All Together Now
The allure of homeschooling in a group
“So you’re going to ‘shack up’ with your boyfriend?”
“Yes. I want to live with him first.”
“How old are you?”
“19.”
A pause followed. Then, the radio show relationship expert responded.
“Sounds like you’re afraid to grow up and be an adult on your own. You think it will be easier if you ‘team up’ with another scared, new adult.”
Lots of parents feel this way when they begin homeschooling. They feel safer in numbers. They imagine that they’ll be liberated from the hard work of piecing together curriculum, social lives, and daily routines if they delegate some of that to a collective—be it a group of five families who meet at a park or a weekly co-op of 100!
This thinking happens when starting a business too. An individual has a good idea, but they feel unsure of its merits. So they look for a partner to split the risk. They want to off load some of the anxiety of failure by sharing the responsibility with someone else.
And as we know, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to find a partner in life or homeschool or business!
I want to dig a little deeper into this analogy because it holds some important ideas to consider for home educators—particularly those who are new to home education.
Freedom and Responsibility
Parents who homeschool often want liberation from the strict structure and requirements of traditional schooling. They see home education as a chance to create something new and powerful for their children.
Freedom can feel scary: What if I fail? How do I know I’m doing it right?
Those questions come from a different energy: responsibility.
The responsibility to do a good job can be even scarier than freedom. Freedom is running shirtless through the sprinklers. Responsibility is wondering whether or not and where you should.
The responsibility of homeschooling is what trips people up!
After freedom comes research and that research leads to a wild wild west experience.
Do I need to keep up with public schools in case my kids want to go some day?
How do I know what to teach and at what pace?
What does the state require of me so that I homeschool legally?
Who are the experts? How do I know they know what they purport to know?
What if I skip a subject or topic without realizing it?
How can I be sure my child is getting the right education?
A new homeschooler can easily run aground just doing the research! But what if they team up? What if they throw in their lot with someone else’s vision and clarity?
Well that can feel really really good!
Now, someone else decides the answers to these questions!
The main trouble comes when right in the burst of freedom, the homeschool parent scurries back to a feeling of security by adopting a vision for education that they haven’t fully vetted or understood in the context of their specific kids.
Choosing your path
If you’re new to homeschooling, I have a secret hope—that you’ll begin on your own, with only your kids.
Yes, spend time doing activities with other families—absolutely! But set up your own daily routine and select your materials for your specific family this year. Interact with other families at picnics, on hikes, for science experiments, or book club parties.
Spend your first year getting to know your kids: how they learn, what they love, and what style of instruction works for them. Lean into the freedom side of home education.
Worry less about the mythical idea of “getting behind” and more about how to meet your kids where their interests are. Discover new strategies for developing core skills in reading, writing, and math. Indulge a child’s desire to work with clay or to build a LEGO set or to plant a garden. Expose your child to the arts. Play sports.
This is the year to try a slew of learning styles (not worrying so much about which one is right). Does your child like hands-on activities? How do they respond to filling out a worksheet? Do they listen well when you read to them? You can compare and contrast different strategies in the same subject to see which ones click with your kids. This year is not about them as much as it is about you as an educator.
Learn your job, on the job, by being a student of learning, not just a teacher executing a curriculum.
Once you have a sense of your kids, joining an existing co-op or micro school can go well! A one day a week program can provide variety and friends to your kids. You will know if this is the right kind of program for this particular child because you will have discerned what this child needs.
One of the most challenging settings is the hybrid school. Here, a child attends classes a couple days a week while finishing the materials at home the other days.
Be sure you review the curriculum the school has selected. If it works at school but not when you’re home, that’s not a good fit! You and your kids have to buy into the learning style of the program or you will feel like the fun happens at “school” and home is now a battlefield to enforce what your child does not want to do.
Sometimes when you join a hybrid school, you wind up with the same limitations as traditional school.
You don’t feel free to say no to homework
You follow their schedule
You can’t take days to go on family field trips without getting behind
Teaming up is a way to offload some of the natural anxiety that comes from choosing this brave lifestyle. But make sure you know what you give up when you do! I hope parents will follow their initial burst of imagination around learning—just to see how it goes! Then, if you’ve been at it for a bit, finding a community version of learning that supports your family can be wonderful.
Brave Writer offerings
Next week, join our Free Online Summer Camp! It’s the professional development you need to grow as a home educator.
July 15-16
Day One for Parents (with a few things for kids)
Day Two for Kids (with parents eavesdropping)
We’ll talk about how to “AI-proof” your kids’ education and all about writing!
To register, go to:
I just read this with a lump in my throat—thank you for writing it with such depth and compassion. That image of gathering the threads, of pulling close what was once spread out… it really moved me. There’s something so healing in the idea that togetherness doesn’t mean doing everything the same way—it just means showing up for each other with presence.
Like many parents, I’ve had my share of struggles helping my son with lessons at home—especially when it came to revisiting material in a way that felt meaningful (and didn’t end in frustration). That journey led me to create an app called SKULI, born quite simply out of my kitchen-table attempts to make revision feel lighter and more child-led.
Just wanted to say how grateful I am to have come across your words today. I’d be honored to gift you access to SKULI (now available on iOS and Android) if you ever feel curious—no expectations at all, just appreciation. And if ever you see ways it could serve families better, I’d truly welcome your insight.
Thanks again for this beautiful reflection—it’ll stay with me.