Greetings!

Ed the horse here. Well, technically Charlie - but Ed's been pacing around the stable all week because the Eddy Awards finalists are in and he wants his royalties for the use of his likeness in our marketing.

But in seriousness... We were floored by the community response. We received over 230 nominations. A review committee narrowed the field. The finalists have accepted. And now you get to meet them!

What follows are real stories from real families doing things that made their friends and neighbors say that person deserves to be recognized.

Some of them will make you proud.

A couple might make you cry.

Without further ado...

Deneigh Candland - Deneigh builds theme-based learning units out of Hurricane, Utah, tying every subject together through a single theme and traveling with her family to historical sites. She has a child with special needs who is exceeding expectations under her approach. Beyond her own kids, she hosts quarterly support groups for homeschool moms and runs a community board where women share what works. @2SistersSchoolroom

Todd Gottlieb - Twenty years ago, Todd left corporate America to homeschool his children full-time. He has been the only dad in every co-op his family has joined - a quiet, constant presence in spaces that are overwhelmingly mom-led. His nomination came from his adult daughter Ivria, who carries a 4.0 GPA, earned her associate's degree at 17, captains the UT Girls Hockey team, and teaches ice-skating to special needs kids. This is a man whose work is measured in a person, not a platform.

Abby Walker - Abby built a teen homeschool cohort from scratch in Grants Pass, Oregon - 14 teenagers meeting weekly for bushcrafting, woodshop, Shakespeare, and environmental stewardship with the Applegate Watershed. When her teens were learning friction fire, they coached each other through it, celebrated the first wisp of smoke, and then explained the science behind why it worked.

Samantha Ford - Samantha built a homeschool routine for her son AJ under circumstances that would have stopped most people. The editorial team flagged her story as one of the strongest across all 233 entries. Her son AJ is also nominated in the Inspiring Student category.

Vayda Williams - Vayda designs rigorous, customized curriculum out of Tooele, Utah, with immersive experiences like historical re-enactments and Hogwarts-themed lessons that bring subjects to life.

Miriam Peterson - Miriam founded Life Mission School, an outdoor K-12 microschool in San Juan County, Utah - one of the state's poorest, with a significant Navajo and Ute population. Her students are in the forest every school day. The curriculum is project-based, play-based, and grounded in classical books. In a county where educational options barely exist, Miriam built one from the ground up. From her nomination: "We are a forgotten people, in a forgotten corner of Utah, but not to Miriam Peterson."

Sereena Smith - Sereena founded FOCCUS in Cedar City, Utah - a homeschool community group serving 50+ families weekly. No fees, no paperwork, no pressure. She also started Color Country's Little Harvest Market, a kid-run farmers market where the kids handle the selling, the customer service, and the booth setups.

Daniel J. Lowe - Daniel built Course Tracker, a free homeschool progress management tool, and gave it away. No monetization. No premium tier. Just a tool the community needed. "We were ready to give up on homeschooling until Daniel created this tool."

McKenzie Purdom - McKenzie runs Recess Outdoor Adventures in Oregon, an outdoor education program that earned a partnership with NOAA as an Ocean Guardian School. She uses the outdoors to teach math, science, literacy, and social-emotional skills - and the kids don't realize how much they're learning because it's fun.

Sidekick to Hero / Joey - Joey is a former Disneyland performer who built a CBT-based life skills curriculum for teens, applying cognitive behavioral therapy principles to the kinds of challenges teenagers actually face.

Brayden, 14 - Brayden lives with ADHD, ODD, and learning disabilities. His family tried several options before finding OpenEd, which his mother describes as "our last option." It was transformative - he now takes initiative, completes coursework with growing independence, and believes in his ability to achieve. He also volunteers with special education classes and rescues reptiles, fostering them until they find permanent homes.

Ilili - A teenage baker who built a real business. Her brand BATCH was featured on Fox News. She does $500 a week from Friday drops and runs weekly PDF agenda meetings with her family - the kind of operational discipline most adults never develop.

Sage Sedivec, 13 - Sage lives aboard a sailboat traveling the Mediterranean. At 11, she wrote her debut novel Guardians of the Secret Isles: The Emerald Jaguar in two months. She free dives to 16 meters and leads writing workshops for other kids. Her motto: "Talent matters less than tenacity."

Lexi Holman, 14 - Five IMDb credits in 18 months, including a Hallmark-style movie and two feature films. Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the Utah Broadway World Awards. In her spare time she teaches robotics, history, and art to homeschool students, and crafts her own costumes without patterns. An OpenEd student since kindergarten.

Paxton, 12 - Paxton came to his parents with an idea: find a vehicle that doesn't run, rebuild every component, and have it ready to drive by the time he turns 16. He and his dad drove six hours to tow home a 1988 Dodge Dakota. Since then he's replaced the drive shaft, rebuilt the exhaust system, fabricated a front bumper from scratch, and reinstalled the complete dash by researching wiring diagrams on his own. He learned to weld by reading the puddle. His welding hood was purchased with OpenEd funding.

Browse the full nominee gallery here →

Dr. Laura Froyen (PhD in Human Development, host of The Balanced Parent podcast) joined us this week for a conversation about spirited kids, neurodivergence, and one deceptively simple language swap that changes everything.

Her advice: get the word "why" out of your vocabulary.

"Why don't you want to go to dance class?" asks a child to introspect, identify the cause, and articulate it - all in real time, usually when they're already overwhelmed. The result is silence, a guess, or whatever they think you want to hear.

The fix: replace "why" with "what." Not "why don't you want to do your math?" but "when you sit down to start math, what's the hardest part?" One drawer in the filing cabinet instead of the whole warehouse.

Listen to the full episode →

In 1984, Benjamin Bloom documented what educators have been chasing ever since: students who receive one-on-one tutoring outperform 98% of their classroom peers. He called it the two-sigma problem - the results were clear, but the economics of scaling personal instruction seemed impossible.

Forty years later, we're getting closer. The research on high-dosage tutoring - short, frequent sessions rather than the occasional hour-long cram - shows it's dramatically more effective than traditional formats. Harvard economist Roland Fryer found that 130+ hours of small-group tutoring at the right dosage produced gains equivalent to eliminating the achievement gap in three years.

That's the model Savvy Learning uses. 25-minute sessions, four times a week, same coach every session. Reading instruction uses the Orton-Gillingham method (Science of Reading). And unlike adaptive software, a live human adjusts in real time.

Want to try it? Your first class is free - no commitment. If you like what you see, Savvy is available in the OpenEd marketplace.