2025 Youth Conference

Come Home
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Date: Jan 17-18, 2025

 

Youth ages 11 (turning 12 in 2025) through 18 are invited to come connect and make friends with other East Idaho homeschool kids. We will learn together through inspiring and engaging classes, play fun team-building games, do a service project, and party the night away at a family dance.

Idaho State University Pond Student Union Building Pocatello Idaho

Register For January 17-18, 2025 Youth Conference

Speakers (TBD)

This years speaker line up will not disappoint!  We are very excited about those who are coming to share their experience and knowledge with us.

Nephi Zufelt

Nephi Zufelt

Entrepeneur

Nephi Zufelt is a servant of Christ; Elizabeth’s devoted husband; Zoe, Ainsley, Keller, Melina, and Stratton’s homeschooling father; world traveler; and a wannabe church basketball star.

 

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Wilford Hester

Wilford Hester

Home School Dad

Wilford Hester grew up homeschooled and absolutely loved it. He also loves reading, writing, and music–piano is his main instrument, but he also plays cello and guitar. 

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Cassie Keller Cole

Cassie Keller Cole

Home School Mom

Cassie Keller Cole teaches and mothers eight children. She and her husband have been home educating for eight years. Cassie has an MFA in creative writing from BYU and taught courses there for almost five years.

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Breann Duffin

Breann Duffin

Homeschooler

Does her family always eat their daily veggies? Nope. Is her house a pristine canvas able to welcome guests at any moment? Also a negative.

 

 

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Julie Lopez

Julie Lopez

Home Educator

Julie Lopez is a homeschooling veteran of 23 years. She has loved every minute and is fighting being placed into forced retirement, as most of her children have graduated and moved on, by helping others on their journeys.

 

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Rosie Christman

Rosie Christman

Home School Mom

Rosie Christman…

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Schedule

Idaho State University Pond Student Union Building Pocatello Idaho

Click here for a map of the student union building classrooms

Day 1/ Date

Presenter NameTimeLocation Notes

Day 2/ Date

Presenter NameTimeLocation Notes
NEPHI ZUFELT
Nephi is a servant of Christ; Elizabeth’s devoted husband; Zoe, Ainsley, Keller, Melina, and Stratton’s homeschooling father; world traveler; and a wannabe church basketball star. In his free time from these important roles, he is the CEO of NexTek Innovations (a medical device incubator), entrepreneur, founder and president of Wealth Mentality Families, author of 2 best-selling books (Katie Bell and the Wishing Well; A Story of Finding True Wealth and The Big Startup Guidebook for Kids), and keynote speaker.
Nephi grew up in the beautiful landscape of Moab, Utah and graduated from Utah State with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering and MBA from the University of Tennessee. He has spent 10 years working his way into the C-Suite at a medical device manufacturing company only to turn around and leave it all for the uncertainty of startups and entrepreneurship so he could spend time doing what was most important to him; raising his family.
Nephi still enjoys the process of innovation and creation in the world of medical devices but finds his true passion in teaching and helping families to find their true purpose and create the life they desire. He teaches parents and youth how to avoid falling into the traps of worldliness and consumption while also pursuing true wealth in the correct way to be used in the service of others.
Dads, We Need You
Target Audience: Adults (Fathers and others)
Description: The world has a Dad problem. Study after study demonstrate the dire effects of fatherlessness on society. Crime rate, sexual immorality, success in school, drug use, lifetime earnings, and every other measure of success are drastically different between families that have a father in the home and those that do not. Dads, we need you in the lives of your children. We need you home more often. We need you engaged with your family. We need you to be spending quality time with them, and we need you to take the leadership role in homeschooling. In this class we will talk about the importance of your role as a father and how you can arrange your life to better fulfill your dream job, being the World’s Best Dad.
Being Creators in a Consumption World
Target Audience: Youth and adults
Description: We live in a world of consumption where it is commonplace to sit and consume hours and hours of content (Netflix, video games, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) every single day. As a society, we are losing our ability to create and produce because of our tendency to consume. This class is not intended to teach you how to avoid consumption through screens and social media. Instead, we want to focus on teaching ways that you can change your usage of modern technology from consumption to creation. The tools we have been given are amazing, but we absolutely must use them to create and produce in lieu of using them as tools of consumption. We will discuss strategies to change our use of technology and introduce the production/consumption ratio.
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Wilford Hester

Wilford Hester grew up homeschooled and absolutely loved it. He also loves reading, writing, and music–piano is his main instrument, but he also plays cello and guitar. He comes from a family of 11, and was born and raised in North Carolina. When he grows up, he wants to be someone who can make a difference in the world.

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Cassie Keller Cole

Cassie Keller Cole teaches and mothers eight children. She and her husband have been home educating for eight years. Cassie has an MFA in creative writing from BYU and taught courses there for almost five years. She loves learning. She is endlessly curious about how communication works (or doesn’t) and how to improve it. She trusts in the power of language and knows that each person has an essential story to share.

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Breann Duffin

Does her family always eat their daily veggies? Nope. Is her house a pristine canvas able to welcome guests at any moment? Also a negative. Sometimes as her six children, ranging from preschool to high school, pass by her, she wonders if their fashion inspiration came from a Dr. Suess book with tassels of hair flailing, mismatched socks, no shoes, and the constant reminder to brush their teeth. Sacrifices had to be made as Breann Duffin grinded to learn everything she could about how to educate in a superhuman way. She has earned two Bachelor’s Degrees from Brigham Young University-Idaho. The first in Agriculture and the second in Secondary Education; certificates in Agriculture and All Sciences. She earned her Master’s Degree in Education in Curriculum Design and Instruction with an emphasis in Learning Design and Technology from Purdue University. She added her Elementary Education certificate after she finished her master’s degree. Over the last twenty years, she has taught all levels, PreK through 12th grade, and also has a decade of experience in teaching at the university and adult levels. She has trained teachers from all over the nation, built a thriving music studio of fifty students, started and directed a PreK-12th grade youth softball program in her community, sang her heart out as the lead in the community musicals, served as the president of her town’s Arts Council, and has built the curriculum for and mentored three IDX STEAM teams who all won first place in Idaho.  She did all this as she was doing the most important work of homeschooling and nurturing her family. Her most valuable experiences have come through the constant introspection of her family’s character, their level of motivation and diligence, and the educational methodologies used in their homeschool. She is honored to be amongst other beautiful individuals at this conference as we learn to develop strengths that make us secretly superhuman.

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Meet Julie

Julie Lopez is a homeschooling veteran of 23 years. She has loved every minute and is fighting being placed into forced retirement, as most of her children have graduated and moved on, by helping others on their journeys. She has opened her own micro-schooling program, MAPLE Scholars, this fall, still teaches at the local co-op, and enjoys discussing homeschooling and mentoring every opportunity she has.

Her older children are on missions and attending college with merit scholarships- all in their own interests. She has used a variety of methods to homeschool all the way through highschool and is a strong believer that these years can be some of the best and most rewarding of all.

Julie started what is now called the “Quest” homeschool co-op 11 years ago with some friends and a lot of advice from those that went before (because what better way is there to learn?). She has taught the 12-18 year olds for all 11 of those years. Her classes have been varied including: Shakespeare, History, Biology, Videography, Mock trial, Government, Leadership, Robotics, Simulations, Speech and writing. She has also directed 6 Shakespeare plays and run multiple youth trips and other opportunities for the youth. Her favorite saying is: “It’s not about the play, it’s about the kids.”

In her spare time, she loves reading all kinds of books, spending time with family(especially her 1 year old grandaughter), serving on the board of the ARRE Foundation, dreaming up new ideas for special needs schools and supports, and diving into medical research to help find answers for her beautiful younger daughter who has some severe special needs.

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