After discussing homeschool co-ops earlier this week to evaluate if a co-op is the right fit for your family, the question was asked, how do you know if this is the right time to join a co-op. While it is true that a co-op might be a great fit for your family, it might not always be the right time for your family to engage in co-op. How do you determine this? I would recommend that each year before committing to a co-op that you weight the pros and cons along with examining the other constraints and limits on your time.
Pros
Socialization for You and Them
One thing that homeschool co-ops do well. Is give you as parents and home educators the ability to connect with and socialize with other homeschool parents. It is a community of like minded individuals all who are going through some of the same things. Likewise, it allows students who are homeschooled to meet other kids just like them and make meaningful connections. It provides a sense of comradery and community that can be a great benefit to homeschooling.
Structure and Accountability
Certain types of co-ops, especially academic co-ops or weekly co-ops, can help provide a sense of structure and accountability to your days. When you know you go to co-op every Tuesday, and that you will need to complete homework by then, it helps give a sense of order to your days. We often look for ways to help lay out our routines and rhythms as homeschoolers, and one easy way to do that is to have certain activities on certain days. Additionally, knowing that you'll be checking in, even informally with other moms, often helps us push through when we don't really feel like doing school.
Academic Support
Most co-ops provide some level of academics, whether that's a full blown class with homework or it is a low key class designed to introduce a narrow field of subject material for fun. It can be great when you have a class that supports what you are already doing at home. My oldest two kids are taking Biology this year, and my middle two are taking Earth Science. Our co-op will be exploring Florida Flora and Fauna this year, which will dove tail nicely with both of those areas of science. It will be a fun extra learning experience that can support and come alongside what we are already doing. Other years it has provided a look into subject mater that we haven't spent much time on, such as geography. Either way, it is nice to occasionally expose your children to extra learning and the experience of learning from and with others.
Additional Opportunities
Sometimes, there are great learning opportunities for our children, if we can get a large enough group together. Co-ops provide that very built in group, that can take advantage of group discounts and met minimums for special activities at different places.
Cons
Socialization for You and Them
"Wait!" you might ask, "Wasn't this was just on your pro list?" Socialization is a two edged sword, there are times that your student may come home having learned about something from their peers that you weren't ready to discuss with them yet. They may pick up bad habits or language that you don't use in your house hold. Anytime you are in a group situation you run the risk of the wrong type of socialization. Even worse, what happens if you or your children don't connect, and end up spending the entire time feeling alone while everyone around you makes connections? It can be hard to break into a group that is already formed and settled, it can be discouraging and undermine your sense of self-worth.
Rigidity
Probably one of the biggest downsides to a co-op for our family is that it locks you into doing certain things at certain times on certain days. If a class ends up not appealing to your child in anyway, it's too bad, they are stuck in it till the end of the semester or school year. A particular teacher not get your kid, or teach in a way that works for your kids, it's too bad they are stuck in it till the end of the semester or school year. Cool field trip opportunity on Tuesday, too bad, you are already committed to co-op. Turns out that the timing just doesn't work well for your family, too bad, you are committed till the end of the school year. I highly value our flexibility on a day to day basis, so to give that up, I need a big pay off.
Conflicts in Beliefs
Even in co-ops where you have taken the time to find worldviews and beliefs aligned with your own, there will be occasions where you run into conflicts with material. Whether that is something like science where you believe in a young-earth creation model with a literal 6 day creation, or a old-earth creation model with 6 epochs of creation. Or whether that is something like a fellow Christian family who doesn't believe that salvation is accomplished the same way that you do. You have to consider how you will handle those differences and how to have those discussions with your children as they come up, and how you handle that may look vastly different according to the age of your children. There have been several times we've had to have discussions with our children, sometimes before we were ready to on various topics because something contrary to our beliefs was broached at co-op.
Cost
Whether you are discussing money or volunteer time, there is a cost associated with co-ops. Monetarily, cost add up quickly the more children that you have. But just as consuming as the actual time spent at co-op is the prep time involved. You have to lay out clothes ahead of time, and make sure everyone can find their shoes the night before co-op, You have to plan a quick breakfast, pack lunches, and consider car snacks for on the way home. Not to mention the planning that goes into preparing for teaching an actual class.
Weighing the Pros and Cons
Co-ops can be a great blessing with all that they offer a homeschooling family, but there are definitely times when the cons out weigh the pros. There are times where the rigidity and planning that goes into co-op ahead of time just might not work out with your philosophy of homeschooling, and your current situation. There are other times where the work load of a class might not work for your students combined with everything else that you want to do with them that year. Maybe you've had enough issues with world view discussions and poor socialization outcomes that you need to take some time off or look for another co-op at another time.
There are no doubt seasons of life, where even if a co-op is a perfect fit it isn't a perfect time for you to be involved. Sometimes it might be easy to identify when you are already over extended. Maybe you have a sick parent you are looking after, a spouse with a demanding work schedule, or a new baby. Other times you may look around and be unsure if co-op should still fit into your schedule. Maybe you have several boisterous younger kids that just don't do well in the constraints of co-op for the time involved. Maybe you need to regroup at home and work on some family dynamics that tend to get over looked when we are out of the house too often. Maybe you are just tired and need to pare back on commitments.
Real Life Scenarios
Twice my family has taken off a year from co-op. Once was one of those big moments where it was evident that it wasn't working for us. The second time was more difficult to determine.
The first time we took off from co-op was shortly after Abigail had passed away. Infact, the day we left Pennsylvania to drive to Florida for her funeral, we were suppose to have co-op. I gathered up everything I had prepared for my 3 year old class, and met up with another mom to pass the materials on, the day before. I was in a stupor much of that semester, and after another class or two it became evident that with the change in our family dynamic it wasn't a good time for me to drive over an hour to get to a day long co-op where I had to teach a group of eighteen 3-year-olds for nearly four hours. So, even though it was after the school year began we dropped out of co-op for that year. I had all I could handle with our three kids at home doing the very basics, without the additional commitment. It gave us a year to heal and deal with what was happening in our family, before getting involved in co-op again the following year.
The second time we took off from co-op was more of a matter of weighing various factors to figure out what was best for our family at the time. The first factor was the demands on our time. I was going to be using an online class for the three oldest for the first time, and I was unsure how intensive the classes would be. I knew though that they would have papers due every two weeks all year long, and adding something of that magnitude to our weekly schedule would take a great deal of planning on my part. We also were logging monumental hours at the farm each week to assist my husband in his job as farm manager. Those hours weren't really negotiable, so I had to work school around the farm for a time. Furthermore, I was burnt out, from the demands at home and with schooling. The second factor to consider were the twin 1.5 year olds. They were wild, and not easily entertained outside of me and home, and co-op with them was trying, even though they would theoretically be in the nursery the whole time. It was easier to keep them at home, where baby gates, tv, and other high interest toys could be used as we cycled different kids in and out of their room to entertain them over the course of the school day. At this point, I knew that it would probably be best for my mental space and our schedule to skip co-op for the year, but I kept hemming and hawing, after all it was only a once a month commitment. I didn't want to let co-op down by not attending, and I knew the kids would really miss it. The final push then was the subject matter for the year. The plan was to have the kids write a play and perform it based in Florida history. I knew with everything else going on, I just couldn't take on helping three kids memorize lines, and come up with costuming. It confirmed what I already knew, we just needed to take the year off. Sure enough it allowed us to really focus on what was happening in our house each week, and without having to talk myself into going each month, we were able to fully be flexible on days that didn't require us to be at the farm. It gave me and the kids time to recharge, focus on other things, and then be ready to jump back into co-op this year.
In Summary...
Homeschool co-ops can be great, but they aren't right for everyone at every time in their homeschool journey. By looking at the pros and cons and determining what your other commitments and constraints are you can figure out if co-op tips more heavily into the pros or the cons each year, to evaluate if it is the right time and season for you to be involved in a homeschool co-op.
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