My homeschool journey has felt like a revolving door at certain times. One point that I kept circling back around to was the need to be part of a co-op. Now before you think I am a social butterfly, most of my close friends know that I love being at home and working on projects. However, because I am fully aware of my need for constant order in my life, I know I can get lop-sided if that part of my personality was left unchecked. Yes, we can grow stagnant when we are not around others. That is not something I wanted to pass on to my kids.
Before I started a co-op what I did appreciate was that other people can enrich your life and make your homeschool journey incomparable. Yes, they can make it stink it too. But hey now I am focusing on the positives about being around other people on a regular basis.
Starting a homeschool co-op was the furthest thing from my mind. I looked around to join one, not start one. Not me. Seven or eight years later our co-op is still strong, flourishing and not growing. (I will let you wait just a minute or so for my explanation on that.)
I’m certainly not going to talk you into joining one either because I want you to picky, very picky. All co-ops are not created equal. I do hope by the time you finish reading this series, you will be armed with a Co-op 101 Guide and then maybe decide to look for one.
Indulge the new bee teacher side of me for just a moment too as I give a definition for a co-op so that I don’t lose a new homeschooler who may be getting the glazed look in her eye about now.
Definition: Co-op – One or more families meeting together on a regular basis to enrich their children collectively about any topic. Everything is negotiable. Meeting places, costs and expenses, topics, how to run it, ages involved, whether a parent teaches or not, if the kids are dropped off or not and discipline issues, everything is determined by those who lead or are the founders. They can spring up as quickly as they fold and it all depends on the need in your area. Anybody can form one, but not all succeed.
Control freak Organized person that I am, I determined that it would be best that I be part of leadership. I started a co-op and Kelley joined, then we added one more mom to our group to balance us out. Adding Cynthia to our group, we became the dynamic trio.{She is the mom standing behind me in the first picture above. I chose that picture of us because we all look tattered, complete with painted faces after we had the BEST co-op that year.}
Now comes the honest assessment of your qualities for being part of a co-op. I knew already that I was perfectly content to be at home but realized that other educators possessed strengths that would only enrich and benefit my children. Things I do enjoy are warm conversations, hand-waving as I am speaking {yes I am rather dramatic as I talk} and I don’t have a problem getting up in a huge crowd. Yes I really do like people that are engaging and warm just like everybody else. Think about what contribution you can make to a co-op and focus on that for a start.
Sharing the benefits to my family, I hope you will see that the benefits far outweigh the drama, discipline problems and anything else negative you might think of from fees or cost to possibly driving longer than 15 minutes to get there.
- By creating a large “family atmosphere”, my children have a sense of extended family. This is not so important when your children are 4 or 5 years old but when they are 14 and 15 years old having friends other than their siblings, stimulates their social development.
- If some of the local educators and other parents had not taught at our co-op, my sons’ passion for certain subjects like history and geography might not be what it is today.
- By sticking with the co-op, my sons have had a sense of “class”. They have seen others graduate and leave the co-op and will be graduating at the same time with others who started with them. This builds lifetime friendships. I cannot put a grade in my planner for life time friends.
- The friends I too have connected with who are caring and selfless leaders year after year like Kelley and Cynthia is unmatched. I only imagined I could have such treasured and dear friends.
- Let me not forget that my sons won’t fall short in the crafts department of homeschooling because there are plenty of other women who not only love it, but have a gift for it and share it willingly with my children.
- Because of our attendance in a co-op, we have enjoyed perks by attending educational places that only will allow “school groups” and by our sheer numbers we have received significant discounts that we otherwise would not have received.
Our co-op swelled to over 100 families and we had to split. Now that our co-op is at the size we want and because our members tend to not leave, we have closed the co-op. Our kids will grow, but our co-op will not because we like the size of it now.
I have remembered one saying and I know I have used it before, but it really expresses my sentiment as a homeschooling co-op convert with all the years of hard work I have put into our local co-op. It is only matched with those that share this task with me.
In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.
~Antonio Porchia~
Can you share your heart in a co-op?
Hugs and love ya,
