I like to talk about how you can change your homeschooling and how homeschooling can change you.
A question to consider: how will you change homeschooling?
You might be a long-term homeschooler, or you might be homeschooling in reaction to public school closures and virtual classes. If so, your choice, along with the choices of many others, may impact both public school and homeschooling.
Will the public education ecosystem change as a result of so many people opting out of the public schools? Will homeschooling change?
I wonder:
- How many people will send their children back to brick and mortar schools as soon as the current crisis wanes?
- Did parents discover ways that school was not meeting their children’s needs that they were unaware of?
- Did parents who opted to homeschool temporarily mostly choose to do “school-at-home,” or did many transition to the more innovative and flexible learning approaches that open the doors to the benefits of homeschooling?
- Will schools make changes to try to re-attract those who opted to homeschool?
- Will schools budget for, train for, and develop a public virtual school delivery that is more realistic and do-able for families and teachers in case it’s needed in the future?
- Will schools develop more hybrid "homeschooling" models, and will those threaten the distinctiveness of “regular” homeschooling?
- Will we get honest about the child-care role of public education?
- Will we see more community-centered services for homeschooled kids as the niche becomes more widely recognized?
- Will homeschoolers see a resurgence of criticism of homeschooling, or will the increase in numbers, even if temporary, provide greater understanding?
- How will state legislators and governors view homeschooling, given that many more of their constituents will have homeschooled?
- How will homeschool organizations adapt to representing new members from a different cross-section of the population and with different reasons for homeschooling?
You can take an active role to support homeschooling, which will help you learn more about whether proposed changes and trends are helpful or have hidden downsides you may not have thought about.
Do your homework. How you change homeschooling could have ramifications for generations.
A popular speaker at homeschooling conferences, business groups, and parents’ groups, Jeanne Potts Faulconer homeschooled her three sons in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia for twenty years. Holding her Master of Arts degree in Communication, Jeanne conducted portfolio evaluations for Virginia homeschoolers for evidence of progress for many years. Jeanne is a former college faculty member, former editor for several publications, news correspondent for WCVE, and former director of Brave Learner Home. She is the contributing editor for TheHomeSchoolMom newsletter and writes the popular Ask Jeanne column addressing homeschool parents' questions here at TheHomeSchoolMom.
Homeschooling has been helping many students to keep a tab of education in these times. The world has been going through tough times, and people are trying to do innovative things to make homeschooling as interesting as possible. Schools will have to rethink their strategies in creating a better teaching model so it can be easy to deliver education in the future.