Homeschool Support Groups and Resource Centers by Jerry Mintz
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Most homeschoolers eventually get involved with homeschool support groups. These groups often meet anywhere from once a month to once a week in informal get-togethers that give the parents support and give the kids a chance to meet other homeschoolers. But as the concentration of homeschoolers has grown in various areas, a new form of support program has emerged. In my travels around the country as director of a nonprofit that supports educational alternatives, including homeschooling, I’ve seen an interesting, new phenomenon developing as the homeschool movement grows - the homeschool resource center.
When I visited France in 1988, I saw what could be the forerunner of organized homeschool resource centers, the Collectif Enfants-Parents in a suburb of Paris. Their group met every day at a different house, and two parents at a time were always supervising and teaching-they only had to work for half a day each week, which enabled even working parents to participate. Every two weeks the group got together to make schedules for the next two weeks. One parent made lunch for the group each day at the house where they were meeting. They had been doing this for fifteen years, with great success. Day-to-day decisions and problems were dealt with in democratic meetings, and the students were quite skilled at this process. Their democratic and non-coercive approach reminded me of some effective alternative schools I had known in the United States. I asked one of the students what he liked about the school and he said what he liked best was that "it is not a school."
There is some danger that, in organizing homeschool resource groups, homeschoolers may re-create "schooling" and lose some of the learner-centered approach that they have been practicing as individual homeschooling families. On the other hand, isolated homeschool families and homeschool support groups that meet only occasionally, every week or two or less, may benefit by empowering the students in a group decision-making process. Some groups miss this opportunity by only having informal social meetings and decision-making by the adults.
In Providence, Rhode Island, Maria Sperduti organized the Educational Resource Center of Rhode Island (ERCRI). It served more than 30 homeschool families from a wide area. Various individuals offered classes, for which parents and students signed up. The center was generally open three and a half days a week, and gave homeschooled children a chance to get together and interact with each other and to choose from several classes that were offered by parents and other adults from the community. The group realized that there probably hadn’t been enough input from students concerning what things they wanted to learn at the center. The emphasis had been upon what things the adults involved wanted to teach. True, the students and parents had a choice of classes, but the curriculum had not grown out of the students’ interests. In addition, day-to-day decisions at the center did not have enough student input, and a mechanism for their involvement had not been created. So the people at the ERCRI decided to work on those problems, and make some changes in their approach.
To demonstrate a way in which curriculum could be developed for the center based on student interest, I showed them how to do something that I call "organic curriculum." As a tool for this, I did a "question class" for one of the younger groups. In just a few minutes, they came up with questions about all sorts of topics that interested them, which wound up constituting as broad a curriculum as an adult could have created for them-but in this case, they had created it for themselves. We then went back over the questions and determined the ones for which there was the most interest, and began discussing those questions. Obviously there was great involvement in those discussions, because the motivation for them had come directly from the students. Some of the questions concerned the war in Kuwait, which was just getting under way, but they also involved a broad range of other areas of interest. This center eventually evolved into Wellspring, a democratically-run community school.
In Lexington, Virginia, a group of people centered around Common Ground Community set up a homeschool resource center called Snakefoot. They met three days a week at the Common Ground Community, although most of the students come from the surrounding area. The homeschool parents hired a resource person to work with their children, in addition to the parents. The students, who previously homeschooled without much regular contact with other students, all agreed that they enjoyed this new process very much. But, again, the group has discovered that they had to be careful not to have the group be too adult-dominated in its structure, and has moved toward more student involvement in decision-making processes. Snakefoot is breaking important ground in organizing homeschoolers.
Some independent schools that are set up primarily for homeschoolers include Mistwood in Eureka, California, Headwaters in Petigrew, Arkansas, and Clearwater School and Puget Sound Community School in Seattle, Washington.
Puget Sound Community School (PSCS) provides an example of an innovative approach in creating a homeschool resource center. Founded primarily for junior high-school through high-school students, it operates three days a week, meeting each time in a different, donated space around the city of Seattle. It has a democratic decision-making process that was originally inspired by Sudbury Valley School. On the fourth day the students participate in an internship program.
The director and founder is Andy Smallman and there are several other paid and volunteer staff members. Students may choose any classes they are interested in attending. PSCS does not have to worry about meeting any particular Washington State standards because it is technically not a school, although it has "school" in its title. But it is considered to be supplementary to the parents’ home education. PSCS has made extensive use of the Internet throughout its history, and some of its students have become adept at its use. One of them was the webmaster for three years of our non-profit, the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO), starting when he was 14.
In Amherst, Massachusetts, the Pathfinder Learning Center has broken new ground in that state. It is set up as a homeschool resource center and is open five days a week for students whose families sign up for its programs on a yearly basis. They have about sixty students, two full-time staff members, and other volunteers.
There are scheduled classes and also the opportunity to just drop in and spend time at the center, visiting other students and staff members, using the computers and other equipment, etc. Although all of the students are homeschoolers, when the number of students at the center passed the thirty-student mark, parents of potential students began to contact Pathfinder and ask if their children could be enrolled in the "school." Pathfinder carefully pointed out that it was not a school, and was only for homeschooling families. The parents would then ask to be shown how to become homeschooling parents. Now the large majority of parents at Pathfinder were taught how to become homeschoolers by Pathfinder, a new phenomenon.
A homeschool resource center that started several years ago in Pensacola, Florida, demonstrates an important forerunner to another phenomenon around the country. This center started out as one of the thousands of tutoring centers, working after school and in the evenings with students who were having school problems. But the many homeschoolers in the area asked them to set up a program during the day for homeschoolers. Then they began to get students coming in who had been having serious school problems, but whose parents didn’t know about homeschooling. Because it was not a school, like Pathfinder, the center then helped parents become homeschoolers, after which the students would return to public school or continue as independent homeschoolers, gradually being weaned away from the center, but using it as a resource. This new application of homeschooling could tremendously broaden its use for students whose needs are not being met by the public school system.
One advantage of their approach was individualized attention, and smaller groups, but this kind of center will need to move away from curriculum based too much on the traditional approach.
I have seen some learner-centered alternative schools that are quite true to the unschooling ideas as described by pioneering education writer John Holt, although they are not called homeschool centers. One of these alternative schools is Grassroots Free School in Tallahassee, Florida. At Grassroots, all decisions are made by a "pow wow." There is no required class attendance, and much of what one sees around the school involves students getting together and organizing their own classes and activities. The students’ relationship with the adults around the school is extremely positive, since there is no reason for the kids to fear the adults as they often do in traditional schools, and there is high motivation in any class because everyone in attendance wants to be there. The school is known for putting on excellent plays for the surrounding community.
Recently, a number of the older students left Grassroots to attend the public alternative high school called SAIL, in Tallahassee. Although they had virtually no experience in the public school system, and in some cases scored low on the initial achievement tests because they had never used a public school curriculum, within six weeks all of the students from Grassroots were on the honor roll (except for one, who missed it by one point). One student I had known for a couple of years, through traveling to alternative school conferences, had hardly ever attended classes at Grassroots. Instead, he had worked on his own projects, like creating his own fantasy games. He is now a straight-A student at SAIL. This is not to say that alternative school or homeschool success should be measured by ultimate success in public school, but rather that these students are open to whatever learning they may need in life, and are therefore able to be successful wherever they go.
Pat Seery, the director of Grassroots, never had any doubts that students would do well. When the initial, low achievement test scores were reported to him by the director of SAIL, he said, "Good! These kids are going to make you look like a genius in a few weeks!" and he was right.
We did a consultation for a group of people in upstate New York in a town called Horseheads. They had also been running a diagnostic and tutorial program called the Achievement Center, which had been there for twenty years. They have developed wonderful and innovative techniques for students with various learning disabilities, and for others who simply want to excel academically. The parents of some of the students began to ask, almost demand, that the center become full-time.
That’s when the owner and director, Laura Satterly-Austin, called upon AERO. We did two consultations with them, the first with Laura and her staff, the second with a group of parents and potential students. It seemed to us that establishing a homeschool resource center in conjunction with the tutorial programs would be the best way to go. The parents and students greeted these concepts with great enthusiasm. One parent said, "Originally I was thinking of this just for my child with learning problems. But I don’t want my other children to miss out on this program!"
As a result, the homeschool resource center opened in September, 1999. The center helped parents write their Individual Home Instruction Program forms to their local school districts, to become homeschoolers. Using the same teachers they had been using in tutorial work, the center established groups in mixed grade levels. They take at least one field trip a month. "Students brainstormed and came up with our center rules and consequences. We voted on them and posted them," Laura said.
The feedback has been very positive, Laura says. "The children say they never want to go back to regular school. Reports from the parents are extremely favorable. We hear such comments as ‘The other night we caught them reading,’ and ‘They are so relaxed and happy now, our whole family life in the evening has changed for the better!’ "
The potential for this approach is amazing when you consider the thousands of tutorial centers that exist in practically every community throughout the country. For the most part they are not being used during the school day.
Some communities have been developed in which the educational program is an integral aspect. One such community in Texas evolved from being a private alternative school, and technically, it is still one. There are about fifty people in the community, and about twenty-five are children. All of the adults in the community are seen as resources for the students, and students make individual appointments with them to learn what they are interested in. But none of that is required, and the whole community is kind of a living, breathing school. The interaction between the adults and the students in that community is better than in any other place I’ve seen. There is virtually none of the fear of adults that you might see in other situations, with adults taking subtle or not-so-subtle control. In this community it isn’t even necessary for the students to live with their own families, and in some cases they live with other families or have made their own structures to live in. They can even do their own cooking if they want to.
There are not clear lines and divisions between homeschooling, alternative schools, and homeschool resource centers. Alternative educations are not easily defined. In fact, South Street Centre near Santa Cruz, California, is a homeschool resource center that is part of a charter school in the public school system.
Some of the centers mentioned earlier in this essay are now not in operation or have changed form. But it is important to understand that it is not necessary to create an institution in order to create a center such as these we have described. Founders should not feel that they need to have the resources to create an institution. The most important thing is to create a form of education that meets the students’ needs here and now.
The idea of the homeschool resource center will continue to grow as the population of homeschoolers grows. Since it is now at a beginning point, it is important to encourage these developing centers to incorporate the learner-centered approach and empowerment of the learner, which are so successful on an individual family basis and in alternative schools.
Leslie Hart, one of the foremost experts on brain research and its application to education, points out in his books that the brain is naturally aggressive, that it doesn’t have to be taught to learn. Students don’t have to be externally "motivated." Also, when students are forced to learn things that they are not interested in, this tends to extinguish that natural aggressiveness and desire for learning. Our most important job is to create a rich and resourceful educational environment, and then stay out of the way when we’re not needed. So alternative schools and homeschoolers, particularly the "unschoolers" (who base their curriculum on the interest of the student), have been intuitively doing the right thing.
Structure and freedom are not mutually exclusive. The structure of these new homeschool resource centers must be one that has within it the ability to encourage the empowerment, confidence, and freedom of its learners.
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© Copyright 2000. Jerry Mintz - All Rights Reserved.
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