Once upon a time, homeschooling was about spending time at home with your kids. It was also about breaking the mold of institutionalized public and private schools and being more flexible in educating our kids. People like the Colfax family, Jessica Hulcy, Dr. Raymond Moore, John Holt, and Elizabeth Foss shaped my homeschool philosophy.
I particularly took to heart this wisdom from Dr. Moore:
Keep a balance in your program. Don’t tie yourself down to books all day. An hour and a half to two hours is ample time for formal education in a typical home school. No formal education at all is needed before age eight or ten. But work, read, sing, play, rest, eat and go places with your children. If you have more than one child, use the older ones to teach the younger and the stronger to help the weaker. Home school should be less perplexity than fun. You are teaching by example every moment. Respond warmly. Use your imagination. Everything within sight, sound, touch, taste and smell is a learning tool.
This is what Mr. Pete and I call free-range homeschooling. Of course, we sought out the community. For many years, we were (and are) part of a Catholic homeschooling support group that offered activities, field trips, and support meetings for members. We made many great friends that way.
The beginning of co-ops
But around 2014 or so, we became part of a little homeschool co-op. Moms got together in a small space and had classes for their kids. We shared expertise and labor, and our kids got to spend even more time with homeschooled friends. I blogged about that back in 2018.
Co-ops really took off after the pandemic in 2020. More and more people were forced to homeschool their kids, and they joined together to form little co-ops or learning pods. The difference between these homeschoolers and the ones who learned organically back in the 1990s was that they sought to recreate what they knew—the public school system of education.
I am familiar with several homeschool co-ops in my area. One is very structured and has students attend twice a week. Another meets weekly but requires attendance all day at the co-op. My co-op focused on the arts and music, allowing families to pick courses à la carte. But being in a large building with many more families took away the intimate feel of the group.
My own co-op continued to grow until it eventually ended up in an old Catholic School building, with a schedule, calendar, ringing bells, and lots of rules and fees. As a teacher and registrar from 2016 onward, I became burdened and then burned out from all of the responsibility. I blogged about this a few weeks ago.
Lee Binz, Homeschool co-op burnout is real!
So it was with great interest that I found this article by Lee Binz , Homeschool Co-op Burnout is Real! I could relate to that title! I had slowly but surely abandoned my free-range homeschool spirit and gotten cooped up in a co-op!
In the article, Ms. Binz lists 12 ways to know if you are Cooped up in your Co-op. Not surprisingly, I hit many of them!
12 Ways to Know if You Are Cooped Up in a Homeschool Co-op
It’s obvious you’re stuck in a homeschool co-op when it’s not a good fit. Parents who come to me with concerns about academics, failure, or socialization problems tend to be using co-ops for core classes. In an effort to do things right, co-op classes may provide an assembly-line production of lessons much like a public school. Students become frustrated because they can’t keep up, or bored because they are so far ahead.
Many homeschool fads come and go. The homeschool co-operative is a current fad. Like many fads, co-ops can be helpful for some and hurtful for others. Even though they are popular, a homeschool co-op may not work for your family. How do you know when you are cooped up in a co-op?
- Mom or Dad feel guilty and anxious
- Learning styles don’t fit
- Parent or student frustration over time lost
- Expenses for gas, fees, and books feel too high
- Excessive homework or homework feels mis-matched to the student
- Increased workload for homeschool parents – feeling frantically busy
- Parents feel trapped, stifled, hemmed-in, and/or frustrated but also feel incapable of stopping
- Parents don’t have freedom to modify the class
- Child is becoming peer-dependent or easily swayed by bad behavior
- Originally left public school because classroom setting did not fit
- Parents are made to feel incapable or inadequate
- The curriculum used doesn’t match family values
Getting my homeschool and priorities back
Here’s how:
- Turn back to home. Next year, I’m getting back on track. I retired from my leadership position, so I will not be required to teach a class. I can now concentrate all of my energy on curating classes for Miss C with Homeschool Connections and Brave Writer, as well as making lesson plans for her courses.
- I’m putting my own kids and family first. While I enjoyed teaching my students, sometime my own child or grandchild had to do without for the sake of others. Sometimes that meant that I was putting so much effort into my lesson plans and research that other subjects that weren’t part of the co-op didn’t get as much time and energy. Other times it meant that if a child that needed to share or do without, it was probably my kid that made the sacrifice.
- We are still members of our co-op but mainly for things like choir and drama, which is hard to do just with a family. But when those opportunities pop up in the community, like drama camp or church choir, we’re going to take advantage of those as well.
- We are going to fully live the liturgical year. That means we’re going to make the time to celebrate the feast days, follow the small traditions, say the special prayers that make our home truly Catholic. That just wasn’t possible in our particular co-op. In fact, there were days when we didn’t mention feast days at all if it happened to be a co-op day or tough week getting ready for co-op.
- Homeschooling is a lifestyle – It means taking every opportunity to learn from the activities and events around you. It’s not only book learning. It is also delight-directed. So if my granddaughter wants to practice her piano for two hours, I’m going to let her. If she wants to finish the book we’re reading, then we will do that. This summer, we are using our time to pick up an extra skill – cake decorating! And if that extends past the summer into the fall, that’s great!
- And to re-energize myself and get back to basics, I’m going to re-read my homeschool reading list:
Homeschool book list
Susan Bauer
“The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home” ISBN-10: 0393067084 ISBN-13: 978-0393067088
Hilary Bernstein “The Tension of Tidy” ISBN-10 : 0825448727
Lee Binz – Her Amazon page here.
Julie Bogart – Help for High School
Julie Bogart – Growing Brave Writers
Mary Kay Clark
“Catholic Home Schooling” ISBN-10: 0895554941
ISBN-13: 978-0895554949
Cathy Duffy
“100 Top Picks For Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing the Right Educational Philosophy for Your Child’s Learning Style” ISBN-10: 0805431381
ISBN-13: 978-0805431384
Elizabeth Foss
“Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home”
ISBN-10: 0971889511 ISBN-13: 978-0971889514
Kimberly Hahn, Mary Hasson
“Catholic Education: Homeward Bound – Useful Guide to Catholic Home Schooling”
ISBN-10: 0898705665 ISBN-13: 978-0898705669
Raymond Moore ” Successful Homeschool Family Handbook.”
Holly Pierot
“A Mother’s Rule of Life: How to Bring Order to Your Home and Peace to Your Soul”
ISBN-10: 1928832415 ISBN-13: 978-1928832416
Back to the Fundamentals
One of the fundamental reasons I started homeschooling in the first place was to immerse myself in my children and give them the best childhood that I could. It started with a fundamental belief that if the family was the building block of the church, it could be the building block for their education as well. Slowly, I had let that get away from me. Next year, I’m getting it back!