Home schooling sees more parents take on role of teacher

With COVID-19 numbers rising and many school districts beginning to abandon their previous plans for faceto-face learning, an increasing number of Ohioans are inquiring about home schooling their children.

Patricia Roth, 44, of Pickerington, decided to home-school her two children after the Pickerington school board announced July 13 that kindergarten through eighth-grade students would come back to school twice a week.

Roth said her 12-year-old son was sad when she told him that he was going to be home-schooled because he would miss being in the school environment and around his friends.

“I explained to him that it was not going to be like it was last year — that school has changed and it may not be (the same) forever,” she said.

Ohio Department of Education spokeswoman Mandy Minick said there has been a rise in requests for homeschool information, with the department receiving an average of 12 emails a day from inquiring parents.

Last year, 32,887 students in the state were home-schooled. The official figures for the upcoming 2020-21 school year won’t be available until September 2021, according to the state education department.

Nationwide, there were 2.5 million home-schooled students in grades K-12 last spring, according to the nonprofit National Home of Education Research Institute in Salem, Oregon.

The National Home Education Research Institute also found that home schooling is growing in popularity among minority families. About 15% of home-school families are nonwhite.

While official headcounts won’t be available until 2021, home-schooling advocates don’t want to speculate whether numbers will rise because, right now, parents are just making inquiries and requesting information.

Kristin Campbell, an administrator with Columbus Area Homeschoolers, said that traffic to join its Facebook group has increased recently, with “more than 20 requests to join, all by parents of children older than 5.”

According to a USA TODAY/IPSOS poll, 60% of parents with at least one child in grades K-12 “would likely” pursue home education, while 30% of parents “are very likely” to pursue home education.

When parents make the choice to home school their children, they must follow guidelines set by the Ohio Department

of Education.

They include notifying the superintendent of their local school district that they’re going to home school, and providing 900 hours on instruction. At the end of the academic year, homeschooled students also have to take a standardized test to demonstrate they can perform with other kids at their grade level. The test must be given by a licensed teaching professional.

However, experts say there are some disadvantages to home schooling, including that parents have to actively seek ways to motivate their children and be around their children for long amounts of time.

Patricia Lewis, 41, of Mansfield, has been home-schooling four of her five children for seven years. Before that, she taught at a Catholic school in Mansfield for four years and English at the Fukushima Prefecture of Japan for three years. She tells parents that it’s a serious commitment.

“It is really important that you make it a priority,” said Lewis, who was homeschooled herself as a child. “There are other parts of your life that do suffer because you are focused on that aspect of your child’s education.”

But they shouldn’t let that scare them because there are so many resources, she said.

Roth, a teacher’s aide for Pickerington schools, turned to Columbus Area Homeschoolers and other groups to help figure out what kind of schooling works best for her children.

Among the questions she encountered was whether she wanted to go the traditional home-schooling route, in which parents act like teachers in the home, or something called “unschooling,” which operates on the belief that children are naturally curious and will follow their interests in their own way.

She said her two children have different learning styles. Her son would have been part of Pickerington’s gifted education program and her 10-year-old daughter has an individualized education program for reading. The beauty of home schooling, she said, is it will give her an opportunity to cater to their strengths.

Roth said she won’t begin homeschooling her children until after Labor Day weekend. She said she will dedicate three hours a day for four days a week to their lessons and will devote the remainder of their time working on creative projects.

Even though she’s been planning ahead, Roth said she’s still a little apprehensive. She takes comfort in the advice of Campbell from Columbus Area Homeschooler.

“She said, ‘Take a deep breath, you’re going to love it. Even if it doesn’t turn out like the way you think it’s going to turn out, the kids will still learn,’” Roth said. gharrel@dispatch.com @Gershonquantez