Document Repository for:
The Petition to Keep HOMESCHOOLING as a Free and Vital Schooling Choice
LINKS to writings and contributions of our proposed speakers:
We thus share the following (scroll down to view or click on the MORE link in the upper right corner of this page to jump to each of the following essays) :
A. EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM by Laurie Block Spigel
B. EDUCATIONAL PARADIGM SHIFT:
Empowerment, Self-Actualization, and Talent Development in Supportive Communities, Including Homeschooling by Jen Seron
C. LEARNING + COMMUNITY:
Creative Learning while Making Genuine Community Connections by Melle Randall
D. AN UNCURATED SHARED LINK LIST of student- and parent-created pro-homeschooling writings for further reference
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EDUCATIONAL FREEDOM by Laurie Block Spigel
(find Laurie's bio at the end of this essay)
I made the decision to homeschool in tears, as an act of desperation. My gifted first-born son had negative experiences in public school, and then, later, in private school. As a last resort, he started homeschooling midyear in 4th grade. Within two weeks I realized that this decision which had terrified me was probably the best decision of our lives. In that short time my son’s love of learning returned, and his attitude toward adults changed from anger and resentfulness to appreciation and intellectual curiosity. I gave his younger brother the choice, to school or to homeschool (even though at that time I wanted homeschooling). At the end of third grade he chose homeschooling, and never looked back. My sons, now post-college and married, still express their gratitude for being homeschooled, and their wives have also reaped the benefits. This is because they are each lifelong learners with an open mind and a contagious appetite for learning. This is the result of homeschooling with a self-directed approach.
Recognizing the positive changes homeschooling gave my family, I help others. In addition to teaching creative-based classes for children, I consult with families and offer support, assistance and mentoring, in the sometimes difficult transition from school to homeschooling and in the homeschooling process. At an initial consultation parents have many questions. After speaking with them, they express surprise. Their expectation was a discussion about state requirements, filing paperwork, curriculum standards, testing and reports (information I keep freely available on my website, which parents often need to discuss). They had no idea, they tell me, that the conversation was going to be about educational freedom. Educational Freedom! This is a new concept for nearly every parent; in our conversation it becomes obvious that they have never experienced educational freedom themselves!
Many families struggle with school. I encounter loving, hard working families, with children who aim to please their parents and teachers, and yet they feel anxious and confused. When I ask the kids, “At school, can you be yourself?” they laugh at the very idea. “Of course not!” they reply. Then I turn to the parents and ask, “How can they be expected to do their best if they can’t even be themselves?”
What is the freedom to be yourself? Does that freedom include the freedom to learn what you want to learn? To learn what you feel an instinctive urge to learn? To learn things you have a personal need to know? Or must we consistently ignore innate educational desires and learn only what others (who may never know us) choose? How many times can a child’s questions be ignored or put off before they stop wanting to ask?
Children in schools today are powerless. The most common comparison children, especially teens, make to school is prison. I remember that feeling well. I remember kids having to raise their hands and ask permission to use the bathroom and then be told no. A boy in my 4th grade class wet the floor because the teacher refused to let him go to the bathroom before a test. If this incident, more than fifty years later, is still etched in my mind, even though I sat on the other side of the classroom, imagine how that boy felt. Children were arranged in size order, made to wait in line, follow a dress code, remain silent and immobile, sitting still hands-on-desk eyes-facing-forward. Classes were ranked according to level - every student knew who were the “gifted” kids and who were the “dumbest.” Kids at the lowest level were reminded of their status daily. I was in the most advanced group, yet I do not remember learning anything there. All of my learning came from home; none of it came from school. Any freedom I experienced happened outside of school, most especially the precious freedom to learn.
Even with this knowledge about where my own learning came from, I resisted homeschooling. My oldest asked me to homeschool him when he was preschool age. He must have heard it from another mom, because I never mentioned this as an option, and said no without a moment’s hesitation. I told him he would find his friends at school and at home I would teach him as much as I could. Even then I assumed that his education would not come from school (after all, mine didn’t) but it wasn’t until many years later, when I started to homeschool him, that I looked back on this conversation and realized I had sent him to school entirely for social reasons. Once we became a part of the local homeschooling community, I discovered how few the opportunities are for social awareness and growth in schools. A key moment for me was when my 11-year-old son joined the homeschooler’s chess club, which met Friday mornings at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. Parents sipped tea and coffee while kids flitted from table to table playing chess. Passing by my table, I stopped my son and asked him why he didn’t play with two kids his age. “Them?” he gestured to the kids I meant. “They’re just beginners. That’s the kid I want to play,” and he pointed to a seven-year-old. “He’s the best player in the room!” I suddenly saw my “age prejudice,” a limiting view that assumes children should be with their own age. My son had already moved beyond that, able to see people individually without judging them by their age. The more my kids homeschooled, the more socially sophisticated they became. Instead of the lonely, one-sided experience that many wrongly assume is homeschooling, they became citizens of the world, seeking learning experiences from diverse sources, actively engaging with people of all ages from all walks in life. They took multi-aged, multi-level classes with other homeschoolers, and attended college classes as high school students. They became comfortable with a far wider age range than schooled students who are typically stuck with just their own age.
Schooled teens are often resentful of adults in authority whose job is to tell them what they can and can not do for much of their lives. In contrast, homeschooled children and teens are genuinely interested in adults who they view as potential learning resources and mentors, rather than unfeeling authoritarians. Instead of fearing arbitrary rules or judgement, homeschoolers are respectful and curious about the work and life of adults. Perhaps this is because adults have the freedom to respect them in turn, and are willing to listen and engage, rather than expecting blind obedience.
Schools tell children to learn in order to pass a test, get good grades, and pass all their courses to get promoted to the next grade and the next, all so they can get into a good college. The pressure to get good grades and to take increasingly rigorous courses often obscures the learning that is most desired, replacing work that feels like play (learning we love) with constant worry and stress. Subjects like art, music, dance and phys. ed., often get short shrift (maybe one period a week in school), while required courses demand daily study in order to get that grade, often requiring short-term memorization for tests instead of developing real skills and creating memorable experiences. Subjects are separated rather than combined as naturally occurs in life. It is not possible to study science, for example, without simultaneously learning math, English, history (biographies, discoveries, inventions), and art as it’s needed to document experiments, nature studies and more. Every subject makes more sense to encourage this natural combination of subjects, rather than to separate them. A homeschooled student entering public high school expressed surprise that in history they were studying the European Middle Ages but in English they were reading 20th century American literature. “Why aren’t we reading Chaucer?” she wanted to know, having experienced this natural association of subjects as a homeschooler. When topics also intersect with a student’s interest, self-direction results, which may start to quench a personal hunger, and lead to an ongoing state of creative learning.
Creativity is absent from most school curricula, reserved for the arts which are, at best, offered as half-year once-a-week electives. Yet creativity is a highly valued skill in the workplace, and many careers, such as science, rely on this skill. In order to solve problems, create new solutions, and succeed in general, we need to think creatively. We need to access divergent resources, and open our minds to access a “creative flow” where new connections are freely made. This is a natural process for young children, and yet in school we learn how to be un-creative, how to follow orders and score well on a test, to repeat what has been praised and avoid what doesn’t belong. In a test-driven system, students are discouraged from coming up with new, creative thoughts and solutions. Just as academic subjects should be taught together, where they naturally join, so should the arts be combined with the academics. Creative thinking, and creative flow, is a learned process that can be practiced and honed. It encourages individual expression and individual connection to the work. More time is given to artistic expression, to day-dreaming, brainstorming, researching with the goal of creating. My students have made board games on topics from science and history, written historical fiction plays, made puppets and performed shows in handmade puppet theaters, and learned history through art. I’ve overheard parents refer to these courses as “extra” or “fluff” and then add, “But you wouldn’t believe how much my kid learned!”
The uniformity of standardized education assumes that children should all receive the same education and all be treated the same way. People have said to me, “You always treat your sons the same, don’t you?” as if any other way is unthinkable. But I didn’t treat my sons the same, because they weren’t the same. One was extroverted, talkative, and acted on a whim. I was always trying to teach him self-restraint. The other was shy, introverted, slow to speak, and I was always encouraging him to come out of his shell. To treat them the same was to ignore their very uniqueness. To love them equally, and unconditionally, I had to treat them individually. They reached for different experiences, learned in their own ways, and sought out environments that worked well for one, but not for the other. I never expected them to end up in the same profession or even have the same lifestyle. To offer them the same identical education would have been an exercise in futility.
Educational freedom, through homeschooling, allows families to travel the world while they learn directly from many cultures. It allows families to teach their children a non-racist curriculum aimed at social change. It allows families to accommodate children with learning issues, giving them the support they need to surpass expectations. It allows us to make creativity a natural part of every day. This freedom allowed my children to honor their individual choices and endeavors, which motivated and expanded their learning. As a homeschooled high school student, my older theater-loving son designed and built a set for an Off-Off-Broadway show (part of a Youth Company), created the costumes for the dream sequence in a Lehman College production of Fiddler On the Roof, directed a contemporary one-act play, and studied world history by reading plays from ancient Greece to medieval Asia, to anti-apartheid Africa, to the contemporary London and NY stage. Later he attended NYU Film School and became a writer. My younger whale-loving son studied marine biology from age two to twenty-two. As a homeschooled teen, he danced ballet and tap, learned kung fu and kendo, and went on whale sails to identify whales. After attending college on the shores of the Atlantic, he became, much to our surprise, a blacksmith! Then he spent years assisting a house builder. Now a massage therapy student, he is building his own small blacksmithing forge. When your head can follow your heart, the learning never ends.
The path of educational freedom had an astonishing effect in my own life. As I fought for the rights of my children (and others) to have this freedom, it rubbed off on me. I started to discover the things I truly wanted to learn, and the things I wanted to teach. I experienced my “Aha” moment in middle age sitting in a children’s theater, and, after years of hard work, became a teacher of playwriting for children. My life direction changed once again. This level of personal transformation and self-discovery is an essential part of learning. It is the highest experience that learning can give us, leading us to see the world differently, and also to see ourselves and others with new eyes. This awakening comes most easily when we seek it with eager hearts and minds, when we can give ourselves over to that personal learning path. It does not happen when we learn in a prison-like environment and “learning” is forced upon us. That sort of “learning” precedes forgetting.
My mother, a professor of education at Hunter College, gave her entering freshman education students a standard 6th grade test. The majority of her students come from NYC public schools and had taken and passed this test as sixth graders. If you have ever watched the TV show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? you know the flabbergasted feeling of seeing these kids rattle off facts that elude us. They name the moons of Saturn, the capitals of all the US states, and so much more, in less time that we could guess. My mother’s freshmen students felt that same frustration when they all failed the sixth grade test. My mother gave her students this experience to help them question the value of the standard sixth grade curriculum, and the value of testing, especially when hard-working college-bound students don’t retain and remember the material seven years later.
What is a memorable learning experience? Thinking back over my life, I have a handful of learning experiences that truly changed me and the way I saw myself and the world. These experiences remain alive in my mind today, many years after they happened. Significantly different from my schooling, these unforgettable learning experiences never came from a textbook, and never happened seated at a desk in a crowded classroom. They were nearly all hands-on experiences, and, in every case, something I chose and reached for that felt like an adventure even if it was daunting, that held personal meaning for me even if it took hard work, time and effort.
Our country is founded on the very idea of freedom. Freedoms initially guaranteed in our constitution have been expanded (with much hard-fought work) to apply to women and people of color. How far do we have to go to expand our freedoms from religion, speech (and other first amendment rights), to include education as a right (and not as a compulsory regulation)? How much more work must we do to apply these freedoms to children?
Implicit in the gift of freedom is the freedom to make mistakes. This is at the very heart of learning. If we are not free to make mistakes, then we are not free to learn. To avoid making mistakes, we must only copy and memorize, only mimic and imitate. We can never discover who we really are, because in our attempts at discovery we might make mistakes. We might try something new and fall on our face. We might have to try again and again, over a lifetime, making new or similar mistakes, in order to discover something new around us and within ourselves. To offer freedom is to allow people the freedom to make mistakes, to choose the wrong thing before they discover the right thing, and to allow them to make that determination for themselves. It is the gift of free will.
This gift of free will may be the greatest gift we have. It allows us to give, and to take. It allows us to help, to heal, and to harm. It allows us to learn, and to grow beyond “mistakes,” to change our wrongs into rights. To take away the amazing gift of free will is to impose a prison. Our children are our future. Why do we choose to limit their minds with an imposed curriculum chosen by others? Why do we test them constantly and fill them with the fear of making mistakes? Why do we not allow our children to voice, and then choose (with our help and encouragement) the learning they think is best for them? Knowing full well that mistakes will be made, free will is still the greatest choice we can give. Educational freedom is the most generous choice we can offer our children, and also the most exciting and limitless choice we can give ourselves.
Author’s bio:
LAURIE BLOCK SPIGEL is an educator and former homeschooling parent, teaching popular classes to homeschoolers. She creates innovative curriculum, and takes a creative, child-led approach in group classes. In addition to consulting services and help for parents and students (including portfolio and transcript advice, college applications and essays, child-led curriculum planning, and more), Laurie maintains a free website, http://www.homeschoolnyc.com , with resources, activities, projects, and everything you need to homeschool in NYC. She has lectured at international conferences on alternative education and taught child-led workshops around the world. Her book, Education Uncensored: A Guide for the Aspiring, the Foolhardy, and the Disillusioned , is part memoir and part handbook. It offers an overview of major academic subjects as well as techniques, insights, and examples of multidisciplinary, child-led curriculum that defy grade level.
I made the decision to homeschool in tears, as an act of desperation. My gifted first-born son had negative experiences in public school, and then, later, in private school. As a last resort, he started homeschooling midyear in 4th grade. Within two weeks I realized that this decision which had terrified me was probably the best decision of our lives. In that short time my son’s love of learning returned, and his attitude toward adults changed from anger and resentfulness to appreciation and intellectual curiosity. I gave his younger brother the choice, to school or to homeschool (even though at that time I wanted homeschooling). At the end of third grade he chose homeschooling, and never looked back. My sons, now post-college and married, still express their gratitude for being homeschooled, and their wives have also reaped the benefits. This is because they are each lifelong learners with an open mind and a contagious appetite for learning. This is the result of homeschooling with a self-directed approach.
Recognizing the positive changes homeschooling gave my family, I help others. In addition to teaching creative-based classes for children, I consult with families and offer support, assistance and mentoring, in the sometimes difficult transition from school to homeschooling and in the homeschooling process. At an initial consultation parents have many questions. After speaking with them, they express surprise. Their expectation was a discussion about state requirements, filing paperwork, curriculum standards, testing and reports (information I keep freely available on my website, which parents often need to discuss). They had no idea, they tell me, that the conversation was going to be about educational freedom. Educational Freedom! This is a new concept for nearly every parent; in our conversation it becomes obvious that they have never experienced educational freedom themselves!
Many families struggle with school. I encounter loving, hard working families, with children who aim to please their parents and teachers, and yet they feel anxious and confused. When I ask the kids, “At school, can you be yourself?” they laugh at the very idea. “Of course not!” they reply. Then I turn to the parents and ask, “How can they be expected to do their best if they can’t even be themselves?”
What is the freedom to be yourself? Does that freedom include the freedom to learn what you want to learn? To learn what you feel an instinctive urge to learn? To learn things you have a personal need to know? Or must we consistently ignore innate educational desires and learn only what others (who may never know us) choose? How many times can a child’s questions be ignored or put off before they stop wanting to ask?
Children in schools today are powerless. The most common comparison children, especially teens, make to school is prison. I remember that feeling well. I remember kids having to raise their hands and ask permission to use the bathroom and then be told no. A boy in my 4th grade class wet the floor because the teacher refused to let him go to the bathroom before a test. If this incident, more than fifty years later, is still etched in my mind, even though I sat on the other side of the classroom, imagine how that boy felt. Children were arranged in size order, made to wait in line, follow a dress code, remain silent and immobile, sitting still hands-on-desk eyes-facing-forward. Classes were ranked according to level - every student knew who were the “gifted” kids and who were the “dumbest.” Kids at the lowest level were reminded of their status daily. I was in the most advanced group, yet I do not remember learning anything there. All of my learning came from home; none of it came from school. Any freedom I experienced happened outside of school, most especially the precious freedom to learn.
Even with this knowledge about where my own learning came from, I resisted homeschooling. My oldest asked me to homeschool him when he was preschool age. He must have heard it from another mom, because I never mentioned this as an option, and said no without a moment’s hesitation. I told him he would find his friends at school and at home I would teach him as much as I could. Even then I assumed that his education would not come from school (after all, mine didn’t) but it wasn’t until many years later, when I started to homeschool him, that I looked back on this conversation and realized I had sent him to school entirely for social reasons. Once we became a part of the local homeschooling community, I discovered how few the opportunities are for social awareness and growth in schools. A key moment for me was when my 11-year-old son joined the homeschooler’s chess club, which met Friday mornings at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. Parents sipped tea and coffee while kids flitted from table to table playing chess. Passing by my table, I stopped my son and asked him why he didn’t play with two kids his age. “Them?” he gestured to the kids I meant. “They’re just beginners. That’s the kid I want to play,” and he pointed to a seven-year-old. “He’s the best player in the room!” I suddenly saw my “age prejudice,” a limiting view that assumes children should be with their own age. My son had already moved beyond that, able to see people individually without judging them by their age. The more my kids homeschooled, the more socially sophisticated they became. Instead of the lonely, one-sided experience that many wrongly assume is homeschooling, they became citizens of the world, seeking learning experiences from diverse sources, actively engaging with people of all ages from all walks in life. They took multi-aged, multi-level classes with other homeschoolers, and attended college classes as high school students. They became comfortable with a far wider age range than schooled students who are typically stuck with just their own age.
Schooled teens are often resentful of adults in authority whose job is to tell them what they can and can not do for much of their lives. In contrast, homeschooled children and teens are genuinely interested in adults who they view as potential learning resources and mentors, rather than unfeeling authoritarians. Instead of fearing arbitrary rules or judgement, homeschoolers are respectful and curious about the work and life of adults. Perhaps this is because adults have the freedom to respect them in turn, and are willing to listen and engage, rather than expecting blind obedience.
Schools tell children to learn in order to pass a test, get good grades, and pass all their courses to get promoted to the next grade and the next, all so they can get into a good college. The pressure to get good grades and to take increasingly rigorous courses often obscures the learning that is most desired, replacing work that feels like play (learning we love) with constant worry and stress. Subjects like art, music, dance and phys. ed., often get short shrift (maybe one period a week in school), while required courses demand daily study in order to get that grade, often requiring short-term memorization for tests instead of developing real skills and creating memorable experiences. Subjects are separated rather than combined as naturally occurs in life. It is not possible to study science, for example, without simultaneously learning math, English, history (biographies, discoveries, inventions), and art as it’s needed to document experiments, nature studies and more. Every subject makes more sense to encourage this natural combination of subjects, rather than to separate them. A homeschooled student entering public high school expressed surprise that in history they were studying the European Middle Ages but in English they were reading 20th century American literature. “Why aren’t we reading Chaucer?” she wanted to know, having experienced this natural association of subjects as a homeschooler. When topics also intersect with a student’s interest, self-direction results, which may start to quench a personal hunger, and lead to an ongoing state of creative learning.
Creativity is absent from most school curricula, reserved for the arts which are, at best, offered as half-year once-a-week electives. Yet creativity is a highly valued skill in the workplace, and many careers, such as science, rely on this skill. In order to solve problems, create new solutions, and succeed in general, we need to think creatively. We need to access divergent resources, and open our minds to access a “creative flow” where new connections are freely made. This is a natural process for young children, and yet in school we learn how to be un-creative, how to follow orders and score well on a test, to repeat what has been praised and avoid what doesn’t belong. In a test-driven system, students are discouraged from coming up with new, creative thoughts and solutions. Just as academic subjects should be taught together, where they naturally join, so should the arts be combined with the academics. Creative thinking, and creative flow, is a learned process that can be practiced and honed. It encourages individual expression and individual connection to the work. More time is given to artistic expression, to day-dreaming, brainstorming, researching with the goal of creating. My students have made board games on topics from science and history, written historical fiction plays, made puppets and performed shows in handmade puppet theaters, and learned history through art. I’ve overheard parents refer to these courses as “extra” or “fluff” and then add, “But you wouldn’t believe how much my kid learned!”
The uniformity of standardized education assumes that children should all receive the same education and all be treated the same way. People have said to me, “You always treat your sons the same, don’t you?” as if any other way is unthinkable. But I didn’t treat my sons the same, because they weren’t the same. One was extroverted, talkative, and acted on a whim. I was always trying to teach him self-restraint. The other was shy, introverted, slow to speak, and I was always encouraging him to come out of his shell. To treat them the same was to ignore their very uniqueness. To love them equally, and unconditionally, I had to treat them individually. They reached for different experiences, learned in their own ways, and sought out environments that worked well for one, but not for the other. I never expected them to end up in the same profession or even have the same lifestyle. To offer them the same identical education would have been an exercise in futility.
Educational freedom, through homeschooling, allows families to travel the world while they learn directly from many cultures. It allows families to teach their children a non-racist curriculum aimed at social change. It allows families to accommodate children with learning issues, giving them the support they need to surpass expectations. It allows us to make creativity a natural part of every day. This freedom allowed my children to honor their individual choices and endeavors, which motivated and expanded their learning. As a homeschooled high school student, my older theater-loving son designed and built a set for an Off-Off-Broadway show (part of a Youth Company), created the costumes for the dream sequence in a Lehman College production of Fiddler On the Roof, directed a contemporary one-act play, and studied world history by reading plays from ancient Greece to medieval Asia, to anti-apartheid Africa, to the contemporary London and NY stage. Later he attended NYU Film School and became a writer. My younger whale-loving son studied marine biology from age two to twenty-two. As a homeschooled teen, he danced ballet and tap, learned kung fu and kendo, and went on whale sails to identify whales. After attending college on the shores of the Atlantic, he became, much to our surprise, a blacksmith! Then he spent years assisting a house builder. Now a massage therapy student, he is building his own small blacksmithing forge. When your head can follow your heart, the learning never ends.
The path of educational freedom had an astonishing effect in my own life. As I fought for the rights of my children (and others) to have this freedom, it rubbed off on me. I started to discover the things I truly wanted to learn, and the things I wanted to teach. I experienced my “Aha” moment in middle age sitting in a children’s theater, and, after years of hard work, became a teacher of playwriting for children. My life direction changed once again. This level of personal transformation and self-discovery is an essential part of learning. It is the highest experience that learning can give us, leading us to see the world differently, and also to see ourselves and others with new eyes. This awakening comes most easily when we seek it with eager hearts and minds, when we can give ourselves over to that personal learning path. It does not happen when we learn in a prison-like environment and “learning” is forced upon us. That sort of “learning” precedes forgetting.
My mother, a professor of education at Hunter College, gave her entering freshman education students a standard 6th grade test. The majority of her students come from NYC public schools and had taken and passed this test as sixth graders. If you have ever watched the TV show Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? you know the flabbergasted feeling of seeing these kids rattle off facts that elude us. They name the moons of Saturn, the capitals of all the US states, and so much more, in less time that we could guess. My mother’s freshmen students felt that same frustration when they all failed the sixth grade test. My mother gave her students this experience to help them question the value of the standard sixth grade curriculum, and the value of testing, especially when hard-working college-bound students don’t retain and remember the material seven years later.
What is a memorable learning experience? Thinking back over my life, I have a handful of learning experiences that truly changed me and the way I saw myself and the world. These experiences remain alive in my mind today, many years after they happened. Significantly different from my schooling, these unforgettable learning experiences never came from a textbook, and never happened seated at a desk in a crowded classroom. They were nearly all hands-on experiences, and, in every case, something I chose and reached for that felt like an adventure even if it was daunting, that held personal meaning for me even if it took hard work, time and effort.
Our country is founded on the very idea of freedom. Freedoms initially guaranteed in our constitution have been expanded (with much hard-fought work) to apply to women and people of color. How far do we have to go to expand our freedoms from religion, speech (and other first amendment rights), to include education as a right (and not as a compulsory regulation)? How much more work must we do to apply these freedoms to children?
Implicit in the gift of freedom is the freedom to make mistakes. This is at the very heart of learning. If we are not free to make mistakes, then we are not free to learn. To avoid making mistakes, we must only copy and memorize, only mimic and imitate. We can never discover who we really are, because in our attempts at discovery we might make mistakes. We might try something new and fall on our face. We might have to try again and again, over a lifetime, making new or similar mistakes, in order to discover something new around us and within ourselves. To offer freedom is to allow people the freedom to make mistakes, to choose the wrong thing before they discover the right thing, and to allow them to make that determination for themselves. It is the gift of free will.
This gift of free will may be the greatest gift we have. It allows us to give, and to take. It allows us to help, to heal, and to harm. It allows us to learn, and to grow beyond “mistakes,” to change our wrongs into rights. To take away the amazing gift of free will is to impose a prison. Our children are our future. Why do we choose to limit their minds with an imposed curriculum chosen by others? Why do we test them constantly and fill them with the fear of making mistakes? Why do we not allow our children to voice, and then choose (with our help and encouragement) the learning they think is best for them? Knowing full well that mistakes will be made, free will is still the greatest choice we can give. Educational freedom is the most generous choice we can offer our children, and also the most exciting and limitless choice we can give ourselves.
Author’s bio:
LAURIE BLOCK SPIGEL is an educator and former homeschooling parent, teaching popular classes to homeschoolers. She creates innovative curriculum, and takes a creative, child-led approach in group classes. In addition to consulting services and help for parents and students (including portfolio and transcript advice, college applications and essays, child-led curriculum planning, and more), Laurie maintains a free website, http://www.homeschoolnyc.com , with resources, activities, projects, and everything you need to homeschool in NYC. She has lectured at international conferences on alternative education and taught child-led workshops around the world. Her book, Education Uncensored: A Guide for the Aspiring, the Foolhardy, and the Disillusioned , is part memoir and part handbook. It offers an overview of major academic subjects as well as techniques, insights, and examples of multidisciplinary, child-led curriculum that defy grade level.
EDUCATIONAL PARADIGM SHIFT By Jen Seron
EDUCATIONAL PARADIGM SHIFT:
Empowerment, Self-Actualization, and Talent Development in Supportive Communities, including Homeschooling by Jen Seron
(find Jen's bio at the end of this essay 7/14/20)
INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 crisis highlights the failures of the current educational system and is an opportunity for deep paradigm change. Our society should invest in empowering, developing, and actualizing the potential of every child in every district and demographic so that diverse children will grow to be strong and capable contributors to their communities and the broader world.
Homeschooling with intent to develop each child's unique interests, skills, and talents can help children thrive while providing common, shared focus for caregivers, teachers, mentors, tutors, interested community members, supportive work sectors, and institutions interested in a homegrown workforce. Parents and caregivers are important partners but children themselves are the key. Not everyone will choose to be a homeschooler, but especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, a positive perspective on homeschooling might be useful to caregivers and educators alike.
Please read further about my own personal experience and perspective, homeschooling as different from home education, empowering children, developing potential, providing personally relevant opportunities, and involving everyone. It is important that children should be allowed to learn in their own way and time while addressing systemic racism, institutional discrimination, and special needs inclusive of those currently underserved including children who are more advanced than their age-peers in certain subjects. Regulations should benefit students and provide effective documentation. Annual progress should be based on personal growth and measured in a variety of ways rather than by single-measure performance on normative high stakes tests. Every parent and caregiver wants their children to succeed and be the best they can be. What if our society had the same goals? Let's make it happen together. Here's a template based on the best aspects of homeschooling that could be applied more broadly to benefit diverse individual children, families and our society.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
My own family was forced to homeschool because our neighborhood public school was unwilling to accommodate my son's need for academic acceleration in a number of subjects. We pulled him out of kindergarten before the winter holidays when our neighborhood public school refused to accommodate his advancement. By April of his kindergarten year we'd learned that not one single school, public or private, throughout New York City, was willing to allow my unevenly developing son to move at his own rate in his areas of strength (3-5 years ahead) and of challenge (speech articulation, social skills, writing). Because of his extreme advancement in many areas, public District 75 and other private special needs schools which would have accepted our Nickerson Letter (our local Department of Education covers tuition) told us that "He is too far ahead," and that they would not take him. One of my city's top public "gifted and talented" school's parent coordinator told me proudly that their school would " . . . even him out" as they did with another math-loving child. She said that they'd gotten that child into basketball for years until the child was at the same place as the other kids in math. Even the top private academic schools were unwilling to take him, telling us "If he was one or two years ahead we could take him, but we can't handle a five-year-old who is three to five years ahead." Additionally unacceptable to our family was that those same private schools wanted him to get related services like speech articulation, social skills, and writing help outside of the school day because they would not allow any support of that kind during the school day. Left with no other option, we became homeschoolers.
Even though we were forced, I am thankful that we were able to homeschool our son so that he could follow his own path in both his areas of strength and challenge. Many families are not able to homeschool and so must choose among less-than-optimal alternatives. The utter waste of human potential and inequity of my child's institutional experiences and other children's experiences are the reason I became an educational advocate, mentor, and community organizer.
Just like many families schooling at home today, we educated ourselves and did our best. Since I'd been raised within a family of public school educators, I was initially nervous about homeschooling. After a bumpy shift to self-empowered learning, my son thrived and took control of his own educational trajectory while meeting the requirements of our state. Once I gave up trying to control him, my son at age seven began to learn on his own faster than I could teach him. As a homeschooling mother I had freedom to let my son drive his own education, set his own pace, and meet my state's requirements in ways that were most effective for him. We worked on both his strengths and his areas of challenge.
To give him tools to address his areas of challenge we found a social skills group at Mount Sinai's Seaver Center for Autism Excellence with diverse families and a parent-support component as well. We got him evaluated and found a speech therapist. We went to the local teacher's school supply store and let him pick out workbooks to help him with handwriting. He worked hard to overcome his challenges. We joined and were active members of the local secular homeschooling community—a community that welcomed and tried to accommodate children of all abilities. We did skill exchanges with other families individually (English for science) and in groups ("Family Spanish"). I brought him to all sorts of events, classes, and gatherings like "Homeschool Recess" and the annual "Not Back-to-School Picnic" where he was able to practice socializing, greeting, and visiting with friends in a safe place, lacking the stressors of bullying. Then, when he was 12, my son began volunteering on Governor's Island National Monument as a docent doing mainly visitor service so he could practice social skills in real-world settings; he answered site-related questions, interacting with the public with confidence that he developed over three years of volunteering.
His academic education was an eclectic blend. We used the New York State free online curriculum and standards as our checklist because his progress in different subjects was uneven. He read hundreds of library books yearly. Noticing the need for organization, he volunteered at the New York Public Library helping organize and shelve books at age five, volunteered for our congresswoman at age six, cleaned cages and took care of animals with a former zookeeper at Art Farm for a few years until age seven, tutored friends in math and Latin, and helped me develop science lessons. He had a variety of tutors and mentors in his favorite subjects. He took world history classes over a period of four years with a local college professor and even took classes at The Beekman School, a local private high school, in order to learn calculus and to use a real chemistry lab for high school chemistry at age ten. The next year we found a kind professor who volunteered weekly to help my son learn college-level math. With a tutor from another local college he learned ancient Latin, Greek and Hebrew then computer programming in Python and JavaScript. He did an internship writing code for Latin-learning software. At age seven or eight he joined an educational non-profit group in his area of interest at that time, then over four years helped write proposals and was a presenter at national and regional conferences for math and engineering educators, giving him public speaking and group-collaboration experience. In addition to traditional academic subjects, such daytime volunteering, mentoring, apprenticeship programs, and real-life experiences were possible within the context of homeschooling.
Through homeschooling my son was exposed to people old, young, from all around the world, with different backgrounds and perspectives—an atmosphere different from the closed, artificial chronological age-based setting of most schools. Each year before submitting our "Letter of Intent" to homeschool I would ask him whether he wanted to go to school; he repeatedly chose to homeschool.
Just like every child has strengths and challenges, every homeschool family has their own issues. For example, our son did not enjoy writing or specific types of sit-down work but rather preferred to learn more actively, read, or think about problems while walking in the park. I was frustrated at the beginning when my child hated to do sit-down work, but then I realized this was an opportunity for growth and empowerment. Life is not easy. We all have to learn to deal with challenges. In our family, for example, we made a deal that he'd get those sit-down necessities like writing, typing, spelling, work sheets in all subjects for handwriting, speech articulation, and social skills practice done early in the day, then choose how to spend the rest of the day. Initially he would work from 9-12 and be done. Then, on his own, he started getting up early at 5 or 6 am so as to be finished before breakfast so he'd have the whole day for fun, which for him was play-based, hands-on, learning-in-motion across subjects, field trips to aquariums and zoos, hiking in parks or highlands, trips to the beach, exploring museums, online exploration, classes on-location around New York City, tutoring, and more.
Thanks to my son's own self-motivated hard work, with much help from my son's mentors and instructors as well as assiduous documentation, great classes, activities, volunteer-opportunities, friendship, and using New York City as our classroom, my son was able to successfully apply to New York University, prove himself, and obtain a scholarship. He wrote his college application essay in Latin. He started his undergraduate education at age 15, graduated with honors, then began his PhD at age 19.
My biggest achievement as a homeschooling parent has been the ability to homeschool in such a way as to promote and stimulate responsible use of my son's talents and at the same time to work on his challenges while simply surviving with necessary essentials and staying as healthy as possible.
PERSPECTIVE ON EDUCATIONAL PARADIGM SHIFT AND HOMESCHOOLING
The goal of homeschooling for most families I know is to empower their children to become independent learners who are hungry in pursuit of their own education, professional development, career, and contribution to society.
For those of you suffering right now trying to educate your children at home while schools are closed, be inspired and let the stress go or use it to motivate a deep paradigm shift in how you interact with your child.
Collaborate with your child to figure out what works best for them. Every child has a different way of relating to education and once a child understands their own interests they are forever changed and empowered. Don't fight the challenges you face, but work with the whole child and recognize that you can negotiate and create a structure that empowers your child and works for you. Reach out to your local homeschool group or start an interest-based group of your own so your child can be with others who share their interests, even while at home. Seek out volunteer opportunities and safe, well-chaperoned subject-based mentors in areas your child wants to learn more about. Encourage your child to learn and then to teach classes, tutor or share what they've learned with other children.
Every child has their own unique interests and skills. Some children are talented, advanced or highly capable in certain areas. Education, whatever the environment, should empower all children to pursue their dreams and contribute to their family, community and society in personally meaningfully, responsible ways. This educational philosophy emerged from the daily challenges and larger equity issues that my family, friends, and others in my community faced in schools and as homeschoolers. Survival is not always easy but we can use these shared crises to grow as individuals and as communities from local to global and to reframe what is possible. Let's together rethink the many areas where educational improvements are needed and how the world of homeschooling can help and inform not only those considering homeschooling but also institutionally schooled children. Fostering and nurturing talents and individual interests as is practiced in homeschooling can enrich the way schooled children learn as well. We can work together, each in our own way, to help every child achieve their full potential in respectful, equitable, healthy, and sustainable ways, collaboratively.
HOMESCHOOLING IS NOT HOME EDUCATION
Homeschooling is distinct from home education. Home education is what happens when schools send professionals into homes such as in case of serious illness or injury of children or other types of crisis that may prohibit on-site school attendance. Home education typically operates within the current paradigm and sticks to the school-based curriculum. For example, COVID-19 has forced many children to learn in the home with teachers being sent into homes remotely; however, the change in location (i.e. being at home) has not shifted the nation's goals of education.
Homeschooling requires a recognition of the value of each child as a unique individual with individual needs, dreams, and potential. Homeschooling is a constant adjustment between your young person's changing and evolving needs and interests plus your own needs balanced by those of society and the homeschool regulations in your area. Homeschooling is an opening to lifelong learning and joy in the process of being your own boss, setting your own goals, and recognizing the limitations of the current structures we inhabit, perpetuate, and create with our daily choices. Homeschooling can be an educational paradigm where actualizing potential in respectful, equitable, healthy, and sustainable ways within a positive, supportive community is the goal.
Homeschooling is so much more than home education. This statement is about how we can shift the educational paradigm to value and promote individual talent development for every child, even when children go back into classrooms.
EMPOWER EACH CHILD
The goal of education in every setting should be to find, develop, hone, apply, optimize and actualize each person's interests, skills and talents within a collaborative community in respectful, equitable, healthy, and sustainable ways. Each child should be the focus of their own education. Right now our institutional educational system puts the focus on normative standards imposed on all children measured by high stakes single-measure tests in an externally mandated, top-down one-size-fits-all, lock-step approach. That model has failed us, and most importantly, it's failed our diverse children.
Although it is necessary for children to be home during this crisis, something good can come out of it if children are empowered to become self-motivated learners by pursuing their interests. Inspiring everyone to do homeschooling with intent to empower children, each in their own way, at their own pace, in their own space, is the goal of this statement. During this crisis and every day we have a chance to make new choices that shift the framework to better empower our diverse children and thus our families, communities, and society.
INCLUSIVELY DEVELOP UNTAPPED POTENTIAL
As humans, our greatest natural resource is our vast untapped human potential. We can do much better as a culture to encourage every child to become independent lifelong learners and provide them with the environment and resources they need to contribute what they uniquely can to our society. For example, our priority of investing in incarceration rather than in education is counterproductive. Black lives matter. The Black Lives Matter movement shines a spotlight on the horrific loss of life and waste of human potential when individuals are devalued and institutional discrimination flourishes. The NAACP's (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's) documentation of the "school to prison pipeline" highlights the need to invest in community-based alternatives and education rather than incarceration.
To dismantle systemic racism we need to dismantle regulatory frameworks that promote bias and embed better alternatives locally.
We each need to make new choices daily. For example, an educational system that uses textbooks that only tell a few perspectives and ignores the experience of entire demographics demands redress only found outside of that system. Many families like mine deeply appreciate and choose homeschooling because they are unwilling to accept institutional bias that excludes the experiences, perspectives, and pasts of people of color, of those on other continents, and many other demographics past and present.
Homeschooling can be inclusive, varied, and filled with discussions about different perspectives, including from under-represented voices. Our whole society can learn from homeschoolers and benefits from each child fully empowered and hungry to contribute their talents and skills to society and their community.
INVOLVE EVERYONE AS EDUCATIONAL ALLIES
Everyone needs to be involved, not just teachers. Educational allies include but are not limited to empowered children themselves and their caregivers, families, teachers, and support staff including counselors, Special Education Itinerant Teachers (SEITs), Special Education Teacher Support Services (SETSS), paraprofessionals, and administrators. In addition to the local branch of the state education department and BOCES (Boards of Cooperative Educational Services in New York State), it is also necessary to involve local community groups, colleges and professional schools (to set up interest-based mentoring programs for all ages and all interests), work sectors, and small businesses to provide volunteer and apprenticeship opportunities starting in grade school. All of these resources can serve as part of a potential larger pool of educational allies to support each individual child realize their potential. Peer mentoring, mentoring, and volunteering in safe ways are frequent practices within the homeschooling world that should be available to every single child every single year.
Our educational institutions should involve educational allies so as to further career development with peer-teaching, mentoring, volunteering, internships, and inclusive professional and business communities providing opportunities that respect the needs and value the potential of every child. Maybe the failing educational system could become more functional by taking advantage of existing professional and community-based organizations, businesses, and structures already extant but until now not used, in much the same way homeschoolers do, simply on a larger scale.
Diverse children pursuing their interests, with help, would also aid society and the larger working world. Wouldn't our professions benefit from a more capable, agile, diverse workforce? Professional organizations and businesses should find ways to help develop the skills and talents of children interested in their professions.
There is so much potential for improvement and community-based action now, embedded within the currently failing framework. Homeschooling using a variety of community resources and educational allies can provide a necessary and child-empowering alternative.
CREATE OPPORTUNITIES
As a society, we need to create opportunities for all children to develop to their full potential. Homeschooling can allow for a broad base of support for individual children. That said, every child should have ongoing access to the aforementioned educational allies including interest-based tutors, mentors, and peer-mentors in their choice of subject-area. Every child should be given the chance to volunteer in different real-life settings that mirror their career interests and goals at the moment. Every child should be engaged within a healthy community and many sub-communities that are based on their own interests at the time, so that they feel loved and cared for and part of something bigger. Homeschoolers in the New York City secular homeschooling community come from all religious and non-religious backgrounds. Every homeschooler I've met in New York City recognizes that diversity makes us stronger. Since homeschoolers waste no time on classroom management (lining up in hallways, attendance taking, homeroom, and the like), the extra time available each day can also be spent doing volunteering, engaging in more playful learning, and finding interest-based support, mentors, and communities of peers who share interests. Skill-sharing, knowledge sharing, career-information sessions, and outreach to include traditionally underserved demographics would benefit both individuals and society. Homeschooling families are used to creating opportunities of all sorts (creative, career-related, community-serving, non-profit) for their children as they are not relying on an institution to do so for them. Creating educational opportunities meaningful to each child is a practice that can and should be expanded to all children, within their communities and their schools. All adults, regardless of whether they are parents, can create opportunities for those who share their interests. What opportunities can you think of that would benefit your community and empower children?
INCLUDE MANY APPROACHES TO LEARNING
There are many ways to learn and children should have choices. Homeschooling gives students the opportunity to not only meet the state-mandated requirements but to go beyond. Schooling at home can mean more opportunities for learning rather than fewer when students and caregivers are creative and figure out fun ways to learn about topics of special interest to children. For some families, figuring out what to learn to meet their state's regulations is an issue. Some states have made their requirements available free online. For example, in New York State, there is a free online curriculum with standards across required subjects that only mandates what must be taught, not how to teach it. How homeschoolers in New York State meet state requirements is up to children and their caregivers.
Homeschoolers often learn on field trips, via travel, classes, in parks and museums, or even online and in any way that works for them. Some take classes at local colleges or participate in New York City's free early college program, College Now. There are as many ways to homeschool as there are children and keeping these options flexible is essential.
In this particular crisis, as a way to empower children and their caregivers who are now schooling at home for the first time, each state's entire curriculum, learning standards and requirements for promotion and eventual graduation should be clearly posted and distributed to children and caregivers in easy format. Every child learns at their own pace (and may be years ahead in one subject or behind in another), but all parents and caregivers should at least have easy access to a helpful guideline so they know what the state expects of institutionally schooled children of any age or grade level. For example if you look at the New York State Curriculum you would note that New York State even has a free career development framework for all ages here. Every state could provide caregivers and children who are schooling at home with their state's minimum educational requirements and in that way empower children to learn at their own pace and pursue their career goals outside of the classroom during this crisis and afterward.
MOVE AT ONE'S OWN PACE
It is unfortunate that during COVID-19, the current home education framework still accepts the existing system that forces children to move lock-step through age-based curriculum and standards. For example, my son, who had taught himself to read sometime before he was three years old, was told he was not allowed to read Magic Schoolbus books in kindergarten because "What will he read in 4th grade?” Why would our country or educators want to actively hold children back, impeding their development? In contrast, homeschooling with intent to develop interests, skills, and talents empowers children to develop their own learning strategies at their own pace. My son greatly benefited from being able to move at his own pace while still fulfilling state requirements to document adequate annual growth.
Every child should be able to move through the curriculum at their own pace in each subject, regardless of grade level or chronological age. There are already some mechanisms in place for this; for example in New York, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) NYSED part 100.10 regulations provide guidance that homeschool families in New York must comply with in order to document "adequate annual progress" and move from one grade to the next. See the "Assessment" section at the end.
To accommodate students who need acceleration, state education departments and local school districts should empower children and encourage their teachers to utilize outside educational resources to benefit such children, compile evidence, and keep records of achievement. Online programs like MIT's open courseware that is free, or John Hopkins CTY, Duke's TIP, Stanford's SPCS, and Northwestern's CTD could be used for specific subjects during class time for children far ahead of what is being taught by the instructor. Instead of being given what they perceive as busywork, or being bored or disruptive in subjects for which they already know their grade level’s content, advanced children could work at their own level and pace, freeing teachers to work with other students. Also, schools and districts in New York State, for example, could use free released NYSED exams prior to the start of a school year so students can test up as they are able, which would also serve to document fulfillment of NYSED requirements in alternative ways, as with NYSED's multiple pathways to high school graduation.
ADDRESS SPECIAL NEEDS WHILE PROMOTING FULL DEVELOPMENT
Children with special needs exist in the homeschool community just as they do in institutional settings. The 1975 IDEA laws and funding to accommodate each child's special needs are available to children with legally defined special needs, wherever they are schooled.
Meeting our children where they are in each subject, challenging them where they are advanced, slowing down where it's difficult for them, utilizing qualitative and quantitative assessments to build their confidence and document annual progress, customizing instruction to their unique and particular learning needs and abilities, and, most importantly, identifying their interests, passions, and talents is needed to help them realize their potential. In regard to assessing progress, special needs children are put at an even greater disadvantage when single-measure test assessments fail to capture and reward their personal growth.
Children of all abilities, including those with special needs, should be able to fully develop their talents and potential.
Because of the 1975 IDEA laws that mandate appropriate support for those with special needs, homeschooled children can also have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Many homeschooled children with IEPs avail themselves of helpful "related services" through their local school district, including occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and even special tutoring and instruction. Other homeschooling families provide their special needs children with this type of supportive therapy privately or through insurance. Within the homeschool framework, these therapies can be incorporated into the homeschooler's day whereas in schools children often have to be pulled out (missing a class) to receive mandated therapies. For example, one of my good friend's sons was at a top-rated New York City private special education school. He suddenly started having problems in math. Since he'd always wanted to be a rocket scientist, the change was alarming. When his mother asked the school what was going on, the school told her that because her son was asking so many questions in math class they had, for the last year, been pulling him out of math so he could receive his counseling at that time. Now in college, he still struggles with math. Pulling children from academic classes daily or even weekly is an unacceptable form of compromise that adds to the challenges that special needs children face. Such practices should be re-examined and revised to benefit the whole child.
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, some special needs children are at home for the first time. Many caregivers are at a tipping point of exhaustion or frustration. Children, including special needs children, were not hard-wired to sit in front of screens or anyplace for so many hours a day. Institutions can and should do better to support both special needs children and their caregivers during this crisis and afterward. Homeschooling families are used to being in the company of their special needs children and are familiar with providing their children with needed sensory supports, offering calming strategies, providing alternate means of instruction, including movement, and knowing how to meet their children's needs inside the home as well as outside.
Another issue brought to light by this crisis is that some special needs children have not yet been identified as having a special need or as needing some form or assistance or support. How can such children be best served when home-bound caregivers recognize a need? Via remote evaluations? Identifying learning challenges (and strengths) as well as learning therapies are needed in order for special needs children to reach their full potential. Caregivers schooling at home as well as homeschoolers have every right to bring potential special-needs children to the attention of their school district so that children can obtain the support and accommodation they need to achieve their full potential.
Also during this time of crisis, many children (even those identified as having a special need) are not receiving their related and supportive therapies (such as those mandated in an IEP or those recommended by developmental physicians or others with expertise). Rather than cutting funds in this important area, solutions need to be found. Perhaps 1:1 home visits with safety precautions will be allowed? Perhaps sensory gyms or speech therapy facilities can be opened with added safety precautions? In New York City, for example, perhaps special transportation accommodations (similar to Access-A-Ride) can assure children and therapists a safer means of travel until public transit has been deemed safe again? In any case, how can we prevent regression or loss of gained function at this time when so many children are not receiving their essential related services and therapies?
Lastly, the idea that special needs homeschoolers are isolated if they aren't in a classroom environment is not valid. Homeschool instructors like myself incorporated and accommodated the special needs of diverse children into our classes, wherever the classes take place. For example, once when I was teaching an on-location science class using the American Museum of Natural History and Central Park as our classroom, I was asked by one student's caregiver to help her child who was on the Autism Spectrum since that child was joining a class for the first time. So, after getting permission from both parents, I asked one of my teen peer-mentors whether he would shadow the new student and provide support to help that new student develop skills to interact with peers. Over the year of science classes, with both my facilitation and the help of this amazingly patient peer-mentor, that new student developed the skills to independently interact in positive ways with peers. As another example, my own son benefited from an inclusive homeschool on-location world history instructor who for four years made a special effort to include him so that by the end he had developed classroom and group-work skills of his own. There are many creative ways meet a child's special needs by making the most of related services in a manner that empowers children along with activities and real-life experiences that reinforce coping skills in classrooms, at home, and outside, including while homeschooling.
DEVELOP FULL POTENTIAL OF THE TWICE EXCEPTIONAL
Too many institutions often focus on challenges children face without developing their strengths. Sometimes children's talents, skills, and interests are ignored because of a child's deficits in other areas (twice exceptional or 2e). A child can have deficits in one area and strengths in another. In the USA, 1975 IDEA laws protect certain special needs but exclude special needs of those who are highly capable at the other end of the special needs spectrum.
For example, in regard to talent development, unless the state has added their own regulations and funding pertaining to highly capable, gifted and talented, or advanced children (see this link for list of mandates and funding for each state), schools have no mandate to make any accommodation or to meet the needs of children who are advanced or highly advanced (highly capable, gifted and talented); 1975 IDEA laws do not include advancement as a protected special needs category.
Institutions should identify and assist children who are both capable of high achievement and also have other special needs (2e or twice exceptional) so they can receive appropriate accommodation and services, even at home.
Children of color, the disabled, English language learners (ELL), and children with low socio-economic status (SES) are among those who are institutionally under-identified when it comes to capability for high achievement and inclusion in programs for "gifted and talented." Often, children's talents, skills, and interests are ignored because of a child's deficits in other areas. See Excellence Gap research, Nation Empowered Report and NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) information about how we can better serve diverse highly capable children in every school district and demographic. Our country, cities, communities, and workplaces need every single highly capable child, whether or not that child also has special needs on the other end of the spectrum. When such children's talents are ignored, underestimated, not recognized or mis-identified, both our children and our society suffer.
All children should have support to develop to their full potential regardless of diagnosis or special needs, including children with any level of advancement from small to profound. Parents who are now schooling at home, our educational system, and our country should all nurture the unique special needs of each child as do homeschooling parents. Many homeschool families find ways for their highly capable children to excel, just as they choose to avail themselves of federally mandated IDEA-law special needs support.
UNDERSTAND REGULATIONS AND USE THEM TO EMPOWER CHILDREN
Homeschooling regulations (and our educational system) should only mandate that specific subject-areas are covered but should not dictate or limit how children learn or at what pace. That said, homeschooling frameworks, regulations, and reporting can ensure a well-rounded education that is at least substantially equivalent to that of publicly educated students while providing much more of a chance for children to pursue their interests and develop in their own ways and rate. Every state has their own requirements. When I began homeschooling I looked into state curricula and homeschooling requirements across the nation and world. In the United States, from my perspective at that time, California and New York had the most rigorous requirements. In my more recent non-profit advocacy work I have helped parents from New York, California, Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states to figure out what was needed to meet homeschool requirements in their state. For example, in New York State where my family homeschooled there are clear guidelines that ensure that all children receive a well-rounded education across subjects; it was this regulatory framework that permitted my son to document completion of all NYSED requirements by the time he turned 14. In New York State, adult homeschool administrators must submit an individual home instruction plan (IHIP), quarterly reports, an annual end-of-year report, and comply with regulations if they want to continue to homeschool.
Among the states, New York's regulatory framework for homeschooling is exemplary (especially when combined with NYSED's free online curriculum and learning standards plus their useful bevy of released tests across key subjects and grade levels).
New York does not interfere with homeschooling choice or freedoms but rather sets assessment requirements that benefit children in regard to documenting personal annual growth via both qualitative and quantitative measures, and requires regular but reasonable paperwork be submitted in a timely manner quarterly and yearly. Instead of wasteful home visits or subjective, potentially biased evaluations of who is "fit to teach," New York State relies upon submitted paperwork and actual evidence to determine fitness to homeschool.
In New York State all homeschooling families are known to the Department of Education because they must submit mandatory NYSED part 100.10 paperwork at regular intervals. Families who are unwilling to complete their paperwork lose the right to homeschool in New York State via a clearly defined regulatory process.
If any further regulation of homeschooling is proposed, I suggest one look to New York State (NYSED part 100.10) as a good example. Although many states do not have the same level of regulatory requirements as New York State, homeschooling nevertheless can provide a valid well-regulated alternative for families whose children would otherwise suffer or fall through the cracks of institutional education, whether at home or in a classroom.
INCLUDE MULTIPLE MEASURES OF SUCCESS
Our families, communities, schools, localities, states, and the federal government should replace the failing one-size-fits-all factory-model, externally mandated punitive standards, and chronologically-based single-measure high stakes assessments that reinforce and ossify systemic discrimination. We should instead invest in more meaningful measures of academic progress that focus on promoting individualized development of every single child's potential.
Testing should be used as a means of self-evaluation and self-improvement. Children's "adequate academic progress" should be measured by comparison of this year's assessments with their own year's prior scores in each subject, not to an aggregate based on age or demographic. Some educators call this a personal growth model of evaluation but continue to compare an individual child's progress to that of their demographic or chronological age peers which is still not fair. Each child's progress should be evaluated in relation to that same child's own progress the prior year, for each subject in which assessments and adequate annual progress are required.
Multiple measures of success, both quantitative (tests) and qualitative, should be employed, such as portfolios, self-evaluations by children, and documentation in a variety of forms by children themselves, parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors. Children's learning outside of the classroom, if documented by mentors, coaches, instructors, parents, and children themselves, might be used to fulfill seat-time requirements. All educational systems should empower and engage children with adequate annual progress based on where they are now compared to a year ago. When each child improves over time, so does society.
CONCLUSION
The key to effective homeschooling, and even home education, is to empower children and engage caregivers, instructors and the local community with the goal of empowering children. Every child should have the opportunity to pursue their interests and actualize their potential in their areas of interest, skill, and talent. Understanding and utilizing key ideas from within the homeschooling community as outlined in this statement could improve our society, homegrow a talented, highly skilled and motivated workforce across sectors, transform education, enrich lives, and empower our diverse children to achieve their full potential.
(Appendix & BIO below)
APPENDIX WITH HYPERLINKS
Below are the hyperlinks in this statement and a few related links.
Author note: All links in this statement were retrieved on 7/1/20.
NAACP's (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's) "Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline"
https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Dismantling_the_School_to_Prison_Pipeline__Criminal-Justice__.pdf
College Now: New York City's free early college program
https://www.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/evaluation/areas-of-focus_1/college_readiness/college-now/
College Now home page
https://k16.cuny.edu/collegenow/
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Open Courseware, free online
https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
John's Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth (CTY)
https://johnshopkinscty.org/
Duke University's Talent Identification Program (TIP)
https://tip.duke.edu/programs
Stanford's Pre-Collegiate Studies program (SPCS)
https://spcs.stanford.edu/about-us#programguide
Northwestern's Center for Talent Development (CTD)
https://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/advocacy-every-student-succeeds-act-essa-updates
New York State Curriculum and Learning Standards, free online
http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction
New York State's Career Development and Occupational Studies Framework
http://www.p12.nysed.gov/cte/cdlearn/cdosresourceguide.html
New York State's multiple pathways to high school graduation
http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/multiple-pathways
United States Education Department's explanation of 1975 Idea Laws
https://sites.ed.gov/idea/about-idea/
Excellence Gap research documenting institutional discrimination
https://www.jkcf.org/our-research/what-is-the-excellence-gap/
Nation Deceived and Empowered research by the Acceleration Institute of the University of Iowa's Belin-Blank Center
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/nation_deceived/
Acceleration Policy Guidelines from the Belin-Blank Acceleration Institute
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Resources/Policy_Guidelines/
Acceleration Institute resources for families, educators and administrators
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Empowered/NE_Vol2_AppendixE.pdf
NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) position on diverse learners
https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources/timely-topics/including-diverse-learners-gifted-education-programs
NAGC lists of resources
https://www.nagc.org/information-publications
New York State Education Department Homeschooling Regulations
http://www.p12.nysed.gov/part100/pages/10010.html
Davidson Gifted's state-by-state mandates and funding for gifted and talented services
https://www.davidsongifted.org/search-database/entrytype/3
Author's Bio:
JEN SERON is a NYC-based educator and educational advocate who believes that education in any setting could benefit from recognizing the value of a focus on developing the talents, skills, and interests of individual children, as do many homeschoolers. The current COVID-19 crisis has prevented children from attending school in the traditional sense. Jen believes that there is a great opportunity in this crisis. Rethinking the manner in which education is delivered should be accompanied by rethinking the underlying goals of education, who education is intended to benefit, and how we can better serve and empower our diverse children.
Jen has presented at local, regional, and national conferences promoting empowerment, self-actualization, and talent development via personally meaningful education for diverse children in all environments, including homeschooling. She has served on boards of three educational non-profits, as a council member of NYCHEA (New York City Homeschool Educator's Alliance), supported community activists, and been a longtime mentor to other parents and to children of all abilities, even while surviving breast cancer. She has developed a unique science curriculum based on supporting children's interests (Full Circle Science). She has taught science programs at all levels from Pre-K through college; at the Vanderbilt YMCA, at St. John’s University (SCI 1000C Plant Evolution), on-location in NYC public school after school programs, and to Pre-K through 12th grade homeschoolers in parks and museums. She also taught "Drawing on Location" at Parsons School of Design. Her own educational background includes an MFA in illustration from School of Visual Arts in NYC, and two prior degrees from the University of Illinois--a BA in philosophy and a three-year research-based MS in plant sciences, where she specialized in ecophysiology and studied climate change on rice for the EPA.
Jen secularly-homeschooled her son, who was exceptionally talented in certain respects and exceptionally challenged in others (twice exceptional, 2e) throughout a ten year period. Over ten years he went from being a public school kindergarten dropout to being admitted at age 14 to New York University, from which he received a Bachelor’s degree with honors. Additionally, during his degree he completed a summer-long, full-time internship that took him to London for a week. The next summer at 18 he was selected and attended an eight-week international summer research program abroad. He excitedly began a PhD program last year at age 19.
Jen’s experiences as a student, science instructor, community activist, advocate, and parent led her to the conclusion that education in every environment should, within diverse and supportive communities, empower and inspire each child to pursue their own interests, skills, and talents to optimize and actualize their unique potential in sustainable, healthy, equitable ways throughout life.
Empowerment, Self-Actualization, and Talent Development in Supportive Communities, including Homeschooling by Jen Seron
(find Jen's bio at the end of this essay 7/14/20)
INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 crisis highlights the failures of the current educational system and is an opportunity for deep paradigm change. Our society should invest in empowering, developing, and actualizing the potential of every child in every district and demographic so that diverse children will grow to be strong and capable contributors to their communities and the broader world.
Homeschooling with intent to develop each child's unique interests, skills, and talents can help children thrive while providing common, shared focus for caregivers, teachers, mentors, tutors, interested community members, supportive work sectors, and institutions interested in a homegrown workforce. Parents and caregivers are important partners but children themselves are the key. Not everyone will choose to be a homeschooler, but especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, a positive perspective on homeschooling might be useful to caregivers and educators alike.
Please read further about my own personal experience and perspective, homeschooling as different from home education, empowering children, developing potential, providing personally relevant opportunities, and involving everyone. It is important that children should be allowed to learn in their own way and time while addressing systemic racism, institutional discrimination, and special needs inclusive of those currently underserved including children who are more advanced than their age-peers in certain subjects. Regulations should benefit students and provide effective documentation. Annual progress should be based on personal growth and measured in a variety of ways rather than by single-measure performance on normative high stakes tests. Every parent and caregiver wants their children to succeed and be the best they can be. What if our society had the same goals? Let's make it happen together. Here's a template based on the best aspects of homeschooling that could be applied more broadly to benefit diverse individual children, families and our society.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
My own family was forced to homeschool because our neighborhood public school was unwilling to accommodate my son's need for academic acceleration in a number of subjects. We pulled him out of kindergarten before the winter holidays when our neighborhood public school refused to accommodate his advancement. By April of his kindergarten year we'd learned that not one single school, public or private, throughout New York City, was willing to allow my unevenly developing son to move at his own rate in his areas of strength (3-5 years ahead) and of challenge (speech articulation, social skills, writing). Because of his extreme advancement in many areas, public District 75 and other private special needs schools which would have accepted our Nickerson Letter (our local Department of Education covers tuition) told us that "He is too far ahead," and that they would not take him. One of my city's top public "gifted and talented" school's parent coordinator told me proudly that their school would " . . . even him out" as they did with another math-loving child. She said that they'd gotten that child into basketball for years until the child was at the same place as the other kids in math. Even the top private academic schools were unwilling to take him, telling us "If he was one or two years ahead we could take him, but we can't handle a five-year-old who is three to five years ahead." Additionally unacceptable to our family was that those same private schools wanted him to get related services like speech articulation, social skills, and writing help outside of the school day because they would not allow any support of that kind during the school day. Left with no other option, we became homeschoolers.
Even though we were forced, I am thankful that we were able to homeschool our son so that he could follow his own path in both his areas of strength and challenge. Many families are not able to homeschool and so must choose among less-than-optimal alternatives. The utter waste of human potential and inequity of my child's institutional experiences and other children's experiences are the reason I became an educational advocate, mentor, and community organizer.
Just like many families schooling at home today, we educated ourselves and did our best. Since I'd been raised within a family of public school educators, I was initially nervous about homeschooling. After a bumpy shift to self-empowered learning, my son thrived and took control of his own educational trajectory while meeting the requirements of our state. Once I gave up trying to control him, my son at age seven began to learn on his own faster than I could teach him. As a homeschooling mother I had freedom to let my son drive his own education, set his own pace, and meet my state's requirements in ways that were most effective for him. We worked on both his strengths and his areas of challenge.
To give him tools to address his areas of challenge we found a social skills group at Mount Sinai's Seaver Center for Autism Excellence with diverse families and a parent-support component as well. We got him evaluated and found a speech therapist. We went to the local teacher's school supply store and let him pick out workbooks to help him with handwriting. He worked hard to overcome his challenges. We joined and were active members of the local secular homeschooling community—a community that welcomed and tried to accommodate children of all abilities. We did skill exchanges with other families individually (English for science) and in groups ("Family Spanish"). I brought him to all sorts of events, classes, and gatherings like "Homeschool Recess" and the annual "Not Back-to-School Picnic" where he was able to practice socializing, greeting, and visiting with friends in a safe place, lacking the stressors of bullying. Then, when he was 12, my son began volunteering on Governor's Island National Monument as a docent doing mainly visitor service so he could practice social skills in real-world settings; he answered site-related questions, interacting with the public with confidence that he developed over three years of volunteering.
His academic education was an eclectic blend. We used the New York State free online curriculum and standards as our checklist because his progress in different subjects was uneven. He read hundreds of library books yearly. Noticing the need for organization, he volunteered at the New York Public Library helping organize and shelve books at age five, volunteered for our congresswoman at age six, cleaned cages and took care of animals with a former zookeeper at Art Farm for a few years until age seven, tutored friends in math and Latin, and helped me develop science lessons. He had a variety of tutors and mentors in his favorite subjects. He took world history classes over a period of four years with a local college professor and even took classes at The Beekman School, a local private high school, in order to learn calculus and to use a real chemistry lab for high school chemistry at age ten. The next year we found a kind professor who volunteered weekly to help my son learn college-level math. With a tutor from another local college he learned ancient Latin, Greek and Hebrew then computer programming in Python and JavaScript. He did an internship writing code for Latin-learning software. At age seven or eight he joined an educational non-profit group in his area of interest at that time, then over four years helped write proposals and was a presenter at national and regional conferences for math and engineering educators, giving him public speaking and group-collaboration experience. In addition to traditional academic subjects, such daytime volunteering, mentoring, apprenticeship programs, and real-life experiences were possible within the context of homeschooling.
Through homeschooling my son was exposed to people old, young, from all around the world, with different backgrounds and perspectives—an atmosphere different from the closed, artificial chronological age-based setting of most schools. Each year before submitting our "Letter of Intent" to homeschool I would ask him whether he wanted to go to school; he repeatedly chose to homeschool.
Just like every child has strengths and challenges, every homeschool family has their own issues. For example, our son did not enjoy writing or specific types of sit-down work but rather preferred to learn more actively, read, or think about problems while walking in the park. I was frustrated at the beginning when my child hated to do sit-down work, but then I realized this was an opportunity for growth and empowerment. Life is not easy. We all have to learn to deal with challenges. In our family, for example, we made a deal that he'd get those sit-down necessities like writing, typing, spelling, work sheets in all subjects for handwriting, speech articulation, and social skills practice done early in the day, then choose how to spend the rest of the day. Initially he would work from 9-12 and be done. Then, on his own, he started getting up early at 5 or 6 am so as to be finished before breakfast so he'd have the whole day for fun, which for him was play-based, hands-on, learning-in-motion across subjects, field trips to aquariums and zoos, hiking in parks or highlands, trips to the beach, exploring museums, online exploration, classes on-location around New York City, tutoring, and more.
Thanks to my son's own self-motivated hard work, with much help from my son's mentors and instructors as well as assiduous documentation, great classes, activities, volunteer-opportunities, friendship, and using New York City as our classroom, my son was able to successfully apply to New York University, prove himself, and obtain a scholarship. He wrote his college application essay in Latin. He started his undergraduate education at age 15, graduated with honors, then began his PhD at age 19.
My biggest achievement as a homeschooling parent has been the ability to homeschool in such a way as to promote and stimulate responsible use of my son's talents and at the same time to work on his challenges while simply surviving with necessary essentials and staying as healthy as possible.
PERSPECTIVE ON EDUCATIONAL PARADIGM SHIFT AND HOMESCHOOLING
The goal of homeschooling for most families I know is to empower their children to become independent learners who are hungry in pursuit of their own education, professional development, career, and contribution to society.
For those of you suffering right now trying to educate your children at home while schools are closed, be inspired and let the stress go or use it to motivate a deep paradigm shift in how you interact with your child.
Collaborate with your child to figure out what works best for them. Every child has a different way of relating to education and once a child understands their own interests they are forever changed and empowered. Don't fight the challenges you face, but work with the whole child and recognize that you can negotiate and create a structure that empowers your child and works for you. Reach out to your local homeschool group or start an interest-based group of your own so your child can be with others who share their interests, even while at home. Seek out volunteer opportunities and safe, well-chaperoned subject-based mentors in areas your child wants to learn more about. Encourage your child to learn and then to teach classes, tutor or share what they've learned with other children.
Every child has their own unique interests and skills. Some children are talented, advanced or highly capable in certain areas. Education, whatever the environment, should empower all children to pursue their dreams and contribute to their family, community and society in personally meaningfully, responsible ways. This educational philosophy emerged from the daily challenges and larger equity issues that my family, friends, and others in my community faced in schools and as homeschoolers. Survival is not always easy but we can use these shared crises to grow as individuals and as communities from local to global and to reframe what is possible. Let's together rethink the many areas where educational improvements are needed and how the world of homeschooling can help and inform not only those considering homeschooling but also institutionally schooled children. Fostering and nurturing talents and individual interests as is practiced in homeschooling can enrich the way schooled children learn as well. We can work together, each in our own way, to help every child achieve their full potential in respectful, equitable, healthy, and sustainable ways, collaboratively.
HOMESCHOOLING IS NOT HOME EDUCATION
Homeschooling is distinct from home education. Home education is what happens when schools send professionals into homes such as in case of serious illness or injury of children or other types of crisis that may prohibit on-site school attendance. Home education typically operates within the current paradigm and sticks to the school-based curriculum. For example, COVID-19 has forced many children to learn in the home with teachers being sent into homes remotely; however, the change in location (i.e. being at home) has not shifted the nation's goals of education.
Homeschooling requires a recognition of the value of each child as a unique individual with individual needs, dreams, and potential. Homeschooling is a constant adjustment between your young person's changing and evolving needs and interests plus your own needs balanced by those of society and the homeschool regulations in your area. Homeschooling is an opening to lifelong learning and joy in the process of being your own boss, setting your own goals, and recognizing the limitations of the current structures we inhabit, perpetuate, and create with our daily choices. Homeschooling can be an educational paradigm where actualizing potential in respectful, equitable, healthy, and sustainable ways within a positive, supportive community is the goal.
Homeschooling is so much more than home education. This statement is about how we can shift the educational paradigm to value and promote individual talent development for every child, even when children go back into classrooms.
EMPOWER EACH CHILD
The goal of education in every setting should be to find, develop, hone, apply, optimize and actualize each person's interests, skills and talents within a collaborative community in respectful, equitable, healthy, and sustainable ways. Each child should be the focus of their own education. Right now our institutional educational system puts the focus on normative standards imposed on all children measured by high stakes single-measure tests in an externally mandated, top-down one-size-fits-all, lock-step approach. That model has failed us, and most importantly, it's failed our diverse children.
Although it is necessary for children to be home during this crisis, something good can come out of it if children are empowered to become self-motivated learners by pursuing their interests. Inspiring everyone to do homeschooling with intent to empower children, each in their own way, at their own pace, in their own space, is the goal of this statement. During this crisis and every day we have a chance to make new choices that shift the framework to better empower our diverse children and thus our families, communities, and society.
INCLUSIVELY DEVELOP UNTAPPED POTENTIAL
As humans, our greatest natural resource is our vast untapped human potential. We can do much better as a culture to encourage every child to become independent lifelong learners and provide them with the environment and resources they need to contribute what they uniquely can to our society. For example, our priority of investing in incarceration rather than in education is counterproductive. Black lives matter. The Black Lives Matter movement shines a spotlight on the horrific loss of life and waste of human potential when individuals are devalued and institutional discrimination flourishes. The NAACP's (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's) documentation of the "school to prison pipeline" highlights the need to invest in community-based alternatives and education rather than incarceration.
To dismantle systemic racism we need to dismantle regulatory frameworks that promote bias and embed better alternatives locally.
We each need to make new choices daily. For example, an educational system that uses textbooks that only tell a few perspectives and ignores the experience of entire demographics demands redress only found outside of that system. Many families like mine deeply appreciate and choose homeschooling because they are unwilling to accept institutional bias that excludes the experiences, perspectives, and pasts of people of color, of those on other continents, and many other demographics past and present.
Homeschooling can be inclusive, varied, and filled with discussions about different perspectives, including from under-represented voices. Our whole society can learn from homeschoolers and benefits from each child fully empowered and hungry to contribute their talents and skills to society and their community.
INVOLVE EVERYONE AS EDUCATIONAL ALLIES
Everyone needs to be involved, not just teachers. Educational allies include but are not limited to empowered children themselves and their caregivers, families, teachers, and support staff including counselors, Special Education Itinerant Teachers (SEITs), Special Education Teacher Support Services (SETSS), paraprofessionals, and administrators. In addition to the local branch of the state education department and BOCES (Boards of Cooperative Educational Services in New York State), it is also necessary to involve local community groups, colleges and professional schools (to set up interest-based mentoring programs for all ages and all interests), work sectors, and small businesses to provide volunteer and apprenticeship opportunities starting in grade school. All of these resources can serve as part of a potential larger pool of educational allies to support each individual child realize their potential. Peer mentoring, mentoring, and volunteering in safe ways are frequent practices within the homeschooling world that should be available to every single child every single year.
Our educational institutions should involve educational allies so as to further career development with peer-teaching, mentoring, volunteering, internships, and inclusive professional and business communities providing opportunities that respect the needs and value the potential of every child. Maybe the failing educational system could become more functional by taking advantage of existing professional and community-based organizations, businesses, and structures already extant but until now not used, in much the same way homeschoolers do, simply on a larger scale.
Diverse children pursuing their interests, with help, would also aid society and the larger working world. Wouldn't our professions benefit from a more capable, agile, diverse workforce? Professional organizations and businesses should find ways to help develop the skills and talents of children interested in their professions.
There is so much potential for improvement and community-based action now, embedded within the currently failing framework. Homeschooling using a variety of community resources and educational allies can provide a necessary and child-empowering alternative.
CREATE OPPORTUNITIES
As a society, we need to create opportunities for all children to develop to their full potential. Homeschooling can allow for a broad base of support for individual children. That said, every child should have ongoing access to the aforementioned educational allies including interest-based tutors, mentors, and peer-mentors in their choice of subject-area. Every child should be given the chance to volunteer in different real-life settings that mirror their career interests and goals at the moment. Every child should be engaged within a healthy community and many sub-communities that are based on their own interests at the time, so that they feel loved and cared for and part of something bigger. Homeschoolers in the New York City secular homeschooling community come from all religious and non-religious backgrounds. Every homeschooler I've met in New York City recognizes that diversity makes us stronger. Since homeschoolers waste no time on classroom management (lining up in hallways, attendance taking, homeroom, and the like), the extra time available each day can also be spent doing volunteering, engaging in more playful learning, and finding interest-based support, mentors, and communities of peers who share interests. Skill-sharing, knowledge sharing, career-information sessions, and outreach to include traditionally underserved demographics would benefit both individuals and society. Homeschooling families are used to creating opportunities of all sorts (creative, career-related, community-serving, non-profit) for their children as they are not relying on an institution to do so for them. Creating educational opportunities meaningful to each child is a practice that can and should be expanded to all children, within their communities and their schools. All adults, regardless of whether they are parents, can create opportunities for those who share their interests. What opportunities can you think of that would benefit your community and empower children?
INCLUDE MANY APPROACHES TO LEARNING
There are many ways to learn and children should have choices. Homeschooling gives students the opportunity to not only meet the state-mandated requirements but to go beyond. Schooling at home can mean more opportunities for learning rather than fewer when students and caregivers are creative and figure out fun ways to learn about topics of special interest to children. For some families, figuring out what to learn to meet their state's regulations is an issue. Some states have made their requirements available free online. For example, in New York State, there is a free online curriculum with standards across required subjects that only mandates what must be taught, not how to teach it. How homeschoolers in New York State meet state requirements is up to children and their caregivers.
Homeschoolers often learn on field trips, via travel, classes, in parks and museums, or even online and in any way that works for them. Some take classes at local colleges or participate in New York City's free early college program, College Now. There are as many ways to homeschool as there are children and keeping these options flexible is essential.
In this particular crisis, as a way to empower children and their caregivers who are now schooling at home for the first time, each state's entire curriculum, learning standards and requirements for promotion and eventual graduation should be clearly posted and distributed to children and caregivers in easy format. Every child learns at their own pace (and may be years ahead in one subject or behind in another), but all parents and caregivers should at least have easy access to a helpful guideline so they know what the state expects of institutionally schooled children of any age or grade level. For example if you look at the New York State Curriculum you would note that New York State even has a free career development framework for all ages here. Every state could provide caregivers and children who are schooling at home with their state's minimum educational requirements and in that way empower children to learn at their own pace and pursue their career goals outside of the classroom during this crisis and afterward.
MOVE AT ONE'S OWN PACE
It is unfortunate that during COVID-19, the current home education framework still accepts the existing system that forces children to move lock-step through age-based curriculum and standards. For example, my son, who had taught himself to read sometime before he was three years old, was told he was not allowed to read Magic Schoolbus books in kindergarten because "What will he read in 4th grade?” Why would our country or educators want to actively hold children back, impeding their development? In contrast, homeschooling with intent to develop interests, skills, and talents empowers children to develop their own learning strategies at their own pace. My son greatly benefited from being able to move at his own pace while still fulfilling state requirements to document adequate annual growth.
Every child should be able to move through the curriculum at their own pace in each subject, regardless of grade level or chronological age. There are already some mechanisms in place for this; for example in New York, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) NYSED part 100.10 regulations provide guidance that homeschool families in New York must comply with in order to document "adequate annual progress" and move from one grade to the next. See the "Assessment" section at the end.
To accommodate students who need acceleration, state education departments and local school districts should empower children and encourage their teachers to utilize outside educational resources to benefit such children, compile evidence, and keep records of achievement. Online programs like MIT's open courseware that is free, or John Hopkins CTY, Duke's TIP, Stanford's SPCS, and Northwestern's CTD could be used for specific subjects during class time for children far ahead of what is being taught by the instructor. Instead of being given what they perceive as busywork, or being bored or disruptive in subjects for which they already know their grade level’s content, advanced children could work at their own level and pace, freeing teachers to work with other students. Also, schools and districts in New York State, for example, could use free released NYSED exams prior to the start of a school year so students can test up as they are able, which would also serve to document fulfillment of NYSED requirements in alternative ways, as with NYSED's multiple pathways to high school graduation.
ADDRESS SPECIAL NEEDS WHILE PROMOTING FULL DEVELOPMENT
Children with special needs exist in the homeschool community just as they do in institutional settings. The 1975 IDEA laws and funding to accommodate each child's special needs are available to children with legally defined special needs, wherever they are schooled.
Meeting our children where they are in each subject, challenging them where they are advanced, slowing down where it's difficult for them, utilizing qualitative and quantitative assessments to build their confidence and document annual progress, customizing instruction to their unique and particular learning needs and abilities, and, most importantly, identifying their interests, passions, and talents is needed to help them realize their potential. In regard to assessing progress, special needs children are put at an even greater disadvantage when single-measure test assessments fail to capture and reward their personal growth.
Children of all abilities, including those with special needs, should be able to fully develop their talents and potential.
Because of the 1975 IDEA laws that mandate appropriate support for those with special needs, homeschooled children can also have Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Many homeschooled children with IEPs avail themselves of helpful "related services" through their local school district, including occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and even special tutoring and instruction. Other homeschooling families provide their special needs children with this type of supportive therapy privately or through insurance. Within the homeschool framework, these therapies can be incorporated into the homeschooler's day whereas in schools children often have to be pulled out (missing a class) to receive mandated therapies. For example, one of my good friend's sons was at a top-rated New York City private special education school. He suddenly started having problems in math. Since he'd always wanted to be a rocket scientist, the change was alarming. When his mother asked the school what was going on, the school told her that because her son was asking so many questions in math class they had, for the last year, been pulling him out of math so he could receive his counseling at that time. Now in college, he still struggles with math. Pulling children from academic classes daily or even weekly is an unacceptable form of compromise that adds to the challenges that special needs children face. Such practices should be re-examined and revised to benefit the whole child.
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, some special needs children are at home for the first time. Many caregivers are at a tipping point of exhaustion or frustration. Children, including special needs children, were not hard-wired to sit in front of screens or anyplace for so many hours a day. Institutions can and should do better to support both special needs children and their caregivers during this crisis and afterward. Homeschooling families are used to being in the company of their special needs children and are familiar with providing their children with needed sensory supports, offering calming strategies, providing alternate means of instruction, including movement, and knowing how to meet their children's needs inside the home as well as outside.
Another issue brought to light by this crisis is that some special needs children have not yet been identified as having a special need or as needing some form or assistance or support. How can such children be best served when home-bound caregivers recognize a need? Via remote evaluations? Identifying learning challenges (and strengths) as well as learning therapies are needed in order for special needs children to reach their full potential. Caregivers schooling at home as well as homeschoolers have every right to bring potential special-needs children to the attention of their school district so that children can obtain the support and accommodation they need to achieve their full potential.
Also during this time of crisis, many children (even those identified as having a special need) are not receiving their related and supportive therapies (such as those mandated in an IEP or those recommended by developmental physicians or others with expertise). Rather than cutting funds in this important area, solutions need to be found. Perhaps 1:1 home visits with safety precautions will be allowed? Perhaps sensory gyms or speech therapy facilities can be opened with added safety precautions? In New York City, for example, perhaps special transportation accommodations (similar to Access-A-Ride) can assure children and therapists a safer means of travel until public transit has been deemed safe again? In any case, how can we prevent regression or loss of gained function at this time when so many children are not receiving their essential related services and therapies?
Lastly, the idea that special needs homeschoolers are isolated if they aren't in a classroom environment is not valid. Homeschool instructors like myself incorporated and accommodated the special needs of diverse children into our classes, wherever the classes take place. For example, once when I was teaching an on-location science class using the American Museum of Natural History and Central Park as our classroom, I was asked by one student's caregiver to help her child who was on the Autism Spectrum since that child was joining a class for the first time. So, after getting permission from both parents, I asked one of my teen peer-mentors whether he would shadow the new student and provide support to help that new student develop skills to interact with peers. Over the year of science classes, with both my facilitation and the help of this amazingly patient peer-mentor, that new student developed the skills to independently interact in positive ways with peers. As another example, my own son benefited from an inclusive homeschool on-location world history instructor who for four years made a special effort to include him so that by the end he had developed classroom and group-work skills of his own. There are many creative ways meet a child's special needs by making the most of related services in a manner that empowers children along with activities and real-life experiences that reinforce coping skills in classrooms, at home, and outside, including while homeschooling.
DEVELOP FULL POTENTIAL OF THE TWICE EXCEPTIONAL
Too many institutions often focus on challenges children face without developing their strengths. Sometimes children's talents, skills, and interests are ignored because of a child's deficits in other areas (twice exceptional or 2e). A child can have deficits in one area and strengths in another. In the USA, 1975 IDEA laws protect certain special needs but exclude special needs of those who are highly capable at the other end of the special needs spectrum.
For example, in regard to talent development, unless the state has added their own regulations and funding pertaining to highly capable, gifted and talented, or advanced children (see this link for list of mandates and funding for each state), schools have no mandate to make any accommodation or to meet the needs of children who are advanced or highly advanced (highly capable, gifted and talented); 1975 IDEA laws do not include advancement as a protected special needs category.
Institutions should identify and assist children who are both capable of high achievement and also have other special needs (2e or twice exceptional) so they can receive appropriate accommodation and services, even at home.
Children of color, the disabled, English language learners (ELL), and children with low socio-economic status (SES) are among those who are institutionally under-identified when it comes to capability for high achievement and inclusion in programs for "gifted and talented." Often, children's talents, skills, and interests are ignored because of a child's deficits in other areas. See Excellence Gap research, Nation Empowered Report and NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) information about how we can better serve diverse highly capable children in every school district and demographic. Our country, cities, communities, and workplaces need every single highly capable child, whether or not that child also has special needs on the other end of the spectrum. When such children's talents are ignored, underestimated, not recognized or mis-identified, both our children and our society suffer.
All children should have support to develop to their full potential regardless of diagnosis or special needs, including children with any level of advancement from small to profound. Parents who are now schooling at home, our educational system, and our country should all nurture the unique special needs of each child as do homeschooling parents. Many homeschool families find ways for their highly capable children to excel, just as they choose to avail themselves of federally mandated IDEA-law special needs support.
UNDERSTAND REGULATIONS AND USE THEM TO EMPOWER CHILDREN
Homeschooling regulations (and our educational system) should only mandate that specific subject-areas are covered but should not dictate or limit how children learn or at what pace. That said, homeschooling frameworks, regulations, and reporting can ensure a well-rounded education that is at least substantially equivalent to that of publicly educated students while providing much more of a chance for children to pursue their interests and develop in their own ways and rate. Every state has their own requirements. When I began homeschooling I looked into state curricula and homeschooling requirements across the nation and world. In the United States, from my perspective at that time, California and New York had the most rigorous requirements. In my more recent non-profit advocacy work I have helped parents from New York, California, Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states to figure out what was needed to meet homeschool requirements in their state. For example, in New York State where my family homeschooled there are clear guidelines that ensure that all children receive a well-rounded education across subjects; it was this regulatory framework that permitted my son to document completion of all NYSED requirements by the time he turned 14. In New York State, adult homeschool administrators must submit an individual home instruction plan (IHIP), quarterly reports, an annual end-of-year report, and comply with regulations if they want to continue to homeschool.
Among the states, New York's regulatory framework for homeschooling is exemplary (especially when combined with NYSED's free online curriculum and learning standards plus their useful bevy of released tests across key subjects and grade levels).
New York does not interfere with homeschooling choice or freedoms but rather sets assessment requirements that benefit children in regard to documenting personal annual growth via both qualitative and quantitative measures, and requires regular but reasonable paperwork be submitted in a timely manner quarterly and yearly. Instead of wasteful home visits or subjective, potentially biased evaluations of who is "fit to teach," New York State relies upon submitted paperwork and actual evidence to determine fitness to homeschool.
In New York State all homeschooling families are known to the Department of Education because they must submit mandatory NYSED part 100.10 paperwork at regular intervals. Families who are unwilling to complete their paperwork lose the right to homeschool in New York State via a clearly defined regulatory process.
If any further regulation of homeschooling is proposed, I suggest one look to New York State (NYSED part 100.10) as a good example. Although many states do not have the same level of regulatory requirements as New York State, homeschooling nevertheless can provide a valid well-regulated alternative for families whose children would otherwise suffer or fall through the cracks of institutional education, whether at home or in a classroom.
INCLUDE MULTIPLE MEASURES OF SUCCESS
Our families, communities, schools, localities, states, and the federal government should replace the failing one-size-fits-all factory-model, externally mandated punitive standards, and chronologically-based single-measure high stakes assessments that reinforce and ossify systemic discrimination. We should instead invest in more meaningful measures of academic progress that focus on promoting individualized development of every single child's potential.
Testing should be used as a means of self-evaluation and self-improvement. Children's "adequate academic progress" should be measured by comparison of this year's assessments with their own year's prior scores in each subject, not to an aggregate based on age or demographic. Some educators call this a personal growth model of evaluation but continue to compare an individual child's progress to that of their demographic or chronological age peers which is still not fair. Each child's progress should be evaluated in relation to that same child's own progress the prior year, for each subject in which assessments and adequate annual progress are required.
Multiple measures of success, both quantitative (tests) and qualitative, should be employed, such as portfolios, self-evaluations by children, and documentation in a variety of forms by children themselves, parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors. Children's learning outside of the classroom, if documented by mentors, coaches, instructors, parents, and children themselves, might be used to fulfill seat-time requirements. All educational systems should empower and engage children with adequate annual progress based on where they are now compared to a year ago. When each child improves over time, so does society.
CONCLUSION
The key to effective homeschooling, and even home education, is to empower children and engage caregivers, instructors and the local community with the goal of empowering children. Every child should have the opportunity to pursue their interests and actualize their potential in their areas of interest, skill, and talent. Understanding and utilizing key ideas from within the homeschooling community as outlined in this statement could improve our society, homegrow a talented, highly skilled and motivated workforce across sectors, transform education, enrich lives, and empower our diverse children to achieve their full potential.
(Appendix & BIO below)
APPENDIX WITH HYPERLINKS
Below are the hyperlinks in this statement and a few related links.
Author note: All links in this statement were retrieved on 7/1/20.
NAACP's (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's) "Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline"
https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/uploads/Dismantling_the_School_to_Prison_Pipeline__Criminal-Justice__.pdf
College Now: New York City's free early college program
https://www.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/evaluation/areas-of-focus_1/college_readiness/college-now/
College Now home page
https://k16.cuny.edu/collegenow/
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Open Courseware, free online
https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
John's Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth (CTY)
https://johnshopkinscty.org/
Duke University's Talent Identification Program (TIP)
https://tip.duke.edu/programs
Stanford's Pre-Collegiate Studies program (SPCS)
https://spcs.stanford.edu/about-us#programguide
Northwestern's Center for Talent Development (CTD)
https://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/advocacy-every-student-succeeds-act-essa-updates
New York State Curriculum and Learning Standards, free online
http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction
New York State's Career Development and Occupational Studies Framework
http://www.p12.nysed.gov/cte/cdlearn/cdosresourceguide.html
New York State's multiple pathways to high school graduation
http://www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/multiple-pathways
United States Education Department's explanation of 1975 Idea Laws
https://sites.ed.gov/idea/about-idea/
Excellence Gap research documenting institutional discrimination
https://www.jkcf.org/our-research/what-is-the-excellence-gap/
Nation Deceived and Empowered research by the Acceleration Institute of the University of Iowa's Belin-Blank Center
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/nation_deceived/
Acceleration Policy Guidelines from the Belin-Blank Acceleration Institute
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Resources/Policy_Guidelines/
Acceleration Institute resources for families, educators and administrators
http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Empowered/NE_Vol2_AppendixE.pdf
NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children) position on diverse learners
https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources/timely-topics/including-diverse-learners-gifted-education-programs
NAGC lists of resources
https://www.nagc.org/information-publications
New York State Education Department Homeschooling Regulations
http://www.p12.nysed.gov/part100/pages/10010.html
Davidson Gifted's state-by-state mandates and funding for gifted and talented services
https://www.davidsongifted.org/search-database/entrytype/3
Author's Bio:
JEN SERON is a NYC-based educator and educational advocate who believes that education in any setting could benefit from recognizing the value of a focus on developing the talents, skills, and interests of individual children, as do many homeschoolers. The current COVID-19 crisis has prevented children from attending school in the traditional sense. Jen believes that there is a great opportunity in this crisis. Rethinking the manner in which education is delivered should be accompanied by rethinking the underlying goals of education, who education is intended to benefit, and how we can better serve and empower our diverse children.
Jen has presented at local, regional, and national conferences promoting empowerment, self-actualization, and talent development via personally meaningful education for diverse children in all environments, including homeschooling. She has served on boards of three educational non-profits, as a council member of NYCHEA (New York City Homeschool Educator's Alliance), supported community activists, and been a longtime mentor to other parents and to children of all abilities, even while surviving breast cancer. She has developed a unique science curriculum based on supporting children's interests (Full Circle Science). She has taught science programs at all levels from Pre-K through college; at the Vanderbilt YMCA, at St. John’s University (SCI 1000C Plant Evolution), on-location in NYC public school after school programs, and to Pre-K through 12th grade homeschoolers in parks and museums. She also taught "Drawing on Location" at Parsons School of Design. Her own educational background includes an MFA in illustration from School of Visual Arts in NYC, and two prior degrees from the University of Illinois--a BA in philosophy and a three-year research-based MS in plant sciences, where she specialized in ecophysiology and studied climate change on rice for the EPA.
Jen secularly-homeschooled her son, who was exceptionally talented in certain respects and exceptionally challenged in others (twice exceptional, 2e) throughout a ten year period. Over ten years he went from being a public school kindergarten dropout to being admitted at age 14 to New York University, from which he received a Bachelor’s degree with honors. Additionally, during his degree he completed a summer-long, full-time internship that took him to London for a week. The next summer at 18 he was selected and attended an eight-week international summer research program abroad. He excitedly began a PhD program last year at age 19.
Jen’s experiences as a student, science instructor, community activist, advocate, and parent led her to the conclusion that education in every environment should, within diverse and supportive communities, empower and inspire each child to pursue their own interests, skills, and talents to optimize and actualize their unique potential in sustainable, healthy, equitable ways throughout life.
LEARNING + COMMUNITY By MELLE RANDALL
CREATIVE LEARNING WHILE MAKING GENUINE COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS: Thoughts & Reflections
by Melle Randall
Founder and Director of THE ROC Network for Learning
(find Melle's bio at the end of this essay)
The following notes begin by reflecting back on the genesis and ideas behind The ROC Network for Learning and follow with a projection of my vision moving forward, one which includes how homeschoolers’ learning successes can actually inform and help the schooling world in a very positive way.
WHAT IS The ROC? :
The ROC is a Creative Lab for Independent Learning & Homeschooling:
Supporting Connections, Nurturing 21st Century Learning, Strengthening Community
Initially I just wanted a place for homeschooling families to be able to get together on a consistent basis. Then once it looked like we had acquired a space, I thought since we will be here, perhaps we could use this as a opportunity to create an environment of enriching activities where our children could play, learn, discover and explore.
The dream became a reality when I was lucky to find awesome teachers who are not only passionate about their subjects, but who love sharing their knowledge of their specialties with our children, and community.
It's truly been a pleasure to provide our communities with this option, among the many wonderful homeschooling options in New York City. It has been touching to see families connecting/bonding, meeting up with their old friends, and making new friends. And, it's been exciting to watch our children growing, learning and playing together while simultaneously aiding us parents as we facilitate and encourage our children's educational pursuits, and overall development.
Beyond the physical space, for me, The ROC Network for Learning is about creating environments that support strong connections, nurture solid development, and strengthen, albeit even a fluid, community.
Now in 2020, The ROC is an organization that has served hundreds of families, kids and teens for over 15 years, providing resources and opportunities addressing academic, life and career goals while responding to the changing face of education, learning, technology and society. In big open welcoming spaces kids, teens and families can get together on a consistent basis for learning, socializing, and just having fun. The community is comprised of individuals and groups of committed parents and motivated, inquisitive teens and kids who like to do things together, and also a cadre of fascinating teachers who enjoy working with those kids in an open, focused, personal and creative format earning The ROC local and international visibility as a Network for Learning, and a gateway for new homeschoolers.
The philosophy is fundamental. It’s the belief that that no matter how diverse our communities, no matter how different we are from each other, there are times and places and experiences where we can meet and grow together.
Building on an average 30 ongoing classes and programs located on site in our spaces each term while also providing opportunities throughout the New York City region, the nation and the world, The ROC Network for Learning offers families, kids and teens a variety of types of resources and opportunities including On-site Classes and Programs, Co-op Planning & Satellite Classes, Virtual Classes (using videoconferencing with teachers and other students around the world), Portfolio Development & Certifications, Internship & Mentoring Coordination (and also Virtual Internships via “Mock Jobs” working with mentors to create ways to initiate real-life work experience), Pathmaker Workshops Exploring and experimenting with 21st Century career and personal skills, Gateway to and from Homeschooling support and community for transitioning from school to homeschool as well as for our homeschoolers transitioning to school, Conferences & Workshops on critical issues in education, sharing films, forums, panels, and more.
The body of experience brought to The ROC represents years of learning how to support all kinds of learning both inside and outside of the conventional schooling box. We’ve created innumerable environments, events, and opportunities for our children to experience the arts, media, language, writing, sports, history, logic, cooking, gardening, civics/current events, and lots of STEM – science, technology, engineering and math… (to mention just a few!) And we love to share that experience with new families. We also reach out into the local communities and work with non-homeschooling organizations including local schools, local charities, local community gardens and local children’s programs (for example a music program for talented cildren who otherwise could not afford musical training), collaborating with these organizations and offering opportunities for homeschooled kids to assist and interact with these organizations whether by direct participation or by helping out (for example, helping set up, decorate, and work concession stands for fundraisers and charity events).
As someone who tries to think creatively to solve problems, in running the ROC and working with kids and teens each day, I like to offer new ways to re-think academic and life-education challenges by working with individuals, inventors and companies that offer new and emerging concepts, materials, plans, software and structures to allow for young talents to emerge and blossom.
For both listeners within and without the homeschooling world, I would like to have the opportunity to provide information on how resources should be directed that will allow these solutions to be solved even better, and for ways to support homeschooling while at the same time solving all the issues that they think homeschooling causes. So, for example, we might request specific new tools from a software developer or communications platform creator or show them how best to use any and everything they have to offer, and maybe even demand they create something that they don’t already have to offer, and so forth.
As a speaker, if I am invited to the pending Harvard Conference, I would like to bring to them an organized, diverse, multi-faceted conglomerate, with a hammered out, detailed analysis of their perceived problems with homeschooling and provide them with well thought out solutions to the issues they raise, using my own experience of nearly two decades as both the homeschooling parent of three and as the founder of The ROC which has afforded me with a wealth of experience working with a vast variety of families and learners.
Author's Bio:
MELLE RANDALL is a homeschooling community leader in NY City and longtime homeschooling single parent of three talented, capable and creative children. Her oldest daughter is now a successful college student while her two younger teens thrive on their homeschool high school journeys. All three children performed for many years with the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus while simultaneously winning awards in Stem Programs and Lego Robotics, earning competitive science internships at the American Museum of Natural History, garnering community service commendations (one, for example, via a humanitarian Girl Scout’s World Water-Conservation project) and participating very actively in their mom’s wonderful organization, The ROC (Resource and Opportunity Center) Network for Learning.
The ROC Network for Learning, founded by Melle and still going strong after nearly two decades, has offered a variety of classes and experiences and so much more to the homeschooling community in New York City and also to the world beyond (please see links below). The ROC is literally considered one of the major foundational “rocks” of the NYC homeschooling community with Melle, a pillar and community leader at the center, gently guiding and keeping things running smoothly with over 30 class offerings and much more going on at any moment. Indefatigable and always full of positive new ideas, Melle welcomes kids of all abilities and learning styles (including special needs) at The ROC and has years of expertise in mentoring children (and young instructors too!), including providing scaffolding to kids teaching other kids as a unique and wonderful paradigm within the varied class structure of the homeschooling world. Apart from all the programs and classes she offers via The ROC, Melle has also offered extensive support to parents needing help figuring out educational and lifestyle solutions for making homeschooling work for their families and for their unique situations, offering expertise, empathy and insight along with the practical solutions.
Having faced considerable challenges herself as a single mom of color who has been able to successfully nurture and support the academic, social and creative needs of her own three children, Melle is a creative thinker and problem-solver and one of her great skills and main goals is to offer new ways to re-think academic and life-education challenges by working with individuals, inventors and companies that offer new and emerging concepts, materials, plans, software and structures to allow for young talents to emerge and blossom.
ABOUT THE ROC: WEBSITE
ABOUT THE ROC: VIDEO
by Melle Randall
Founder and Director of THE ROC Network for Learning
(find Melle's bio at the end of this essay)
The following notes begin by reflecting back on the genesis and ideas behind The ROC Network for Learning and follow with a projection of my vision moving forward, one which includes how homeschoolers’ learning successes can actually inform and help the schooling world in a very positive way.
WHAT IS The ROC? :
The ROC is a Creative Lab for Independent Learning & Homeschooling:
Supporting Connections, Nurturing 21st Century Learning, Strengthening Community
Initially I just wanted a place for homeschooling families to be able to get together on a consistent basis. Then once it looked like we had acquired a space, I thought since we will be here, perhaps we could use this as a opportunity to create an environment of enriching activities where our children could play, learn, discover and explore.
The dream became a reality when I was lucky to find awesome teachers who are not only passionate about their subjects, but who love sharing their knowledge of their specialties with our children, and community.
It's truly been a pleasure to provide our communities with this option, among the many wonderful homeschooling options in New York City. It has been touching to see families connecting/bonding, meeting up with their old friends, and making new friends. And, it's been exciting to watch our children growing, learning and playing together while simultaneously aiding us parents as we facilitate and encourage our children's educational pursuits, and overall development.
Beyond the physical space, for me, The ROC Network for Learning is about creating environments that support strong connections, nurture solid development, and strengthen, albeit even a fluid, community.
Now in 2020, The ROC is an organization that has served hundreds of families, kids and teens for over 15 years, providing resources and opportunities addressing academic, life and career goals while responding to the changing face of education, learning, technology and society. In big open welcoming spaces kids, teens and families can get together on a consistent basis for learning, socializing, and just having fun. The community is comprised of individuals and groups of committed parents and motivated, inquisitive teens and kids who like to do things together, and also a cadre of fascinating teachers who enjoy working with those kids in an open, focused, personal and creative format earning The ROC local and international visibility as a Network for Learning, and a gateway for new homeschoolers.
The philosophy is fundamental. It’s the belief that that no matter how diverse our communities, no matter how different we are from each other, there are times and places and experiences where we can meet and grow together.
Building on an average 30 ongoing classes and programs located on site in our spaces each term while also providing opportunities throughout the New York City region, the nation and the world, The ROC Network for Learning offers families, kids and teens a variety of types of resources and opportunities including On-site Classes and Programs, Co-op Planning & Satellite Classes, Virtual Classes (using videoconferencing with teachers and other students around the world), Portfolio Development & Certifications, Internship & Mentoring Coordination (and also Virtual Internships via “Mock Jobs” working with mentors to create ways to initiate real-life work experience), Pathmaker Workshops Exploring and experimenting with 21st Century career and personal skills, Gateway to and from Homeschooling support and community for transitioning from school to homeschool as well as for our homeschoolers transitioning to school, Conferences & Workshops on critical issues in education, sharing films, forums, panels, and more.
The body of experience brought to The ROC represents years of learning how to support all kinds of learning both inside and outside of the conventional schooling box. We’ve created innumerable environments, events, and opportunities for our children to experience the arts, media, language, writing, sports, history, logic, cooking, gardening, civics/current events, and lots of STEM – science, technology, engineering and math… (to mention just a few!) And we love to share that experience with new families. We also reach out into the local communities and work with non-homeschooling organizations including local schools, local charities, local community gardens and local children’s programs (for example a music program for talented cildren who otherwise could not afford musical training), collaborating with these organizations and offering opportunities for homeschooled kids to assist and interact with these organizations whether by direct participation or by helping out (for example, helping set up, decorate, and work concession stands for fundraisers and charity events).
As someone who tries to think creatively to solve problems, in running the ROC and working with kids and teens each day, I like to offer new ways to re-think academic and life-education challenges by working with individuals, inventors and companies that offer new and emerging concepts, materials, plans, software and structures to allow for young talents to emerge and blossom.
- With that in mind, what I am interested in is presenting to potential policy makers what education and/or any regulation can and needs to be, and in bringing them proven solutions (i.e. things we are already doing) to any and everything they think is a problem.
For both listeners within and without the homeschooling world, I would like to have the opportunity to provide information on how resources should be directed that will allow these solutions to be solved even better, and for ways to support homeschooling while at the same time solving all the issues that they think homeschooling causes. So, for example, we might request specific new tools from a software developer or communications platform creator or show them how best to use any and everything they have to offer, and maybe even demand they create something that they don’t already have to offer, and so forth.
As a speaker, if I am invited to the pending Harvard Conference, I would like to bring to them an organized, diverse, multi-faceted conglomerate, with a hammered out, detailed analysis of their perceived problems with homeschooling and provide them with well thought out solutions to the issues they raise, using my own experience of nearly two decades as both the homeschooling parent of three and as the founder of The ROC which has afforded me with a wealth of experience working with a vast variety of families and learners.
Author's Bio:
MELLE RANDALL is a homeschooling community leader in NY City and longtime homeschooling single parent of three talented, capable and creative children. Her oldest daughter is now a successful college student while her two younger teens thrive on their homeschool high school journeys. All three children performed for many years with the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus while simultaneously winning awards in Stem Programs and Lego Robotics, earning competitive science internships at the American Museum of Natural History, garnering community service commendations (one, for example, via a humanitarian Girl Scout’s World Water-Conservation project) and participating very actively in their mom’s wonderful organization, The ROC (Resource and Opportunity Center) Network for Learning.
The ROC Network for Learning, founded by Melle and still going strong after nearly two decades, has offered a variety of classes and experiences and so much more to the homeschooling community in New York City and also to the world beyond (please see links below). The ROC is literally considered one of the major foundational “rocks” of the NYC homeschooling community with Melle, a pillar and community leader at the center, gently guiding and keeping things running smoothly with over 30 class offerings and much more going on at any moment. Indefatigable and always full of positive new ideas, Melle welcomes kids of all abilities and learning styles (including special needs) at The ROC and has years of expertise in mentoring children (and young instructors too!), including providing scaffolding to kids teaching other kids as a unique and wonderful paradigm within the varied class structure of the homeschooling world. Apart from all the programs and classes she offers via The ROC, Melle has also offered extensive support to parents needing help figuring out educational and lifestyle solutions for making homeschooling work for their families and for their unique situations, offering expertise, empathy and insight along with the practical solutions.
Having faced considerable challenges herself as a single mom of color who has been able to successfully nurture and support the academic, social and creative needs of her own three children, Melle is a creative thinker and problem-solver and one of her great skills and main goals is to offer new ways to re-think academic and life-education challenges by working with individuals, inventors and companies that offer new and emerging concepts, materials, plans, software and structures to allow for young talents to emerge and blossom.
ABOUT THE ROC: WEBSITE
ABOUT THE ROC: VIDEO
student- and parent-created pro-homeschooling writings
At this time we have one excellent contribution to share at this separately hosted link:
1. Shattering the Glass Case: the Equation of Homeschooling by Avery Scott
