Founder Heather DeGeorge has been teaching and mentoring all of her life from gymnastics instruction to small children, to coaching and teaching public high school students, up through corporate training and technical school for adults. She moved from corporate management into teaching in the public schools to homeschooling her own children while offering private coaching, education and consulting. Her formal education includes:
- Master of Arts in Teaching with a focus on educational technology
- additional graduate credits in Special Education and Teaching Children with Autism
- Licensed teacher in both IL and NJ with multiple teaching endorsements
- Executive Function training with Rush NeuroBehavioral Center and Executive Functioning Success
- multiple training programs and workshops in Modeling Instruction with American Modeling Teachers Association
- attended Great Books Institute for Foundations & Shared Inquiry training
- attended courses in Paideia Principles, Paideia Projects and Socratic Teaching
- graduate certificate in Project Management
- Bachelor of Science in Business Administration
- Project Management Professional certification since 2003
- diploma in Network Engineering & Data Communications
- multiple certifications in coaching
- educated and participated in student mediation and conflict resolution as a high school student
In addition to founding the illuminatED Coschool, she sat on the board of MAGE (Midwest Academy for Gifted Education in Chicago, IL) from it’s launch in 2018 through it’s expansion in early 2022. She now sits on the board of Prairie Paideia Learning Center and is their lead instructor.
Personally, Heather has been married to her husband since 1999 and has been a biological, foster and adoptive parent with two permanent children. She has taken on the autism spectrum, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ADD/ADHD, giftedness, anxiety and a long list of physical challenges in the children she has parented.
She can be reached by e-mail at heather@illuminat-ED.com (for inquiries about illuminat-ED Coschool) and heather@prairiepaideia.org (for inquiries about Prairie Paideia)