WANTED!

Wanted: Classroom teachers who are tired of working in a broken system, creative leaders who want to help young learners become smarter and stronger without the interference of state legislatures, state and local boards of education, and district curriculum departments, adult learning leaders who receive training in building personalized learning plans for their young learners. Must be able to build relationships with young learners and their families, plan an annual budget of $350,000, lead a cohort of young learners anytime, anywhere, and demonstrate technological expertise. You will be assessed on your ability to help young learners define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning. You will be partnered with another adult learning leader (with either a literacy or problem-solving expertise), and can earn around $100,000 a year with solid learning results.

Interested?

When we opened our personalized learning lab school in the Houston Museum District, we were lucky to find two classroom teachers who fit the job description above. And, what we knew was that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers currently in traditional classrooms that would yearn to have this type of experience, if only we could find them. Sadly, those prospective adult learning leaders never left their traditional classrooms. Maybe it was bad advertising. Maybe it was their fear of stepping out on their own, without the protection of a school or a school district.

But that was almost 10 years ago. Today is different.

Last week, The Washington Post reported a story focused on adults who have connected with the nation’s home-schooling crowd to serve those young learners as their learning coaches or guides.

The Post, in an article titled “For many home-schoolers, parents are no longer doing the teaching,” writes:

“Parents pull around the circular driveway to drop their children off in the morning. Students climb the steps and hang their backpacks on hooks. Katy Rose greets her charges and sends them into a classroom festooned with artwork, where they open their laptops and begin working through math problems.”

“But Rose is not a teacher, and this is not a school. Every child here is a home-schooler.”

“Rose, a registered nurse, had never studied or worked in education before starting her own ‘microschool,’ where her title is ‘guide’ for students who study math and reading online and depend on her for many other subjects.”

“Her program is part of a company called Prenda, which last year served about 2,000 students across several states. It connects home-school families with microschool leaders who host students, often in their homes. It’s like Airbnb for education, says Prenda’s CEO, because its website allows customers – in this case, parents – to enter their criteria, search and make a match.”

“An explosion of new options, including Prenda, has transformed home schooling in America. Demand is surging: Hundreds of thousands of children have begun home schooling in the last three years, an unprecedented spike that generated a huge new market. In New Hampshire, for instance, the number of home-schoolers doubled during the pandemic, and even today it remains 40 percent above pre-covid totals.”

“For many years, home schooling has conjured images of parents and children working together at the kitchen table. The new world of home schooling often looks very different: pods, co-ops, microschools and hybrid schools, often outside the home, as well as real-time and recorded virtual instruction. For a growing number of students, education now exists somewhere on a continuum between school and home, in person and online, professional and amateur.”

“Microschools sometimes provide all-day supervision, allowing parents to work full time while sending their children to ‘home school.’ Hybrid schools let students split their days between school and home. Co-ops, once entirely parent run, might employ a professional educator.”

“Many parents still take the lead in teaching their children. Many rely on family co-ops, in which a mom in one family might teach science while a dad in another leads a photography class. Families also tap into existing community resources such as YMCAs, art studios and nature centers.”

“But new financial and ideological forces have revolutionized the broader home-school landscape.”

“The most powerful may be government. About a dozen states allow families to use taxpayer funds for home-school expenses. Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs, direct thousands of dollars to families that opt out of public school, whether the destination is a private school or their own homes.”

“Support comes, too, from the nonprofit sector. School-choice advocates are directing millions of dollars in charitable giving toward home-school organizations – a convergence of two powerful but traditionally separate movements.”

“And venture capitalists have invested tens of millions of dollars in new businesses to serve what they see as a potentially huge market.”

“…critics have concerns. State exercise little oversight of home schooling. What regulations do exist were mostly adopted beginning in the 1980s, when home schooling was almost exclusively at home. Now, some see danger as the number of home-school students soars and more of the educating falls to third parties, including for-profit companies such as Prenda.”

“’They have no oversight, no taxpayer accountability, no academic or curriculum standards,’ said Beth Lewis, director of Save Our Schools in Arizona, a public school advocacy group. ‘We don’t know what kids are learning.’”

“In some states, these arrangements may not even be legal, because home-school parents are required to deliver all or most of the education themselves, said Darren Jones, senior counsel and director of group services at the Home School Legal Defense Association. Only three states explicitly allow for learning pods in state law. Elsewhere, he said, ‘it’s a fuzzy area.’”

No doubt, there are challenges to be worked out with these out of school models, whether it be home school, microschool, learning pod, or hybrid. But it seems like these challenges are being worked on and worked out, whereas reading, writing, and problem-solving deficiencies in our black, brown, and poor young learners inside traditional schools aren’t.

So, if you are a classroom teacher starting a new year, realizing that you can’t do what you want to do or need to do for your students, think about taking these steps over the next year:

Hope you live in a state that provides funding for families who choose to go somewhere else other than traditional public school for their child’s education. I understand this first step might be a non-starter for some, but many states are looking at ways to put money in the hands of parents to make a different choice for their children than public school.

Find families that are unhappy with their current public school. Make sure you and those families can build relationships around improving their young learner’s reading, writing, and problem-solving abilities. If you happen to live in a state that doesn’t offer financial support for out of school learning, the families themselves might be able to pool resources together to arrive at an acceptable budget to begin a learning cohort.

Train yourself in building individual learning plans for your young learners. I’ve written several columns about learning plans for ABPTL. You can find those columns at abetterpathtolearning.com.

Build a budget that ensures success in each personalized learning plan created.

Negotiate behavior norms with your new learning cohort, like “when is learning time happening in your world and mine, and when isn’t it happening?”

Decide what technology you will use to help support the individual learning plans.

Be courageous! Be willing to make mistakes! Be willing to work with your young learners and their families! Be committed to improving reading, writing, and problem-solving abilities!

And have fun!

I’ll bet you make more a difference in the lives of your young learners and their families, learning outside of the traditional system, than if those young learners stayed in their traditional school, especially if that traditional school is not performing the way it should be.

Til tomorrow. SVB