to financial spreadsheets including the income statement, balance sheet, and statement of cash-flows. We will analyze examples from poor, middle-class, and wealthy households as well as examples from small businesses and nonprofits. We will build cost-models to explore business ideas, and write a business plan.

Budgeting, Buying, Saving, and Investing Your Way to Independence. Failsafe ways to invest for prosperity and be financially independent by age 40. We will learn about compound interest, study the financial system and the history of the stock market, and become MS Excel whizzes. We will build personal budgets, forecast familial budgets, budget for large purchases, learn strategies for saving, and learn how to research and shop for maximum value by finding the sweet spot between quality and affordability.

Home Ec for Boys. This class is open to any gender, set apart from conventional home economics classes by its emphasis on the aspects of household stewardship which are traditionally -- not necessarily -- masculine. These include landscape management, tool use, basic building maintenance and repair, and the use and maintenance of machinery.

Knock 'Em Dead Presentations. Master the high art of the slideshow -- invaluable in business and higher education. We will master our MS Powerpoint (or Apple Keynote) skills, practice public speaking, and hone our powers of persuasion. We will learn how to distill ideas to their simplest and deliver them powerfully.

The Life Visioning Process. Learn and practice a powerful process for identifying your values, putting a finger on your dreams, and then moving those dreams toward reality by creating a matrix for analyzing multiple possibilities.

Decision-Making for Dreamers. Learn how to make decisions in this complicated world using the guiding maxim, "We can only making the best decision we can given the information we have at the time." How to gather and analyze information, consider trade-offs, and use your intuition to guide difficult and important decisions.

Learning and Practicing Geometry with Real-World Models. We will design and build fantastic buildings out of small wood, learning how to apply geometric equations to make all the parts fit together.

Sample earnings: 1 class at 10 students at $25 for 32 weeks = $250*8 = $2,000. Potential earnings with four classes = $8,000, or eight classes = $16,000. Importantly, the schedule would leave summers free for farming activities or camps.