Hybrid homeschooling, which lets children learn at home and at School, is good for children, families and communities, writes Michael Q. McShane of EdChoice in National Affairs.
These days,”hybrid” means a day or two per week at school, then three or four days of remote teaching. Some teachers are trying to teach in person and remotely at the same time, which is very stressful.
Elementary students at Grace Prep in Arlington, Texas attend two days a week.
Hybrid homeschooling got its start a generation ago, when parents in suburban Dallas created Grace Prep. The private school now enrolls 500 students: K-6 students attend two days a week, older students are in class three days a week. That keeps the cost low.
The hybrid model has been replicated in both public and private schools across the country, McShane writes.
The Mountain Phoenix Community School, a Waldorf charter school operated by the Jefferson County school district on the western side of Denver, offers both a traditional school schedule and a one-day-a-week schedule for homeschooling families.
Students learn via song, dance, and music. They are taught “practical arts” like sewing, knitting, and cooking, and to express themselves through acting, poetry, and storytelling. Lynn Pollitt, who directs the Lively Arts Homeschool Program at Mountain Phoenix, says the main selling point for the school is that “there are no textbooks, there are no computers until [students] get into middle school, so there is this slow, lovely approach to education that a lot of parents are seeking for their kids.”
Colorado funds part-time schooling, at a fractional rate, so the school is free to all students.
Despite the traditional hostility between public school officials and homeschoolers, some districts have reached out to homeschooling families, offering services without threatening parents’ autonomy, writes McShane.
Homeschooled children can attend Mountain Phoenix Community School, a charter in Jefferson County, Colorado, one day a week.
In Fleming County, Kentucky, Superintendent Brian Creasman asked homeschool families what they wanted. The district now offers a choice of full-time virtual classes or a “hybrid home-school program, in which students spend some time in local schools and some time at home,” writes McShane.
Michigan lets home-schooled students enroll in enrichment courses at local schools (or gyms, music studies, etc.) at no cost, writes McShane. “A teacher from one Michigan hybrid home-school program believes they work because they are ‘run by people that understand the home-school community and really respect how home-school families want it to go rather than trying to push the school’s agenda on them’.”
Public schools that have closed for nearly a year — and may not reopen till fall — don’t know how many students will return to their classrooms. One strategy is to try to shut down alternatives, such as pods, homeschools, pop-up private schools, charters, etc. I don’t think that will work.
McShane offers another alternative: Work with parents to create new models of schooling.
This post first appeared on Joanne Jacobs — Thinking And Linking By Joanne Jacobs, please read the originial post: here
