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Zan Tyler's life as a speaker, writer, homeschooling mother and advocate was born over twenty years ago with a sense of God's calling and in the midst of great adversity. In 1984, Zan and Joe Tyler found themselves in a quandary when their local school board denied their initial application to homeschool. In a follow-up meeting, the South Carolina State Superintendent of Education threatened Zan with jail. The Tyler family spent the next eight years fighting for the rights of SC homeschoolers in the legislature, in the judicial system, and in the court of public opinion. Zan and Joe homeschooled each of their children from kindergarten through high school, for a total of twenty-one years.
As an acquisitions editor for Apologia, Zan's goal is to develop and publish biblically-based resources that will empower parents in the purpose and process of homeschooling. She says, "In 1984, I read a book that gave me the courage and the vision to homeschool despite overwhelming obstacles. I know firsthand the power of the written word to equip us to pursue God's calling in our lives. My passion at Apologia is to bring the best possible authors and resources into the lives of homeschooling parents. "
In addition to developing homeschooling resources, Zan derives deep joy from speaking to and encouraging homeschooling parents across the country and around the globe. "After speaking at a conference in Japan, I spent time with a mother who said, 'You gave me strength because you gave me Christ.' My heart soared because my greatest desire is to give parents a sustainable vision for raising their children for Christ while providing them the very best education."
Zan is the author of Seven Tools for Cultivating Your Child's Potential. She is a popular on-line columnist and her articles appear in a variety of publications including homeschooling magazines, the Court Report, and academic journals.
Zan founded the South Carolina Association of Independent Home Schools in 1990 and served as its president for 10 years. In 1987 she was honored as the South Carolina Homemaker of the Year. Additionally, she co-authored the book Anyone Can Homeschool with Dr Terry Dorian in 1996. In 1999 she appeared on NBC's Today Show with Katie Couric. The Governor of South Carolina awarded Zan the Order of the Palmetto in 1998, the highest honor a civilian can receive.
Zan has recently served as the National Grassroots Director for ParentalRights.org and as the Homeschool Editor and Resource Consultant for LifeWay.com's Web Network (www.lifeway.com/homeschool). For four years she worked with B&H Publishing Group as an acquisitions editor developing a homeschool line of books and resources.
Where are Zan and Joe Tyler's kids now? Ty, the oldest, is married to Tammy and they are the parents of two beautiful girls. Ty is pursuing a successful sales career. John is married to Christine, and their first son was born in 2008. John is entering his last year of law school. Lizzy is a rising senior at Asbury College, where she is a media communications major. She recently had the opportunity to work at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. All three attended college on a variety of scholarships based on academics, athletics, leadership ability, community service, and/or the fine arts.
Most importantly to Zan and Joe is that they all continue to love each other and they are all seeking to serve and glorify Christ in their adult lives.
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Zan Tyler Presentations
(Click any presentation to see description.)
Seven Tools for Cultivating Your Child’s Potential Worldview Training: Teaching Your Children to Think Like a Christian in a Non-Christian World Raising the Daniel Generation Cultivating a Servant’s Heart in Your Child Praying Powerfully for Our Children Life in the Fiery Furnace How God Uses Our Weaknesses and Limitations as Homeschooling Mothers Becoming Sarah’s Daughter: Replacing Fear with Faith Ten Training Tips for Running the Homeschool Marathon Creative Ways to Cultivate Your Child's Potential Tips for Inspiring Creative Service in Our Children Creative Use of the Holidays in Homeschooling The Vision of the Homeschool Husband and Dad – Leaving a Legacy (Given by Joe Tyler) The Keys to a Biblical Marriage (Given by Joe Tyler)
Seven Tools for Cultivating Your Child’s Potential
You can have the best homeschooling year ever! Your vision will in large measure determine your success.. In this session we will explore the power and the purpose that God has invested in your home and family, and in you as a parent. Secondly, we will identify some simple but dynamic guidelines for strengthening the relationships in your home. (Vibrant relationships provide a strong foundation for both teaching and learning.) Thirdly, we will learn how to discover and recognize the gifts, strengths, learning styles, and special purposes that God has placed within your children. (We will also discuss ways to minimize conflict in your home and school day.) These first three topics (tools) lay the groundwork for providing stimulating and creative academics in a supportive and loving environment. Our goal is to train children who love the Lord, know how to engage their culture for Christ, and can use their gifts to serve those around them while bringing glory to God.
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Worldview Training: Teaching Your Children to Think Like a Christian in a Non-Christian World
The statistics are tragic and startling. Great percentages of children raised in evangelical homes are not continuing in their faith and beliefs as they reach and continue into adulthood. Some of the most important academic and practical training we can give our children as we homeschool them is worldview training. For Christians, our goal is to teach our children to think biblically about all of life. During the course of this workshop, we will delve into why Christian worldview training is an absolutely crucial component of our homeschooling. We will also discuss the following questions:
• What is worldview?
• What function does worldview serve in my child’s life?
• How can I teach worldview?
• How can I teach worldview if I don’t understand it?
• At what age should I teach worldview to my children?
• Can I award high school credit for studying worldview?
If we want to see true revival in our culture, we must teach our children how to think biblically about all of life—from academics to social issues to daily decisions. A true biblical worldview will equip our children to become powerful thinkers, leaders, and communicators. This workshop will change the way you teach!
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Raising the Daniel Generation
(This material is now incorporated into the workshop on Worldview Training. The session can be titled “Raising the Daniel Generation” or “Worldview Training: Teaching Your Children to Think Like a Christian in a Non-Christian World.”)
When the heathen King Belshazzar saw the hand appear out of nowhere and begin writing on the wall, the Bible tells us “his face turned pale, and his thoughts so terrified him that his hip joints shook and his knees knocked together.” That’s scared! When no one could read the handwriting on the wall, the Queen appeared and suggested that the King call Daniel, who was known for his “extraordinary spirit, knowledge and perception, and the ability to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems.” Our teens, like Daniel, live in the midst of a secular culture with a host of problems. Our goal as Christian homeschoolers has to be bigger and broader than turning out kids with exceptional talent and high SAT scores. We should be striving for them to use their gifts to impact the world for Christ, to help others by solving real problems, and to bring glory to God in the process. In this workshop, we will study the life of Daniel and learn to apply the powerful principles we find to the lives of our own children and teens.
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Cultivating a Servant’s Heart in Your Child
Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves is the hallmark of being a Christian. According to Jesus, serving our neighbor is not optional. Most children do not intuitively know how to serve others; we must model service for them and teach them how to serve. We must make service to others a priority in our homes or more than likely it will never be a priority for our children. This freedom to focus on service as opposed to popularity is one of the great benefits of homeschooling. In a typical school environment, surrounded by peers, a child’s tendency is to fit it—to be popular. This escalates to new dimensions during adolescence. At home, we can continually remind our children of Jesus’s command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The flexibility of homeschooling enables us to build service projects into our school day. In this workshop, we will delve into this topic and discuss many practical ideas to teach your children what it means to fulfill the second most important commandment.
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Praying Powerfully for Our Children
We learn how to be dynamic teachers, mentors, and advocates for our children through imitating Christ and following His example. Christ sacrificed Himself for us and now lives to intercede for us (Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25). As parents, our call is to lay down our lives daily for our children and to pray (intercede) powerfully and meaningfully for them. In this workshop we will focus on many passages of Scripture, including Isaiah 45, which will give us vision and teach us how to pray in a compelling way for our children. We will look at homeschooling as an integral part of intercessory prayer. We will also focus on the powerful effects of parental prayer. You and your children will never be the same!
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Life in the Fiery Furnace
Homeschooling is hard work that places great demands on us as parents. The combination of great demands and great expectations often sets us up for great failure and disappointment. We quickly find out as we homeschool that things don’t always go according to our plans. Sometimes, when we are doing our best to follow God and love our families, we unexpectedly find ourselves in the fiery furnace. Why does this happen? How does it happen? What is God trying to do in our lives?
When Daniel’s three friends were thrown into the fiery furnace, through no fault of their own, they discovered deep fellowship with the “fourth man,” who is Christ. If we learn to look at the Fiery Furnace through the eyes of Scripture, we can begin to bask in God’s love in the midst of trials, rather than being consumed by the flames and “burned out” by our circumstances.
In this workshop, we will look at the things that lead to burnout and talk about ways to avoid them. We will also talk about what to do if you find yourself already there—ready to throw in the towel and put your children on that very appealing yellow school bus. This workshop will contain many practical tips on streamlining your life, but it will also focus on vision. We must have a powerful, biblical vision of what we are ultimately trying to accomplish in the lives of our children through homeschooling in order to sustain us through the hard times and difficult days.
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How God Uses Our Weaknesses and Limitations as Homeschooling Mothers
Do you ever have those moments of panic when you wonder if you are giving your children everything they need to succeed in life? Or, in those rare quiet moments of thought and reflection, do you worry that you are inadequate for all that homeschooling requires of you? Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night plagued by the long list of important things that still need to be done—and know there will never be enough time in the day to accomplish them? If you, like I, have experienced these feelings and fears in your homeschooling journey, then come to this workshop and be encouraged. God knows that as human beings we are confined and surrounded by limitations and weaknesses. We will look specifically at the challenging areas of vision, finances, knowledge, home management, and fatigue. The Scripture provides promises of hope, strength, power, and help for those of us who are weak, weary, and imperfect. The Bible also instructs us in accomplishing the impossible as we bask in God’s boundless resources, amazing strength, and infinite love.
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Becoming Sarah’s Daughter: Replacing Fear with Faith
The demands of homeschooling can be overwhelming, and are often accompanied by underlying fear and nagging questions and doubts: Can I really do this well? Am I adequately preparing my children for the future? Am I teaching them everything they need to know? In the midst of our daily pressures, responsibilities, problems, trials, and limitations, God’s Word and His promises remain sure. I Peter 3 reminds us that we become Sarah’s daughters if we “do what is right, without being frightened by any fear.” In this special time for women only, we will look at how to replace fear with faith, and become the effective, kingdom-minded women God wants us to be. “Faith never denies reality but leaves room for God to grant a new reality” (Jim Cymbala from Praying God’s Word by Beth Moore).
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Ten Training Tips for Running the Homeschool Marathon
Homeschooling is more like running a twenty-six mile marathon than the one-hundred yard dash. If you want to successfully complete the marathon, you must develop a training strategy that builds your strength, stamina, and vision, enabling you to persevere until the end. Zan Tyler, who has completed twenty-one years of homeschooling, will give training tips that will help you complete the God-given task of homeschooling and help you “run with endurance the race that lies before us.”
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Creative Ways to Cultivate Your Child's Potential
When you look at your children, do you see only little people making demands of your time? Or do you see what God sees—a landscape of limitless possibilities? Zan Tyler wants to take you beyond the here and now to embrace a wondrous, life-giving vision for your children's future. You will learn to recognize the signs of potential in your children's lives, signs that are easy to miss yet ripe for cultivation. You will begin to see every facet of each child's life through the eyes of faith and the lens of Scripture, creating a vision of hope and beauty. You will also look to the Master Gardener as you learn to use the tools He has given you for cultivating that child's potential. In this session we will discuss how to help your kids establish a godly identity, discover their purpose, and build leadership and communication skills.
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Tips for Inspiring Creative Service in Our Children
Jesus lived and died for the benefit of others. He always put others' needs ahead of His own (Phil 2). He came to earth to be a servant. If we want our children to grow into His likeness, we must emphasize the importance of loving and serving others on a daily basis. Most children do not intuitively know how to serve others; we must model service for them and teach them how to serve. In this session we will lay the biblical foundation for service to others and we will look at creative ways to weave meaningful service projects into your school day. We will also discover how creative problem-solving can become a springboard for meaningful service. If you want your children to grow into adults who use their gifts to serve others and glorify God, this session is for you.
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Creative Use of the Holidays in Homeschooling
One of the great beauties of homeschooling is the ability it gives us to turn all of life into a learning experience for our children. Holidays abound with opportunities to expose our children to some unique learning situations and environments. They also provide effective tools for teaching powerful spiritual lessons. We will discuss creative ways to celebrate the following holidays: New Year's Day, Presidents' Day , Valentine's Day, Martin Luther King Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day, Flag Day, July 4, Voting Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. We will also discuss birthdays, anniversaries, snow days, and vacations. And as a special gift for you, the teacher, we will discuss Reading Days, also known as "Days You Can Catch Up on Things That Are Bothering You Most." As an added bonus, we will discuss how you can count almost all of these holiday celebrations as school days.
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The Vision of the Homeschool Husband and Dad – Leaving a Legacy (Given by Joe Tyler)
A particular cell phone commercial features an NBA point guard trying to play basketball blindfolded. Because he can’t see the goal, he’s never sure whether he’s scoring. Too often men in our age take on the tasks of husband, father, shepherd, principal, coach, and disciplinarian without the vision necessary to accomplish the goal. (What is the goal, anyway?) In this seminar we will define the goal and discover the divinely appointed means of achieving it. You may even learn the secret to making your wife deliriously happy, your home a quiet and peaceful kingdom, your children rich beyond measure, and your father-in-law in awe of your great accomplishments. Come join us in our discussion of the homeschool husband and dad.
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The Keys to a Biblical Marriage (Given by Joe Tyler)
In this workshop we will discuss not only the basics, but the BASIS, of a good marriage. Beginning in the second chapter of Genesis through the book of Revelation, marriage is a central focus in Scripture. God even uses the marriage relationship to explain to the church and the world the relationship between Christ and His church. We will establish a biblical vision for marriage, consider the roles of husbands and wives, discuss the unique pressures that homeschooling places on the marriage, and point out ways that we can divorce-proof our homes. The world is watching as the daily drama of our family lives play out before them. Let’s make sure that our marriages and families point them to Christ.
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