The growing Bortins family moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1989 when Rob accepted a job with US Air. Then Leigh began homeschooling in earnest.
Robert had plenty of homeschooling friends through elementary school, but as they got older, one by one their parents put them into public or private schools because their parents didn’t think they were competent to teach young adults.
In the fall of 1997, at Rob’s encouragement, Leigh began teaching a once-a-week, classical-model program in Rhetoric in her home with 11 students. This was the beginning of Classical Conversations’ Challenge I program.
Just two years later, Leigh, along with some friends, began the Foundations program for 4-12-year-olds to give them a solid grounding in the Grammar level of classical education, by helping them memorize facts and definitions and the order and sequence of those facts.
