Parental Homeschool Teaching Method
In this type of homeschool situation, parents teach their own children, and only their own children. They may do this with self-designed curriculum, curriculum they’ve purchased from a publisher, or curriculum they’ve assembled from a variety of sources. In this situation, parents are responsible for all the homeschool record keeping, from keeping track of children’s school hours and daily attendance to grades and progress reports. A parental homeschool may take advantage of community offerings, public television shows, and Internet material that is presented by others. But the parent is running the school and its main location is usually the family’s home.
Multifamily Homeschool Teaching Method
In a multifamily homeschool, a parent from one family takes responsibility for instructing children in his or her own family and at least one other family. Note that states may regulate homeschool enrollment, determining whether children from outside the teacher’s family can be in the homeschool and also how many children from outside the teacher’s family may attend. In a multifamily homeschool, the parent has the same responsibilities as in a parental homeschool, but has responsibility for additional children who are not in his or her family. The school often meets in the home of the parent who is teaching.
Cooperative Homeschool Teaching Method
In a cooperative homeschool teaching situation, parents from at least two families share the duties of responsibility for homeschooling their children in common. The homeschool may meet in a home or in a community site, such as a church or community center. Or it may move between several family’s homes. Duties may be divided so that some parents teach, while others provide childcare for children too young for school, and others take responsibility for recess, lunch, snacks, and make other non-academic contributions.
Distance Homeschool Teaching
Distance education learning opportunities are provided by a number of homeschool curriculum providers. In these alternatives, students work from home, rather than attending the school, which provides materials in a variety of ways, including print, CD, DVD, streaming video, and live instruction/interaction. With an accredited distance homsechool, you’ll get not only record keeping, assessment, and grade reports, and figuring grade point average (GPA) but also a certificate of graduation, and – in some cases – a graduation ceremony. Note that certain distance learning providers treat their students as classes, and there may be opportunities for students to interact with each other, as well as other things that usually only come in large schools with face-to-face classes, like class rank.
With distance learning, it’s also possible to draw your courses from a wider array of levels. Your high school student could take a variety of high school and college courses. For example, since many languages are not offered in high school, an introductory college course is the best opportunity most students have to enroll in such a course. If your child is a gifted student and has completed all the high school courses available in his or her area of expertise, this is another reason that you might turn to a college distance learning provider. If your child prefers the distance learning method, he or she might choose to take online MBA programs or other degree porgrams in the future.
Multimethod Homeschool Teaching Method
Some homeschool curriculum providers have options whereby they provide the curriculum but the parent is still responsible for the record keeping, assessment, progress reports, and grades. It’s also possible to use distance learning for some subjects and parental instruction for others. If you intend to school from multiple sources, just be sure that any alternatives you sign up and/or pay for do not explicitly preclude enrolling in other programs.
