Homeschool Co-ops: Phases of Development (Part 2)

This week’s guest blogger is Lindsay P. Lindsay lives in Asia in one of the largest cities in the world. She has been an education consultant with AERC for six years, and before that she taught in a one room school house for TCKs in the Himalayan foothills.  She loves the opportunity that working with AERC gives her to meet families who work in unique circumstances throughout Asia.  One of her favorite things is exploring and photographing old ruins–which are plentiful in Asia–and finding ways to make it enjoyable for others, too.

The phases envisioned for development of a co op closely follow the list of needs that will be met that we discussed last week.

Beginning Phase:

The process of development begins with parents finding a way to take turns and balancing schedules together. In this phase, families learn how to work and make decisions together, developing common goals. Some of the decisions that need to be made are:

• Curricula and subject choices to be covered as a group
• Location
• Schedules, etc.
• How to organize finances
• Goals for joint education—It may help to have an agreed upon philosophy of education stated. It could start with something like the following:

• We desire our children to develop a love for learning.
• We want to teach them how to learn, not just what to learn.
• We want to help each of our children discover what they love and are good at.
• We want our children to be exposed to what we, as parents and teachers, enjoy about the world around us and who God created us to be in it.

Talk about ideas together and come up with a vision for your community homeschool co op. The possibilities for what it can grow into are many. Brainstorm together and see what educational opportunities for your children you come up with: a playground; classes in art, music or sports; field trips; science camp; short term teachers helping out with extracurricular activities, etc.

Think about where you will meet together. What requirements does your co op community have? Think about somewhere that most of the following can be met:

• Families can freely meet for school every day, or as often as desired, with as little disruption as possible.
• Adequate space for both inside and outside activities.
• Space for playground.
• Space for library, if need be.

Intermediate Phase:

Once the initial decisions are made, it is possible to move into something more structured. At this phase, an administrator may become necessary to help things run smoothly. Also in this phase, teachers, short or long term, can step into the system and begin to do what they do best, teach, without the major adjustment of setting things up in a foreign culture or investing in a lot of preparation and organization. At this phase, it is also possible to recruit local teachers, who could teach language.

Future phase:

After some practice in operating a homeschool co op, it will be necessary to make some adjustments to the system so that everything runs better. Things that are not being done effectively can be changed. More local involvement might be possible, or maybe the need has grown enough to look towards developing a school. Mistakes can be evaluated and solutions found by asking some questions.

• How are things working? What is not going well? What needs changing?
• Where are we ready to grow?
• Where do we need more support in what we are already doing?
• What needs are being met and where do we still need more support?
• Are we requiring too much commitment from some families and not enough from others?

Next week, Lindsay will wrap up this series with a discussion of roles in homeschool co-ops.

What other considerations need to be made as a homeschool co-op is developed?

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