Meet Kimberlee Biddle-Tucker. She is the owner of Kimberleebee Homeschool Evaluation and Testing. She is a homeschooling mom, former public and private teacher with over 25 years of experience in the field of education. Both of her parents are educators and she came from the small town of Bismarck, Illinois and grew up with a lot of farms around her.
She provides three options in annual evaluations: Portfolio Review, Peabody Individual Achievement Testing or Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. All of her evaluation choices comply with Florida homeschool law (1002.41) and the state’s requirements for annual evaluations. Portfolio reviews can be arranged at her home office, Face-time, Zoom, Facebook Messenger or even a simple phone call, Testing is administered in her home office or via Zoom only and also she’s a direct provider for the Gardiner Scholarship.
Thank you, Kimberlee, for sharing useful information about homeschooling and for your love for North Tampa.
Questions:
Q: Where are you from and why did you come to North Tampa?
A: I’m from Illinois. I’m a child of the 80’s, I had everything from riding the bikes to playing red rover, red rover, coming in when the street lights came one. I had a quintessential, wonderful childhood. Amazing! I ended up in North Tampa because we decided that we were tired of the winters. I love it here.
Q: What inspired you or led you to your current career?
A: I am the owner of Kimberleebee Homeschool Evaluation and Testing and I started my business 10 years ago. It came to be because I am a certified teacher and my daughter had fallen through the cracks in public education and I decided to pull her out and try homeschooling. When I entered the homeschool world with her, I found that there are laws that homeschoolers have to comply with and one of those is annual evaluations for every child and they can either do testing or a portfolio evaluation. So 10 years ago I had 6 people and now I have 600 so I have grown tremendously in the past 10 years and I love every aspect of what I do. It’s an honor to work with these amazing families, I am truly blessed.
Q: What is your favorite restaurant in North Tampa, and what do you love there?
A: La Casa Della Pasta on Ehrlich. They have the best lasagna I ever had in my life. And of course Sips Specialty Coffee House for my coffee.
Q: How long have you lived or worked in North Tampa?
A: We came down here 17 years ago.
Q: Is there someone that has a positive impact in your life?
A: Absolutely, my parents. On February 15th, they just celebrated their 51st Anniversary. They’re both educators. My mother was a 3rd Grade teacher and my father started out as a high school teacher and kept getting degrees. He’s also a retired school superintendent in Illinois. And now they live here, he works at USF as an adjunct professor. They’re amazing and they instilled in my sister and I, God, family and to love all people just as if the were my best friend despite differences. We have a really wonderful childhood.
Q: If you could travel anywhere in the world right now, where would it be? And why?
A: USA. I thought about this question for a long time and I actually have a lot of things scratched out on my sheet because I had all kinds of places in Europe and I was like, you know what I would love to go to like rent an RV and go on a year-long tour of the United States of America. I’ve never really been in RVs and those kinds of fancy things, who knows we might be checking the RV in and getting plane tickets.
Q: What is your favorite movie OR what is the first movie you remember seeing in a theatre?
A: The Breakfast Club with Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson. I just love it and it kind of reminds me of my teen years like 16 candles. And the very first movie I remember seeing is Bambi and I cried when the mama was killed.
Q: What advice would you give a crowd of people?
A: Embrace your uniqueness. I think that’s one thing that I’ve learned working with homeschool families, we’re all unique, we are not going into the box of public schools, private schools and we are being unique individuals and unique families teaching children the things we feel are important more than likely the school system is not teaching.
Q: What is something on your bucket list?
A: African Safari. I dream of seeing the elephants, giraffes,the lions. etc.
Q: What is your favorite music/or band you would like to see (dead or alive)?
A: That is really had for me to narrow it down to one because I love music. Music is playing all the time at our house.
Q: What is your favorite thing or something unique about North Tampa?
A: I love in North Tampa that it’s small so you can get from place to place fairly easily and I like that if you take the time to open your eyes that there are unique little shops and places that are not chain businesses that are locally owned. That is one of the coolest things of living in this area and there’s easy access to a whole lot. We’re always joking that we are 20 minutes from everything and if we have family and friends visiting us an asking how far it is, we always say, 20 minutes.
Q: (Even for friends or family), what is something interesting that most people don’t know about you?
A: Most people don’t know that I am a huge Grateful Dead fan -Jerry Garcia. When I was in college in the early 1990, I did summer tours following the Grateful Dead.
Q: What 3 words or phrases come to mind when you think of the word HOME?
A: Peaceful, Loving and Happy.
Q: If you were cast into a major motion picture and had your choice of anyone to be your co-star, who would you choose?
A: Hugh Jackman. He would be my love interest and he would sing songs to me. He’s the werewolf guy, in the X-men and in the Greatest Showman. Any man that can sing is really cool.
Q: Do you think that face to face is still important or not important anymore, now that we have social media and internet?
A: That I think we need to bring back, face to face. Obviously social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, that’s not gonna go away, they might change, they might no longer be Facebook but it will always be something new, but I think that it’s important to get back to face to face interaction with humans and that the generations that’s growing up right now is missing. But to swing this back around to homeschool, homeschoolers have figured it out, they have so many social interaction more than just regular kids because they’re always around the other kids in parks, field trips and having that face to face. And I think, it’s important for adults to go out and talk to people.
