Home-schooling parents turn to blogs, Facebook for help

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"Carolyn Morrison home-schooled her two children from 1993 to 2004 — and the tools she had available to her then seem primitive today.

'Our computer was used primarily for e-mail, word processing and games, with CD-ROM resources filling in the gaps left by the paltry online reference sites,' she said. 'We even pre-dated Google!'

And for sure, that was before the term 'social networking' was part of the vernacular.

Internet resources now available to parents who home-school their children not only include the vast amount of information that's online; parents are turning to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs geared to their home-schooling interests for help, humor and how-tos.

'What a fantastic blessing that can be to someone who lives an hour's drive from the nearest library or bookstore,' said Morrison, of Marshalltown, Iowa, who has a popular blog, Guilt-Free Homeschooling.

'Online resources have truly shrunk the world to manageable proportions: There is no longer either a time barrier or a distance barrier between people.'

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A movable feast: For some, the world is a classroom

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"Evidence suggests that home-schooling in America is a growing trend. In a weeklong web-only series, TODAYshow.com reports on the challenges and creative opportunities presented by this approach to education.

Niall Gifford, 11, attends school on a sailboat in the South Pacific. Markos McFerrin, 7, has done countless math and spelling lessons on the back of a tandem bicycle. Jen and Maddie Farmer, 12-year-old twin sisters, have completed curricula in Greece and England.

These typical American kids are having exotic educational experiences for the same reason: Their parents have chosen to home-school them so they can travel.

For such families, “travel” doesn’t mean frantic vacations to Disneyland. These moms and dads want their children to see the world, experience other cultures and learn, learn, learn.

Of course, pulling it off can entail major lifestyle upheavals. Jobs need to be left behind (or sabbaticals requested), houses need to be rented out, modes of travel need to be selected, budgets need to be carefully crafted. For many parents who home-school away from home, wrenching themselves so completely from their regular lives has not been simple.

But has it been worth it? Oh yeah.

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I lost the home-school burnout battle—and I'm OK with it

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"What does it take to be a great home-schooler? Passion, energy, creativity, high ideals and whole-hearted devotion to your kids.

What does it take to spoil home-schooling? Passion, energy, creativity, high ideals and whole-hearted devotion to your kids.

OK, not always. But many home-schooling moms find themselves burned out after a few years, exhausted by the very things that made the whole enterprise possible.

Some parents home-school for negative reasons like fear or mistrust. But others, like us, do it because it just feels natural to stay together as a family — and because we’re dying to pass down to our children the delightful world of knowledge and culture that makes our own lives rich. We started home-schooling when our oldest child was 6 years old. We now have eight children, and have home-schooled for six years. Now, we are ready to let someone else do all that wonderful sharing!

Why? Because passing down a whole world of knowledge and culture is a pretty tall order for one set of parents. It’s a huge undertaking with even one child, never mind six or eight.

And then there's curriculum envy. Someone's always blogging about the interactive origami diorama her second-grader made with homemade rag paper and saffron dye. (And all we did today was reading, writing and arithmetic!)

We want to prove that home-schoolers aren't the backward, tongue-tied ninnies they're rumored to be. Striving against stereotype, our kids can't simply be as good as public-schoolers -- they have to be better — smarter, happier, more sociable, more ambitious — more everything.

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As home-schooling moves to mainstream, stigma fades

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"Evidence suggests that home-schooling in America is a growing trend. In a weeklong web-only series, TODAYshow.com reports on the challenges and creative opportunities presented by this approach to education.

Fifteen-year-old Tess Rodrigues is a typical teenager: She spends her free time at the mall, hangs out with friends and stays connected on Facebook.

But unlike most 10th-graders, Tess is home-schooled by her mother, and supplements her studies in marine biology, Spanish and world history with help from a weekly home-school co-op group.

“My mom and I laugh a lot and have fun,” Tess said. “And with the work, I get to go at my own pace, unlike a regular classroom. I can speed through lessons that are easy, and take time to go over things if I don’t get them.”

Her mother, Lisa Landis Rodrigues, started home-schooling her three children when they were in second, fourth and fifth grade.

“I’m not anti-school at all — I think teachers are awesome and I think most schools are great,” said the Rhode Island mom. “But morally, I think they go way too fast. I wanted my 10-year-old to be a 10-year-old, not get caught up in how other kids dress and act, so I decided to home-school them.”

Though such students represent an estimated 3 percent of the population, evidence suggests that home-schooling is a growing trend in America. While most say faith is their primary motivation, others choose this path for a variety of reasons that include dissatisfaction with the local school system, caring for special-needs kids, safety concerns, flexibility to travel and the chance to spend more time with their children.

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Home Where They Belong — What About Socialization?

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"If you’re a homeschooler or are even just thinking about homeschooling, I’m sure you’ve heard it. It’s the perennial favorite question asked by those who do not homeschool.

But what about socialization?

Aside from the fact that the vast majority of homeschoolers spend plenty of time around people of a variety of ages, in many different settings, and have proven themselves able to function quite well in the “real world”, do we really want the world’s socialization anyway?

This article, entitled Youth Violence Linked to Unsupervised Socializing, presents a scary picture of what can happen among teens who “socialize” on their own. This trend was even noticed in so-called “good” neighborhoods with “A” students.

If violence is one of the results of “socialization“, I don’t mind at all if my family is “unsocialized“.

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