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| Fire hydrants captured on one of the walks with the photography class I taught. |
For the fall of this school year, we decided to try a new co-op homeschooling program. In fact, I worked all through last summer with the other co-founders, shaping it into something I thought our family could use. Just before the beginning of the first term, I felt that we had accomplished that and I was super excited to start the fall.
Unfortunately, ideas on paper don't always match up to reality. There's only so much planning you can do. A group movement is going to gain momentum, but it might not go the way you want it to, or the way you thought it would. All these cliches being said.... the co-op was a roaring success. Just not for my family.
A few of the goals of this new endeavor, for many of us, were to reduce the amount of searching for classes, reduce the amount time spent driving across town, and to have consistency with seeing people during the week. I agreed with all of these. I wanted all of these goals to be accomplished. And it was accomplished. But the reality of it didn't fit our family's style and I became VERY frustrated and disappointed.
Then, "hello, kismet"! I read Julie Bogart's (creator of Brave Writer) article with the following excerpt:
..........I've noticed a trend in home education products and services. More and more they resemble the schedule, trappings, and services of school. In fact, I remember a friend saying to me one time that she felt like she lived in her car. She was driving to sports practices, music lessons, a co-op, tutoring for math and science, and her kids were also in an acting company.
Her comment cracked me up: "Wouldn't it be great if all of these services and classes were in one building and happened all day in a row? It would make my life so much easier."
I thought she was joking, but when I saw that she wasn't, I said, "That does exist. It's called school."
Now she cracked up! "You're right! Oh my gosh, you're right. I didn't even think of that! What am I doing?"
That was a good question.............
A good question, indeed. We gave it a good try. The experience was VERY trying on our family. We found ourselves on the schedule of the co-op. We were asked to fundraise for the co-op. We were asked to give, give, give to the co-op. Class sizes were varied, but some were too big, creating situations where teachers (OK, I can really only speak for myself and what I heard from my own kids) had to spend a lot of time wrangling or disciplining kids. The kids were exposed to behaviors from other kids I would deem inappropriate, but I felt powerless to change it. We felt the stresses of being an introverted, oddball, anxiety-ridden family amongst many extroverted mainstream families. Situations that bothered us, didn't bother the most of the families. So change seemed to be an uphill battle.
Most of our time, ok, most of my time was spent preparing for the classes I taught, or relaxing from a harried day. Thus, no time was spent doing what we have found to love in the first three years of homeschooling. I felt like we were back in the public school system. I had to say no too many times to my kids' curiosities. I felt all my energies were spent going towards other people's children rather than my own.
I'm sad that we lost a year. I'm ready to hit the ground running this fall with something OLD. Go back to what we know works for us. I'm really trying to keep a positive spin in that we tried to fill a need, and even thought it went terribly wrong for us, we tried. I'm trying to model another cliche, "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again."
P.S. There were a few pros to our experience. I did teach a photography class. Taking the kids on walks each week to photograph a concept I just taught them was fun. I enjoyed watching them be excited to share their creative photographs. The experience even reignited my own interest in photography. I'm back looking through the view finder and I'm feeling good about that. (written July 31, 2015)
