Alternative education

Religious preference, traveling and time conflicts, ability to provide individualized attention and a variety of other factors contribute to the decision to educate children out of the public school system.

It’s not a decision many take lightly, or take for granted. Adjustments for parents and children have to be made to accommodate a much different family scenario than that of which many are familiar.

But the benefits, say some area home school parents, outweigh the challenges they face.

According to the Minnesota Department of Education, about 15,000 Minnesota students are schooled at home. The International Falls School District has 25 students registered for home-school, but that doesn’t take into account students registered as home-schooled in other districts. It also doesn’t take into account students taking classes through online programs and registered in districts across the state and across the country.

Home-schooling in Minnesota requires parents to file necessary paperwork with the school district and also to perform standardized tests for the children each year. Progress is monitored compared to peers in the public school system.

Home-schooling, parents say, can be as or more rigorous an education than the public school system. Some students move through material, with mastery of concepts, faster than their peers because they are not subject to the same restrictions as a teacher working with a classroom full of students, all learning differently and at different speeds.

A group of parents, part of a group called Border Home Educators, recently discussed home schooling with The Journal while their children participated in a program the group created called home-school gym. The home-school gym class meets each Wednesday afternoon at Evangelical Covenant Church. This group is one way in which both parents and children involved in home-school can socialize.

Home school parents

Mary Ciriacy and her family, including two boys, are living part time in International Falls and in Aurora, Minn. Her husband provides consultation at Boise, and they make their way as a family back to Aurora each Thursday for the weekend.

Their children had been pulled out of school on Fridays previously, but the school became concerned about their number of absences.

“They were straight-A kids, but they weren’t sitting in their seats on Fridays,” Ciriacy explained.

Instead of having a conflict with the school’s truancy policy, the family decided to home-school the boys. Ciriacy got her substitute-teaching license. She was a benefits and compensation manager for a company previously, a very different field from teaching.

“It’s been an adjustment,” Ciriacy said, for her children in grades four and six after switching to home-school two years ago.

But they’re getting a rhythm now, and the children are adjusting well to the new schedule, she said.

Wasted time, she said, in the public school system became apparent as she reviewed the materials students in public school were expected to cover in one day.

“We could kick that out in a few hours,” she said.

Moral, religious factors

For other families, moral and religious factors brought the switch from a public school to home-school.

“One of the reasons I home school is to raise a Christian disciple,” said mother Barb Herrly. “I want a daughter who will grow up to know the truth.”

Herrly’s older children had attended public school, and she chose home-school for her youngest daughter.

She said she felt the public school education would not best fit her needs. With home schooling, she said, she can select a curriculum for her daughter that coincides with her view of the world. “Not that she’s only learning that, but it influences her that way. If she was going to public school, she’d be learning one thing there and another thing at home and try to assimilate the two all the time.”

Herrly called this a “constant battle for her values.”

Jean Johnson said that an experience she had in high school with a peer who was home-schooled led her to consider the benefits for her own children.

“Misty was the strangest creature I’d ever met,” said Johnson about her home-schooled friend. This young girl defied the stereotypes.

“She didn’t care if her eye shadow matched. She didn’t care if she wore eye shadow,” Johnson joked. This young woman was independent, and strong in academics, Johnson said.

“She didn’t worry about being bullied or being picked on, all those things that I was so worried about.”

Johnson said she did not want her children, including one with special needs, to have those peer pressures and struggles that she felt herself in high school. Her home-schooled daughter, she said, embodies some of those same free-spirit qualities.

She also feels that the education she can provide her children is greater than that which they would get in public school, she said.

“I have a different curriculum that has more of a world view, and I like the fact that I can broaden their horizons and teach them things more than what they would get in public schools and at a rate that fits their pace,” Johnson said.

Her children, for example, are working on foreign languages not available for younger grades as well as the study of other cultures.

Home-school mom Stacy Hall said she was glad that she had time to discuss with her children what they were learning in school.

Instead of getting the typical “nothing” response when asking her kids what they learned in school, it helped her bond and discuss topics with her children. Hall has chosen an online-based education system for her children.

Online education

An online program has also worked well for home-school mom Cindy Hendrickson. There are many options available for those families who want to incorporate varying degrees of parent-educating and flexibility. In some of the online schools, for example, students wear headsets and sit in a virtual classroom online, where they are expected to attend class on regular schedules. Other online models are more flexible and simply provide a framework for the courses, the parents said.

Kristy Hufnagle has home-schooled her six children. “Their interaction with each other is so much greater than if they were all in school all day and come home drained, with their friends on their mind and homework,” she said.

She started home-schooling after her oldest daughter finished kindergarten and asked to stay home for school.

Home-school parents noted a higher degree of quality of their students’ work compared to their traditional school peers. They are more likely to complete a textbook, in contrast to public schools, which stop using the textbook when the year ends. The students are more likely to work slower and more methodically, note the parents, but have a greater voracity for learning and getting things done perfectly.

And as far as socialization, they say their home-school students have an equal or greater chance to meet other people. Because they are not labeled based on their grade in school and feel like they have to keep to those social groups, they are likely to bond with children younger than they as well as older teens and adults.

They’re not shy, the parents say, and have an unwavering propensity for learning that often translates into asking a lot of questions of new people they meet.

After-school activities, sports, 4-H and other groups, as well as the home-school gym, provide outlets for children to bond with kids their age.

Challenges

One of the challenges Johnson noted was time management. She said they act as the school bus, teacher, and a variety of other roles, which takes a lot of time and planning for her. Other parents agreed that the stresses, and especially the large investment of time that it takes to home-school, is one of the most difficult aspects of the program.

They all shared a great amount of respect for public school teachers who handle up to 30 or more students at any given time.

“And you feel like your house isn’t kept up the way you want it to be, and meals are slapped on the table, not lovingly prepared like you’d like,” said home-school mom Hufnagle.

There are also financial considerations. Home-schooling typically requires one family member devoted to the task. Most of these moms don’t work outside the home-school job, and the one that did, Andrea Trembath, said she relied on family to help with the schooling during her part-time job.

Not only are there potential lost wages from the parent who otherwise could be employed, but there are books, supplies and other costs associated with home-schooling. Tax deductions and other incentives for home-schoolers don’t cover the costs of the education, parents say.

Home-schooler

Scott Ducharme leads the home-school gym class each week. He and several of his siblings have been home-schooled, and he was once a participant in the weekly classes. He took over the activity after he and many of the older home-schoolers finished their high school education.

“I think the education is far superior,” Ducharme said of home schooling.

Ducharme said four of his siblings were home schooled.

“After the Christian school closed down, my mom decided to home-school because she didn’t want to put my older brothers into an environment that can sometimes be hostile and sometimes you can pick up things that are not beneficial for a child to learn. And there’s also issues of bullying, and teen suicide and drugs, narcotics, alcohol, all these terrible things that if you can control the environment, you can keep out.”

“Also my mom wanted to focus on Biblical teaching and creationism versus atheistic teaching and evolution.”

He also said it allowed him the flexibility to get a part-time job of a paper route, mowing lawns and other odd jobs, and that he enjoyed the ability to choose which district to join for sports and extracurricular activities.

He took two classes at the high school before joining the Postsecondary Enrollment Options program at Rainy River Community College.

“The main difference is in college they’re not going to hold your hand and bring you along,” Ducharme said. “You’re responsible to get your own work in. And they don’t pander to you and hold your hand or anything. Pass, fail, you have to do the work.”

“And home schooling helps build that. You think, your mom’s right there, she’s holding your hand. Really, it helps build an independent mentality where you take ownership of your own education. So it’s counterproductive to put people in this system that helps them with their education then transfer them to a system that doesn’t. (College) wants to teach them, but not hold their hand.”

Ducharme had some of the same concerns many public school students face in high school.

“Sometimes when I was going through home schooling, I worried that when I did get to college I wouldn’t measure up. Even though I had the test scores, I worried that I’d get there and wouldn’t measure up. And I worried that maybe people would think I was strange or something. When I got to college I realized that I did measure up and I was able to achieve to similar or better levels than most high school students, especially the Falls ones.”

He said sports provided a good social outlet and integration with other public school students.

“There’s also a great community of home-schoolers you can do stuff with,” he said.

Considerations of home schooling:

• Opportunity to tailor education.

• Opportunity to build in family experiences, like world travel, to a curriculum.

• Peer group interactions.

• Time, commitment and lost wages of parent.

• Whether one of the parents of the student is opposed to this choice or less than enthusiastic — regardless of your marital status.

• Whether a combination of home schooling and public programs like Postsecondary Enrollment Options, Special Education or Shared Time might provide the right mix.

• Whether the organizational skills and stamina exist to design and run your own school.

• Whether another public school choice or traditional private school better meets needs.

• New beginnings.

From Minnesota Department of Education

Potluck

Border Home Educators will be holding its fall potluck dinner from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Monday at Evangelical Covenant Church. The group welcomes all area home-schoolers and online schoolers from both sides of the international border.

For families considering homeschooling, the group encourages them to attend the potluck to get more information. Call Ciriacy at 283-0865 for additional information.