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By AnnaLisa Michalski
Correspondent
SUFFOLK
In the past, home-schoolers generally were of two opposite groups: those who wanted a strictly religious curriculum, or those who valued liberal, commune-style schooling. Today’s home-school population is much broader than those extremes.
For Gary and Gail Barker, the home-school journey began when their oldest son was diagnosed with a mild learning and speech disability. But the limited services available in their small, rural town were inappropriate for his needs. They decided to teach him themselves and never looked back.
Now living in Suffolk, the Barkers continue to home-school all four of their sons, ages nine to 18.
Special needs influenced Mollie Baker’s family also. Mollie was already a home-school mom when her seventh and youngest child reached school age.
Because he has cerebral palsy, Mollie enrolled her son in Northern Shores Elementary School’s special education program. The school was excellent, but Mollie was thoroughly exhausted by the classroom and bus schedule after a year and a half.
“We really needed more flexibility,” she says. The solution? Add special education to her home-school repertoire. Flexibility is one of the hallmarks of home schooling. Students learn at various times of the day and year rather than being bound by schedules. Continuity is a major draw as well.
For military families who may need to move in the middle of a school year, home schooling is appealing. That’s what motivated Mary Ellen Bebermeyer’s family to home-school. Despite not having been relocated in seven years, Mary Ellen says, “we have no incentive to stop home schooling now.”
Home-school programs vary from the fluid to the heavily structured. One structured model is Virtual Public Schools. This program allows motivated students to learn at home while taking full advantage of public school resources including instructors and materials. This arrangement gave Adriana Fuentes, 12, of Harbor View uninterrupted learning when her family moved here from Florida.
Virginia is one of 25 states that offers the program. “It works great,” saidAdriana’s mother, Sharon Fuentes. “I wish more people knew about it.” (Learn more at www.k12.com.)
Despite doing much of their learning privately, home-schooled families are not isolated. Most make a point of interacting through places of worship, Scouting and community league sports.
Other group programs are designed by and for home-schooling families. Locally, Renaissance School for the Arts meets at Ebenezer United Methodist Church in Eclipse to offer theater, dance, music and visual arts.
Co-founder and home-school mom Norma Andes explains the healthy socialization offered by the program: “Children are not separated by age. You’ll see bigger kids helping the younger ones. They play together and forget to keep score.” She says there are other social advantages as well. “No one really cares about brand-name clothes.”
Gary Barker agrees. Home-schooled kids, he says, have “an openness, an innocence. Not like the hardness you sometimes get with public schooling.”
And most importantly, he says, they learn well, too. “Our youngest son was the fastest to learn reading because his brothers helped.”
AnnaLisa Michalski, churchland-corner@adminmaven.com
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Renaissance School of the Arts
You can find out more about Renaissance School of the Arts at
www.rsa-tidewater.blogspot.com
There are also two statewide homeschooling associations with more information on homeschooling in Virginia.
Virginia Homeschoolers - www.vahomeschoolers.org
HEAV - www.heav.org
Check them out!
I appreciate this article.
As a homeschooling mom of four I cringe every time someone sends me another homeschooling article. Mostly because I am inundated with news that is not relevant to my family or that is sent against home education. I am pleased with the positive light this article sheds on a fine program in our area. Be encouraged there are many more! Thank you for this article! I have added it to my blog and sent it to many more homeschoolers.
Positive homeschool article
I agree this is a positive article on homeschooling. THANK YOU!
A very positive aspect of homeschooling not mentioned in the article is the financial aspect. The average homeschooler's cost of education is less than $500 per year. Compare this to the public school costs of $10,000 per child and you can easily see that homeschooling parents are saving a lot of money for state and local taxpayers. For this reason alone, both state and local governments should encourage homeschooling.
Thank you for this positive article...
...on homeschooling. It's good to see it reported that homeschooling has a positive impact on children's social development, because the parents find positive avenues for their children to seek relationships with other children - church, scouting, athletic leagues, etc. I must second the quote from Gary Barker who mentions the openness and innocence of homeschooled children. I've been acquainted with a number of homeschooled children myself, even before I started homeschooling my own, and noticed how they typically retain their youthful innocence, even when they're teens. Many if not most of the public-schooled teens are hardened and/or moody, their innocence long gone, no doubt due to the public school environment being their primary shaping force as they grow.