Meet Jenny

My personal blog has gone through many cosmetic changes over the past five years but I’ve consistently blogged about our home life: including our Orthodox Christian faith, our journey to more eco-friendly living & eating, special needs & development, foster care/adoption, homeschooling, travel, and all the adventures in between.  I initially started blogging to keep our out-of-state family up to date with our ever changing family but, with time, I quickly learned that blogging was just as beneficial for myself as it was to my mom, mother-in-law, aunts, cousins, and friends because I was able to reflect on my days as I re-read my posts before publishing.  It was in those late nights, with the lights dimmed and the house peacefully quiet, that I could appreciate the lessons I was learning in patience, compassion, sympathy, and most importantly love.

I tend to post several times a week about the current adventures in our household.  If you’d like to receive the most recent posts in your inbox then you can subscribe to my blog on the right side of this page.

My Biography

My background is elementary education.  I have taught in daycares, elementary public schools (including one year with severely autistic children), church school, and have homeschooled my kids for the past nine years.  I have been a church school director and a St. John Chrysostom Oratorical Festival Coordinator.  My husband and I were foster parents for three years and took in five boys under the age of 5 in just over one year’s time for a grand total of six kids in our home.  We adopted our oldest three foster sons and our youngest two foster sons were adopted by extended family.  Currently we have four children – one girl and three boys ranging in ages from 17 to 6 years old.

I created Illumination Learning in 2009 to be a hub for finding Orthodox Christian education resources.  Some resources are very easy to locate by just doing an Internet search and other resources are found by word of mouth.  I wanted a central location people could go to find Orthodox Christian resources for their homes and parishes.  Illumination Learning recently merged with OCN (Orthodox Christian Network) and is now one of their ministries.  I am also a contributing author on OCN’s blog, The Sounding.

My Contact Information

You can find me on Illumination Learning, Twitter, and Facebook.  Look for me at @jenniferhock on Twitter.  You can also reach me by sending me an email to jenniferhock@illumination-learning.com.  I have always dedicated my blog to all of you and enjoy hearing from you.