Tag: homeschooling

Posted on

Suffolk ready for home-schooling return if needed

Suffolk ready for home-schooling return if needed

Posted:
4:57 PM December 17, 2021



College leaders are preparing for a ordinary return of educational institutions in January – but steps to introduce remote mastering swiftly are in place if Omicron escalates restrictions in the new yr.

Hottest Suffolk details for the very last 10 times indicated that 2,252 kids tested favourable for Covid-19, with 271 educational institutions recording at least just one optimistic scenario.

It is understood all-around seven or 8 faculties shut early right before the conclusion of term on December 17.

Adrian Orr, assistant director for schooling, techniques and discovering at Suffolk County Council, reported cumulative figures for children testing favourable this time period could be close to 15,000, but verified educational facilities ended up planning for a usual return in January with the hope that a lockdown is not essential.

“We are genuinely hoping that is not likely to be the scenario, but obviously we do not know how this variant is going to play out,” he stated. 

“I think moms and dads, little ones and personnel would like points to be as ordinary as probable as they can from January, recognising they have bought to do the screening and getting the acceptable routine in place when they examination good. 

“But if we uncover ourselves in a predicament like January 4 or 5 previous yr – in which the key minister had manufactured the announcement immediately after they experienced been in college a working day that they were sending them residence – I consider the difference now is there are fairly strong mechanisms in location to put distant finding out in put speedily.”

Faculty workers have been praised for their efforts in preserving colleges open through the past phrase, and mom and dad have been urged to continue being patient in the new 12 months if shorter time period modifications are required.

Mr Orr said educational facilities experienced described staffing pressures towards the conclusion of phrase, and when wanting to go on relying on their possess workforce, may well require to utilise supply instructor companies if illness ramps up in the new 12 months.

In addition, Mr Orr reported there was “some issue in the system” about provide of lateral flow exams, adding: “Clearly some components of the procedure have received the lateral stream tests and other people have not, so we will go again to what we did correct at the commencing and could possibly even swap some round and change them spherical so that everybody has bought enough”.

Previously in the time period, the council released a new university Covid-19 framework centered on a few levels of situation figures. Every level had different advised measures all-around re-introducing bubbles, staggered get started and conclude times and distant discovering for smaller groups if required.

The authority claimed that experienced been made alongside university leaders and experienced been effectively obtained, with the protocol mentioned to continue into the new 12 months.

Extra direction for faculties is predicted from the Section for Schooling up coming week, with any improvements from that currently being incorporated into a revised protocol if essential.

Mr Orr stated: “ The framework we will modify primarily based on what the national picture is and the Division for Instruction tips.

“We think it is a great design since it has acquired stream charts and folks like movement charts since it helps deal with issues, In the long run the responsibility does rest with faculty leaders, we are just hoping to give them as a lot support in their decision making.”

On information for mothers and fathers he added: “Parents have performed a amazing work in supporting us throughout this pandemic, it is just that recognition that how it performs out in different colleges can be unique so we just check with them to bear with us. 

“There is usually the minute of disappointment for a dad or mum when they get the contact that their kid has got to occur property or that the class is closing, or even that they are having to go to distant studying.

“We absolutely get parents’ stress about that. All those factors are only taking place as a last resort, and they are taking place since that is the most successful way we can continue to keep their children risk-free, keep other people’s small children safe and sound and staff risk-free.”

Posted on

Pandemic and racism in eductation lead more Black families to homeschooling : NPR

Pandemic and racism in eductation lead more Black families to homeschooling : NPR

Yalonda Chandler homeschools her children, Madison and Matthew. She co-founded Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham, in Alabama, and has seen the organization grow since the pandemic began.

Kyra Miles/WBHM


hide caption

toggle caption

Kyra Miles/WBHM

Yalonda Chandler homeschools her children, Madison and Matthew. She co-founded Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham, in Alabama, and has seen the organization grow since the pandemic began.

Kyra Miles/WBHM

It’s a common perception that white, evangelical families are the most likely to homeschool their children. But a growing number of Black families have started teaching their kids at home — especially during the pandemic. The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey found that in April 2020, 3{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf} of Black households homeschooled their children, and by October 2020 it was up to 16{e4f787673fbda589a16c4acddca5ba6fa1cbf0bc0eb53f36e5f8309f6ee846cf}.

Those numbers may not be completely accurate, the Bureau noted, because a lot of children were learning at home in 2020. So part way through the survey period, the homeschooling question was expdanded to clarify that homeschoolers did not include children enrolled in public or private school. Even so, the numbers signal a significant increase.

Joyce Burges, founder of National Black Home Educators, said that since 2020, thousands of families have joined her organization.

“I think you’re going to see more and more parents, Black parents, homeschooling their children like never before,” Burges said.

Homeschooling Doubled During The Pandemic, U.S. Census Survey Finds

“COVID was the catalyst”

Didakeje Griffin in Birmingham, Ala., is one of them. When she and her husband realized their kids wouldn’t be going back to public school in March 2020, they knew they had to make a change.

“It was like a light bulb moment,” Griffin said. “Ultimately, what I realized is that the pandemic just gave us an opportunity to do what we needed to do anyway, which is homeschooling.”

The mother of two said she’d always coached her kids at home to keep them on track. But three things made her decide to officially start homeschooling. First, she wanted her children to be safe from bullies. She also wanted them to understand their cultural history. The third factor was freedom.

“I want to have time to cultivate my children’s African-American, their Nigerian history and culture in them first, before anybody tries to tell them who they are,” Griffin said. COVID was the catalyst, “but it has not been the reason that we kept going.”

The Griffins celebrate Juneteenth more than July Fourth. They have discussions about the Black Lives Matter movement and talk about critical race theory with their children, ages 11 and 8. Griffin sees homeschooling as a way to protect her children.

“I don’t want my kids to be subjected to racism in certain ways so early,” she said.

Homeschooling as activism

In Black households, homeschooling can be its own unique form of activism and resistance.

“The history that’s taught is that we’ve tried through Brown v. Board of Ed to get access to schools, and schools are integrated,” said Cheryl Fields-Smith, a professor at the University of Georgia who studies Black homeschooling and its cultural significance.

“And that’s true,” she added. “But we’ve also always been self-taught.”

Fields-Smith said homeschooling is a way to combat educational racism, which comes in many forms.

“We all know that there are structures and policies and practices within our traditional schools that can be damaging to students of color, Black students in particular,” she said.

School discipline is one of them. Data from a 2014 study by the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights showed that Black students were suspended at three times the rate of white students, and were more likely to be reprimanded. A 2015 study from the Association for Psychological Science found that Black students are more likely to be labeled “troublemakers” by teachers.

These statistics can make parents and caretakers of Black children distrust the education system. In the last couple years a number of states have moved to add more Black history into their lesson plans. Still, earlier this year, Alabama and a handful of other states banned critical race theory in K-12 classrooms, even though it’s an academic theory of structural racism that is largely taught at the university level.

“This idea of white supremacy and the inferiority of Black people lingers today,” Fields-Smith said. “We are overcoming racism through homeschooling. I don’t think white people can say that.”

A growing community

Some families are also creating community through homeschooling.

In Alabama, Alfrea Moore said homeschooling her children for the last three years has given them the freedom to ask questions and learn without a strict curriculum. It’s also allowed them to connect with their culture.

“The thing about homeschooling in the South as a Black family that I’m finding is that there are a lot more of us than we actually know of,” Moore said.

“When we moved to get my kids to interact with other kids, there are networks of homeschoolers and Black homeschoolers in not just this part of Alabama where we live, but all over.”

Carleigh and Alexander Duckworth get some play time as part of their homeschooling day. Their mother, Jennifer Duckworth, is a co-founder of Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham.

Kyra Miles/WBHM


hide caption

toggle caption

Kyra Miles/WBHM

Carleigh and Alexander Duckworth get some play time as part of their homeschooling day. Their mother, Jennifer Duckworth, is a co-founder of Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham.

Kyra Miles/WBHM

Jennifer Duckworth and Yalonda Chandler co-founded the Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham three years ago so more homeschooling families of color could find and support each other.

Duckworth said she started homeschooling because she was concerned that if her son were in public school, he would start to withdraw.

“My son, being a young Black boy with positive self-esteem about himself, can sometimes be threatening, for lack of a better word, to some teachers,” Duckworth said. “They’ll create an identity for the Black and brown children that they don’t even realize they’re doing.”

Duckworth said the Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham has created a community where children don’t feel different because of their race.

Her 10-year-old son, Alexander, agrees. “It just feels great to be around kids like me so you don’t always have to be alone, like the odd person out,” he said.

Duckworth has been homeschooling her three children for several years. They participate in a lot of the Black homeschooling group’s activities, like the debate club and field trips.

Last month the group held its first homeschooling summit. The founders said in just three years, the Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham has grown from two families to 70.

“Black families, they understand now that they don’t have to be trapped in a system that overpolices them, that marginalizes them, that makes their children feel criminalized for just being who they are,” said Chandler.

For a long time, the U.S. had barriers that made it hard for Black people to get an education, so learning and knowledge were always shared within the community.

“The African-American and African culture, we are the culture that has been homeschooling our children since the beginning,” Duckworth said. “And so I feel like it’s just in our DNA.”

Posted on

Kansas homeschooling numbers spike after pandemic-era remote learning

Kansas homeschooling numbers spike after pandemic-era remote learning
Kansas homeschooling numbers spike after pandemic-era remote learning

WICHITA — Worried about safety, resistant to mask orders and troubled by a lack of confidence in public schools, thousands more Kansas parents are opting to teach their kids at home.

The shift comes in the wake of the pandemic that convinced those families they could handle the job.

“We just had call after call after call,” said Bert Moore, who oversees home-school registrations for the Kansas Department of Education. “And they continue to call us. This isn’t something that occurs in just August. … It will be May before we have the final number.”

During a normal school year, about 1,400 Kansas families newly register to home school. Last year that number more than tripled — to 5,527 — and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing. So far this year, more than 2,250 new families have registered.

Posted on

Homeschooling becoming more prevalent as coming out of pandemic

Homeschooling becoming more prevalent as coming out of pandemic

KMUW. Kansas News Service

Homeschooling becoming more prevalent as coming out of pandemic

Some parents want more flexible schedules or greater control over their children’s lessons. Others are disillusioned with the traditional model of education or worried about plummeting test scores.

WICHITA – Worried about safety, resistant to mask orders and troubled by a lack of confidence in public schools, thousands more Kansas parents are opting to teach their kids at home.

The shift comes in the wake of the pandemic that convinced those families they could handle the job.

“We just had call after call after call,” said Bert Moore, who oversees home-school registrations for the Kansas Department of Education. “And they continue to call us. This isn’t something that occurs in just August. . . . It will be May before we have the final number.”

Posted on

Homeschooling surges among black families

Homeschooling surges among black families

Raegan Mayfield’s 11-year-old son was doing well in his Christian private school, but Mayfield and her husband felt there were gaps in how his history classes addressed racial subjects. They supplemented his education at home, but then COVID-19 concerns and racial issues became front and center in spring 2020. “My husband and I became really protective of our son,” Mayfield said.

The couple, who live in Georgia and work from home, began looking into homeschooling options. “We wanted to keep the Biblically sound education but then also diversify his education a bit,” Mayfield said.

Finding Heritage Homeschoolers, a group for African American homeschoolers in the Atlanta area, gave Mayfield the encouragement she needed. She and her husband began homeschooling their son in fall 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic drove an increase in homeschooling across all demographics, but the boost was particularly large among African American families. According to Census Bureau data, the percentage of black families educating children at home grew
fivefold in six months, from 3.3 percent in April 2020 to 16.1 percent in October 2020.

Steven Duvall, director of research at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), said that in previous years African American families homeschooled at about half the rate of white families. But more recent surveys show the black homeschooling rate is only a couple of percentage points behind that of white families. “It just shows you how diversified the homeschool movement has become,” Duvall said.

That shift began even before 2020. According to a 2015 report
by Brian Ray at the National Home Education Research Institute, the number of black homeschooling families “nearly doubled from 1999 to 2012.”

Amber O’Neal Johnston, who helped start the Heritage Homeschoolers group the Mayfields joined, said she has seen more black families involved since she started homeschooling about seven years ago, but the growth has exploded in the past two years. Heritage Homeschoolers opens registration to new families twice a year, in January and August, and in 2019 and early 2020, the group received fewer than 20 applications in each of those months. Since August 2020, though, 34 to 41 new families have applied each month registration is open.

Before starting Heritage Homeschoolers, Johnston and her husband were involved with another homeschool group. They enjoyed it, despite being the only black family there. But their daughter began to say negative things about her own skin and hair and stopped playing with her black dolls. “It’s not like anyone had been mean to her,” Johnston said. “It wasn’t like she had been somewhere where people were saying negative things about black people.”

The Johnstons never left their first homeschooling group, but they decided to look for other black homeschooling families. Soon Heritage Homeschoolers was born, and it kept growing. It now serves 94 families with 280 children.

In March 2020, Khadijah Ali-Coleman defended her doctoral dissertation on perceptions of community college preparedness among dual-enrolled African American homeschooling students. Ali-Coleman homeschooled her daughter for a while and co-founded Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars, a research group that provides virtual training for parents. In her research, Ali-Coleman identified several reasons black parents chose to homeschool, including concerns that schools aren’t properly teaching about black history and convictions that parents could better protect their child’s self-esteem at home.

Emily Powell, a representative for National Black Home Educators, said in an email that the organization has “seen incredible growth” this year. According to Powell, many new families are homeschooling due to COVID-19 restrictions, virtual learning situations, or concerns about schools teaching critical race theory.

Jasper and Deah Abbott prayed about their son’s education after his prekindergarten year ended with virtual learning in spring 2020. Deah said that four generations of her family have taught in public schools, but the Abbotts’ concerns about COVID-19 and virtual instruction convinced them to give homeschooling a try. They pulled their son out of public school in fall 2020, the weekend before he would have started kindergarten.

Deah is white and Jasper is black. In some homeschool circles, their son may be the only brown-skinned person. “He feels that—that otherness,” she said.

The family also joined Heritage Homeschoolers. Abbott thinks her son may benefit even more from the group than most children.

Johnston believes the uptick in homeschooling will continue, especially now that there are more support groups and options for single or working parents.

“Parents have had an opportunity to see their children just flourish at home,” she said. “When everyone was forced to bring the kids home, black families, in large numbers, saw how beautiful it was.”

Posted on

Former California mom enjoys homeschooling here

Former California mom enjoys homeschooling here

Admittedly one to always be involved in her community, Lisa Cruz has begun a Little Free Library in her front yard.  

This love of books springs from her childhood, where her parents weren’t as involved as she is today in her own kids’ lives. Rather, she says she lived with an abusive stepfather for 10 years; she and a sibling, then teenagers, were sent to foster care.  

“So, my childhood wasn’t full of books,” Cruz said. “If there had been little free libraries, I would have loved it because nobody took me to the library.  

It was time spent with her paternal grandmother that encouraged Cruz to love books when she was very young.  

“Reading somebody’s story helps you understand yours better,” Cruz said. “When you’re a child and you read a book, it’s like going into another world. It’s not escapism… it’s a distraction from pain.”  

Now Cruz, through the Little Free Library, gets to relate to other people among the community through the Lending Library.  

One mother approached her through the Lending Library community about what books she should give her new foster child.  

Cruz, who knows what it’s like to own only “a trash bag full of clothes,” said, “When she comes, you take her somewhere… let her pick out the books she wants. They don’t have choices in their lives for very many things. Let her control what she can.”  

For the love of family  

This love of books and community has served Cruz well as she homeschools her kids…. which she said will change you and your kids’ lives.  

“Because not only do the kids slow down, but you do to,” she said.  

The Census Bureau recently reported that the number of households homeschooling their school-aged children nearly doubled between the spring and fall of 2020, growing from 5.5 to 11.1 percent. That, in large part, was due to COVID-19, according to the Institute for Family Studies. But many families are choosing to maintain homeschooling, the report said.  

For Cruz, the decision to homeschool her kids sprang from wanting to be involved in her kids’ lives.  

“The main thing is I can control the influences in their lives. And that’s huge because I think the majority of problems parents are dealing with, especially with teenagers, is the negative influence of certain kids,” Cruz explained.  

Homeschooling helps take out the peer pressure and comparisons many students face at school. And when Cruz and her family made the move to Shelbyville from the Los Angeles, California area, the adventure just began.  

“I knew when I had kids, I was going to do it all up―the holidays, books, toys, Mommy and Me―the things I didn’t have.”  

From city to farm  

Cruz and her husband, a retired Los Angeles police officer, have five children, ranging from 16 (the twins) to 32 years old.  

They also have seven dogs and a multitude of sheep, turkeys, cows, and rabbits on their 29-acre homestead in Shelbyville.  

Cruz said California was a great place to live in the 80s and 90s. But after the Reagan era, she said things turned for the worse. Her LAPD husband witnessed firsthand more crime in the city, while businesses became regulated and housing expensive.  

When her husband retired in 2017, they made their plans to get out of the state and buy a farm.  

“There are so many people in those states who are stuck there who don’t want to bring the same sort of things to this state. They want to escape it,” Cruz said.  

The family decided on the Volunteer State, bought their 1900s farm home virtually, and packed everything up. Using an old RV and two trucks, they made it to Tennessee in five days that July of 2019.  

“We really pushed,” said Cruz.  

Now settled into their homestead, Cruz has her home already decorated for Christmas while her two teens finish schooling for the semester.  

Homeschool life  

Homeschooling is an intimidating undertaking, Cruz said. But it’s doable.  

“When you think about it, you as a parent are a teacher. You teach them to talk, walk, to have manners, affection, right from wrong.” You are a teacher. And it’s a God-given right to teach your kids, Cruz said.  

“I’ve always tried to be involved in my kids’ schooling. And whatever community I was in, I tried to be involved.”  

Her three older kids were in public school back in California and she was involved then. But Cruz soon realized she didn’t know what her kids were being taught. And when a student brought a gun to school, that was it.  

“It is overwhelming and it’s not something I ever thought I needed to do because I was just trusting the school system to do what they needed to do for the kids.”  

Cruz went online, talked with other moms, and studied.  

“I just did it,” Cruz said. They do follow an umbrella school, which provides what the state requires as well as what requirements need to be met for college or trade schools.  

Living on a farm helps, too, as “There’s more than one way to learn.” And with online resources available like never before, Cruz finds material for her kids beyond a textbook.  

They also find the time to go out to church or the recreation center with friends so they can have continuing involvement in the community.  

And for her kids, Cruz says she teaches them accountability for their own futures.  

“I tell them ‘It’s up to you’…You find your niche…And we kind of wing it,” Cruz joked.  

Where her kids were usually withdrawn after attending a regular public school day, they are now closer, and find more time to relax and de-stress from the “go-go-go.”  

Now, Cruz says, “We’ve had a much better relationships.”