Homeschool Co-ops: The Many Benefits (Part 1)

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.

Some of the most difficult decisions families living and working cross culturally make have to do with their children and education. Most parents feel the responsibility to give their children an education at least as good as the one they had themselves. Many of them come to the decision to homeschool their children, which affects family dynamics.  Some parents may feel inadequate or overwhelmed by the task and wonder how to balance it with their other ministry work. Children who are homeschooled may also be isolated from the local community around them.

All of this may lead parents to consider a cooperative effort at homeschooling, with hopes for some of the following:

• alleviating some of the exhaustion of parents and the feeling of being alone in homeschooling
• helping keep children from being isolated
• helping make sure the quality of education is not sacrificed
• creating a community for the children out of which they can minister to others
• making opportunity for those with special skills and expertise to teach in those areas

There are different types of homeschool co ops with differing levels of parental or teacher involvement. Some meet daily, some weekly or monthly, and some even less. Some meet together every day for one week or so, everyone immersed in a project together and then going their separate ways again at the end of that time. Some come together only to participate in extracurricular activities as a group, while others look more like a school and children study all of their lessons together. The families involved in a co op will have different needs and will have to structure it around those needs.

These are some of the needs that can be met through a co op.

Short term:

• Families will feel less isolated in the task of homeschooling.
• Children will have opportunity to play and learn together, developing a supportive TCK community.
• Parents have opportunities to work together in a way that their strengths and weaknesses fill in the gaps of others to meet a common, important goal.

Intermediate:

• The structure is in place for future education, when the upper grades become more of an academic challenge.
• Children learning together have opportunity to learn from each other.
• There is also the opportunity to learn from parents and teachers who are gifted or specially qualified to teach certain subjects.
• A location and system can be put into place for other volunteers and teachers to come and step in without having to do all the preparation work or organizing.

Long term:

• A co op community grows into something out of which the children themselves can minister, especially to other children. They will have a place and community out of which to interact with other children.
• Summer camps, workshops, and other extra-curricular activities can grow out of homeschool co op ideas, and then there is also the opportunity for inviting local children to join in these activities.
• Teachers and volunteers can be recruited into an existing program instead of required to first set up something before it can happen.
• Local tutors can be hired for language learning or other subjects.
• There are possibilities of developing into a school if that becomes a future need.

Next week, Lindsay will discuss the phases of homeschool co-op development.

What benefits of homeschool co-ops have you observed?

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