When schools were shut down during the height of the Covid pandemic, students’ learning went virtual. Most students logged onto classes hosted by the schools they attended pre-pandemic, and have since returned to the in-person classroom at their traditional schools. Some students/families, however, opted to switch education gears and embraced home schooling – a learning environment which does not usually include a traditional in-person classroom. Many of those students/families continue to practice home schooling.
As reported by the Washington Post, a recent poll “suggest[s] that American home schooling is evolving from a movement into a practice — no longer driven by shared ideology and political goals but by circumstances specific to individual families.” Some families avoid traditional schools out of fear (health fears about continued exposure to covid and other illnesses), safety fears (related to school shootings and bullying), or moral fears (related to the content of public school education).
But other families value the flexibility that home schooling provides, allowing a better mix of book learning, experiential learning and extracurricular activities. Home schooling also often better addresses the needs of students with special needs or learning disabilities. Not unlike the post-pandemic “work from home” movement, it’s all about creating a life that maximizes the value of the time you devote to each task.
Home schooling is also starting to look different than it did in the past. The pre-pandemic model usually involved a parent staying home to deliver the instruction him/herself or facilitating the students’ learning via online classes. Post-pandemic, plenty of families continue to follow that labor-intensive model. But for other families who want the benefits of home schooling but don’t want to be the teacher/facilitator, a marketplace is developing to coordinate the learning environment without actually being a “school.”
Another Washington Post article cites several options: A micro-school, where students are dropped off for the day and a “guide” (not a teacher) coordinates the students’ access to online lessons. Hybrid schools allow students to spend some of the day interacting with other students, and some of the day learning alone at home. Co-ops draw on the relative talents of member parents to cover all the academic disciplines.
It will be interesting to see what the future of home schooling holds.
