Catholic Home Educators Collective Houston
CONNECT · ENRICH · EMPOWER · ENGAGE
Our Mission
Our mission is to unite and support families as the primary educators of their children, connecting communities across greater Houston and providing resources for an education rooted in the Catholic faith.
Connect
We link families, co-ops, tutorials, and parish groups across greater Houston so that no family educates alone.
Enrich
Museum and garden series, lectures, and excursions open the city's cultural life to Catholic families, seen through the lens of the faith.
Empower
Guides, formation talks, high school and college planning, and a member library give parents what they need to lead with confidence.
Engage
Gatherings, the Showcase Magazine, and service draw families into a shared Catholic culture and bring their children's work before the wider community.
Our Story
CHECH began with a mother who had devoted her life to home education. Diane Aquila and her husband Dominic educated their eleven children at home over more than forty years, and for fifteen of those years Diane ran a tutorial program for Catholic families. When she moved to Houston, she noticed a trend she had already seen in other cities and states. Many families were enrolling their children in traditional high schools, unable or unwilling to continue educating at home through the upper grades. For many, the reason was a lack of confidence, mentoring, and support. That realization became the driving motivation behind CHECH.
In 2023, Diane founded CHECH as a central place where every Catholic family educating at home in greater Houston could meet one another and find resources: a larger community, Catholic and universal. She designed it as a collective, an organization that takes nothing from the small communities already doing good work and instead connects them, helps them share with one another, and offers what smaller groups cannot provide on their own.
CHECH is for every family, not only those connected to a group. Some are already part of a parish group or tutorial; others are still searching for one or have just arrived in Houston. Many want neither to educate in isolation nor to join a formal group, and CHECH gives them a community of their own. Together, families find the confidence to continue through the high school years, and the city's museums, universities, and lecture halls open to them all.
Today CHECH is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving hundreds of Catholic families across greater Houston, led by a volunteer board of parents who educate their own children at home. Each year the board chooses a theme that shapes its programs, its publications, and its work with families.
What We Believe
Parents are the first educators.
“Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2223
The home is the first place of formation.
Children are shaped by the rhythms, habits, and loves of their home long before any lesson begins.
No family should educate alone.
Friendship among families sustains the work through its hard years and multiplies its joys.
The faith illuminates all learning.
Truth, goodness, and beauty belong together, and every subject is richer for being studied in their light.
Every family's approach has a place.
Each family chooses the method that fits its children, whether classical, Charlotte Mason, a published curriculum, or one of its own design. What unites them is the faith at the center of the home.
The city is part of the classroom.
Museums, gardens, concert halls, and lecture halls extend what begins at home, and Houston offers them in abundance..
Our Themes
Each year the CHECH board chooses a theme to guide its programs, its publications, and its decisions. Together the themes answer the question every family faces at some point: why educate at home at all. They are our story told one year at a time, and each is written to apply to every family.
2026–2027 · CURRENT THEME
The Formative Home
The home is not the backdrop to the education. It is where the education begins.
2025–2026
The Great Conversation
The great books and the long dialogue of Catholic and Western thought, carried to the family table.
2024–2025
An Invitation to Wonder
Wisdom is born in wonder. Attention to the created world, to beauty, and to the questions children ask on their own.
2023–2024
A Timeless Approach
The inheritance of Catholic education, received and handed on. Families stand in a long tradition and work in the present toward a lasting end.
Why Families Educate at Home
In their own words, CHECH families share what first led them home and what keeps them there.
Our Patroness
Our Lady of the Pillar
In the year 40, Our Lady appeared to St. James the Apostle at Zaragoza, standing on a pillar, and encouraged him in his mission to preach the Gospel in Spain. We ask her intercession in our own task of educating and spreading the Gospel in our homes and communities. Her feast is celebrated on October 12.
Holy Virgin of the Pillar: increase our faith, strengthen our hope, revive our charity. Help those who suffer misfortune, those who suffer from loneliness, ignorance or hunger or lack of work. Strengthen the weak in faith. Arouse in the young an availability for a total surrender to God.
ST. JOHN PAUL II
Our Logo
The CHECH column is shaped as an M for Mary, recalling the pillar on which Our Lady appeared to St. James. A column stands on the strength of the past, embraces tradition, and looks to the future. It supports, it gives structure, and it beautifies even in its function. This is the aim of CHECH: to strengthen, to build on the past, and to work toward the future, making all of it beautiful, inspiring, and lasting, under the protection of Our Lady.
Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught... May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.
2 THESSALONIANS 2:15-17
Our Team
Caroline Testa
PRESIDENT · THE WOODLANDS
Caroline has cultivated a personalized, Charlotte Mason-inspired education for her three teenage daughters since their earliest years. Coordinating Holy Family HMNS classes since 2019, she's passionate about connecting families with rare and enriching opportunities.
Casey Torello
CHAIR & TREASURER · THE HEIGHTS
Casey homeschools her eight children because being their first educator has been the most rewarding and intuitive role she's known, even amid the organized chaos of home. Drawn to CHECH since its inception, she wants parents to see the broad landscape of educational experiences in our area through the lens of a Catholic culture.
Jessica Counts
SECRETARY & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF · GALVESTON
Jessica and her husband Barrett home educate their seven children, drawing on the riches of the Catholic tradition. A believer that good books and good conversation change the world, she finds that gathering families in person is where community takes root.
Katherine Tully
BOARD MEMBER · RICE VILLAGE/WEST U
Katherine fell into homeschooling unexpectedly and never looked back, raising three boys with a love for following their curiosity wherever it leads. Always exploring new resources herself, she delights in helping families find the approach that fits them best.
Marie Romero
BOARD MEMBER · PEARLAND
Marie and her husband Fernando educate their children in the liberal arts tradition, inspired by Charlotte Mason's philosophy. Convinced that learning is meant to free us to recognize eternal realities in the natural world, Marie finds that life's wonders are more joy-filled and memorable when experienced within a community of like-minded friends.
Past Board Members
Diane and her husband Dominic spent 40+ years raising and home educating their eleven children. After founding and running a tutorial program for fifteen years, she established CHECH to support Catholic homeschool families across Houston.
With gratitude to Diana Hayes, Olivia Kirwan, Debbie Harne, and Ava Camera for their service.
Join Our Team
Do you believe in connecting, cultivating, and supporting home educating families? We need volunteers with skills in web design, event planning, social media, mentoring, and more.
Get InvolvedGet in Touch
Catholic Home Educators Collective Houston
3262 Westheimer Rd #402
Houston, TX 77098
CHECH is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donate.
