Hampton Roads families find benefits in homeschooling

By Shirley Mozingo
Correspondent

More than 100,000 Hampton Roads students left their homes Tuesday for school, but hundreds more will stay behind for their education.

Joy and Joe Suits' daughter, Kimberly, will be one of them. During her 16 years, she has never stepped inside a public school.

The Virginia Beach couple are home educators. Instead of sending their daughter to a public or private school, they teach her at home.

Kimberly is a second-generation homeschooler. Joy Suits was educated by her mom, Cherrie Moore, a single parent. Moore, now 58, developed a passion for homeschooling that it became a vocation. In 1986, she founded Moore Expressions, a Virginia Beach store that sells homeschool supplies.

Homeschooling isn't easy or inexpensive, yet some 1.8 to 2.5 million children are homeschooled in the United States, according to the National Home Education Research Institute. It demands full-time commitment. Curriculums must be purchased. Outside group activities and enrichment classes are usually fee based. Then there's t ransforming the house into an education center.

Maps replace Monets. Chalkboards rule. Label makers are essential. Books multiply across flat surfaces, and pigs become centerpieces.

Joy Suits, 36, still remembers her mom plopping a fetal pig on the dining room table for her to dissect. Later, after cleanup, the table was set for dinner.

"You have to have a comfortable environment where learning can take place and be fun - like the pig on the table," she said.

While some parents make their homes resemble a schoolhouse, others decide that won't work for their child. Moore stressed that the key to success in homeschooling is matching your child's learning style to the curriculum and the home environment.

"My motto is teach the child; not the textbook," Moore said.

While schooling itself may be confined to one particular room, the process involves the entire house and the whole family.

"It does become a way of life. We school on our dining table and in the living room, according to how much needs to be spread out. Your house can become incredibly messy sometimes," said Norfolk resident Wendy Fish, who has homeschooled five children, ages 12 through 23.

A homeschooling military family, Fish said that, when they move, they don't have to worry that the children will be ahead or behind in the new school system.

Homeschooling is all about flexibility - doing lessons around delivery drivers, errands, deployments, housework and appointments.

Virginia Beach resident Ruth Olbris, 50, remembers homeschooling her four children at the doctor's office.

"I started homeschooling when my youngest entered kindergarten. We had school on the floor for a while because it was comfortable. Then we took a downstair's bedroom and made it into a schoolroom with school desks so each child had a place to put their things.

"Later, they worked on their own at the kitchen table, and I would work with the one needing help. The whole house has been used. It just depended upon our needs that year," said Olbris, who has a T-shirt proclaiming "Homeschool Mom. Please don't interrupt me. I'm in the middle of a parent-teacher conference."

Brad and Alyson Shedd of Chesapeake had no idea how homeschooling was going to work out for them, but they knew they wanted to give it a try.

Alyson, 45, began homeschooling in 2001 with their first child, Olivia. The family grew to include Sophia, 10, Stephen, 8, Ava, 6, Susanna, 4, Laura, 3, and Juliana, 14 months.

"I had this vision for home education, but I didn't want my home to look like a 'Romper Room.' I didn't want it to have the feel that there's not a place of solace anywhere. So I thought: How can I incorporate beauty and function together?" Alyson Shedd recalled.

She bought plastic bins and hot-glued fabric on the outside to hold each child's school materials. And she purchased wicker baskets - lots of them - to use for storage.

"This made the whole room warm and homey yet very, very functional," she said.

They remodeled the garage into a playroom, adding a wall of bookshelves. She posted a yearlong daily schedule on the refrigerator and keeps the children's chore books nearby. A list of 30-minute dinners is taped inside a kitchen cabinet.

"I told the kids, 'God is on a schedule, and we're going to be on a schedule,'" Alyson Shedd said. "When children are on a schedule, they feel more secure. It helps them stay on task. They know at 11 (a.m.), they'll each be on some musical instrument. From 1 to 1:45 (p.m.), they'll do grammar and language. If they finish early, they have extra time to do what they want."

What they won't be doing is playing video games or watching television. The house has one TV without cable or satellite, and no iPods, video games or computers.

"The 'mother of creativity' is limited resources. If you only have so much money or space, you get creative. Even with our children, if we don't give them all the media options, they get creative," Brad Shedd, 42, said.

"Alyson has taken this house and said, ' OK, this is all the space I've been given, so how do I make it work as a home schoolhouse?' "

Their four-bedroom, two-bath home is spotless and organized, filled with well-placed photos and mementoes. Nothing is out of place.

"People are amazed that we haven't moved into a bigger house, but I keep saying we don't need to move; we just need to get rid of stuff," Alyson Shedd said.

"She's always purging, throwing stuff away. It makes life simpler and it becomes more about each other than accumulating," Brad Shedd added.

While it can be challenging and exhausting at times, home educators agree... there's no place like homeschool.

Shirley Mozingo, oceanwriter@earthlink.net