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Cara Bergeron

State Manager

Cara Bergeron and her husband, Brian, have been married almost 14 years and committed themselves to the idea of homeschooling after reading Douglas Wilson's "The Lost Tools of Learning" and John Taylor Gatto's "Dumbing Us Down" when their first child was two years old. "The Well-Trained Mind" swiftly followed as did three more little blessings--Gresham, Seth, and Evangeline. They now have a child for each state they've lived in--California, Texas, Alaska, and Florida‹with the exception of their new home state of Oregon.

Cara has an undergraduate degree in graphic design from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and a Masters in Systems Management from the University of Southern California--neither of which taught her how to use the actual tools of learning. After surveying course material for 30 years, she left the scope and sequence approach behind in 2003 when she began to school Brandt; but it wasn't until a friend in South Carolina gave her a call in Panama City, Florida to tell her about Classical Conversations, that she began to grasp the importance of committing grammar skills to memory.

In 2004 Cara was 6 months pregnant, exhausted, and desperate to start a CC in Panama City. One morning, she looked into the mirror at her haggard face and said, "Lord, you know I cannot do this but YOU CAN." One month later, she and a group of friends drove up to Prattville, Alabama for a one-day practicum with Leigh. While they were there, they were hooked on the vision of CC. The Lord even provided a director who wasn't six months pregnant and who was an experienced homeschooler. That original group began to rope their homeschooling friends in Florida into the idea of starting a Classical Conversations locally. Cara loved tutoring for two years in the Panama City program and determined that when she move d to Oregon, she would beg the Lord to begin the same good work there.

Classical Conversations of Klamath Falls, Oregon was begun in August, 2007 with seven families and Cara as director. God has brought these families together as surely as He did in Panama City and as He has all over the United States. Cara is excited to see more CC communities spring up throughout Oregon--communities committed to education as discipleship, education as relationship, and education as precursor and prompting to worship.