We often talk interchangeably about support groups and co-ops, but they are actually two different entities. It’s possible that most homeschooling parents today have never really experienced a support group.
In the early homeschooling years, support groups began to sprout. But it took a couple decades, the 1980’s and 90’s, to organically grow enough homeschooling parents to establish support groups everywhere.
Yet almost as soon as support groups spread around the state, co-ops started replacing them. Let’s explore the differences between a support group and a co-op and how the two affect us.
We’ll start with the origin of support groups so that we understand what they are. I’ll speak from my personal experience as an early homeschooler.
I began homeschooling full-time in 1996. At that time, homeschoolers were still fairly rare. Most of us had heard of homeschooling, but we certainly didn’t know exactly what it meant or how it worked. So if we decided to try homeschooling, we hunted for others already doing it. But often, we felt pretty much on our own.
For me, I knew no one personally who homeschooled except my cousin out west and a childhood friend whom I hadn’t seen for years. I reached out to both.
Of course, there was no internet then. I couldn’t hop on my cell phone to find resources across the nation. Since things have changed so much, why bother writing about this time period at all?
Because the homeschooling principles of the 1980’s and 90’s produced a generation of homeschool graduates who made homeschooling an enviable entity – and that catapulted homeschooling into a growing movement! For easy evidence, hop on over to our video here and listen to the first 15 seconds. Heather Sprenger was teaching at the University of New Hampshire and she was impressed with the homeschool graduates there!
But it wasn’t just college professors who were impressed. Multiple parents say they became interested in homeschooling because they noticed that homeschoolers in their church were different. Homeschool families were fascinating and were what they wanted for their own kids and families.
So what were these impressive early homeschoolers like?
Well, as I implied already, they weren’t schooling online. The internet wasn’t available to the general public in the way it is now. Nor were resources on the internet much developed even if someone had access.
Instead, moms were merely using the few curriculum resources available at the time and “winging it.” That’s how it felt to me anyway. But an amazing thing happened to us! When we began to invest personally in our kids at home, wonderful things resulted! And it seemed to happen to all of us, even though we didn’t know it because we didn’t know one another.
You can read about it in multiple “what we wished we had known when we started to homeschool” contributions written by multiple moms from that time. What’s fascinating about those accounts is that they are eerily similar even though written by strangers. Obviously, at-home homeschooling in that simple way not only produced impressive graduates and enviable homes, but it produced parents who were so surprised themselves at what had happened, that they wrote about it for others.
But again, what has that to do with support groups? Now we’re ready for the answer. Support groups were started by these parents so that they could find fellowship – and talk freely about homeschooling. I know because that’s why I helped start our own local support group.
I finally found a handful of homeschooling moms in my town and we began to meet together. It was just casual – no agenda. No “formal meeting” and certainly no fees. It was a safe place to express doubts or concerns – without the others telling us to put our kids back in school. Instead, we cheered each other on and shared ideas and solutions. It was gold!
Our original five moms grew to be over 100 families in the ensuing years – by word of mouth. No more than 25 moms ever met regularly, but the reach of our resources (mostly just an email group for announcements and an annual test center) was much larger.
We did have a tiny bit more structure as more moms came. But the purpose was the same:
- It was just moms. Kids stayed home with dad for the evening.
- It was for encouragement. Safe conversation. Finding out what others were doing and what resources others were using.
That’s pretty much it. Think of supporting the moms. Not feeling alone. Support group.
I will digress here just a moment to describe another aspect of many support groups that I believe helped morph them into co-ops.
Our group made a conscious choice to only be support to moms. I had been a Children’s Ministry Director and I had no desire whatsoever to head a support group that wanted to have a dozen activities and where my job would be to beg people to head them up and make them happen. Instead, I decided our philosophy should be, “If you want to do it, make it happen and announce it to everyone else.” So as activities were dreamed up, the only ones that came to fruition were the ones the dreamer actually cared enough about to make happen personally.
However, leaders of other support groups didn’t make that same decision. As their groups grew, so did moms’ desires to have activities – spelling bees, parties, field trips, etc. Many group leaders found themselves trying to find annual directors for these various activities. “Who wants to head up the field trips this year?”
As you can imagine, coordinating efforts for 100 families became a big job! And these activities weren’t for moms; they were for the kids. So now they had lots of children’s activities – not unlike church children’s ministries. That takes many volunteers and much organization.
Early on, moms started joining forces to offer classes like art, music, prep for geography bees, and the like. And voila! A co-op.
But co-ops are child-oriented. Support groups had been mom-oriented.
Hmm. Remember when I said that early homeschoolers were moms winging it with their own kids at home? While these early co-ops were often valuable enrichment and socialization opportunities that didn’t have much bearing on the home curriculum, eventually, this morphed into expensive co-ops that provided and guided the curriculum, structured the families’ schedules, and brought us back to some of the same peer situations that we had left in school. I keenly remember the complaints from tired co-op leaders who struggled with group dynamics, finding enough teachers, dealing with families with disruptive kids, and all manner of other school-like problems. Plus running the co-op captured their time! Their time wasn’t slow and centered on their own kids at home. Instead, they were running quasi-schools for all the other families and kids. Actual support groups began to dwindle.
Gradually something else happened, too. Co-ops that were centered on a certain curriculum started gaining popularity, but they were only available to parents who were using that curriculum – or could afford to use it. Those using another approach were “on the outside.” While the original support groups were for everyone, these new groups were exclusive. That left some moms having trouble finding support. Sound familiar?
Lastly, these curriculum-based groups pushed a one-curriculum-approach-fits-all mindset and therefore fellowship was predicated on using the same thing as everyone else.
I’ve watched this unfold with sadness and concern. I fear we’re losing the very thing that made the homeschool movement successful – moms slowing down and turning their attention back to their own homes and their own children. Homeschooling can be just another educational choice that doesn’t change the heart of the home at all. We can still be reduced to taxi driver and someone who gets the kids ready for the next outing, in this case, the homeschool co-op. What a loss! We’re losing our focus!
What is the focus? Using homeschooling as a means to disciple our children. Stepping away from the peer pressure/hectic schedule to instead carve time with our kids. To get to know our kids, explore their interests, do what’s best for each individual child, and enjoy being together! Most of all, to establish a Christian worldview in the heart of each child individually.
All families are different. We can afford different things. We have different resources – whether five acres out the back door or a stairwell to the next apartment. A museum down the street or a pasture with cows. Five kids and ten chickens or just one child with processing issues. So what works for each family – and each child – is different. Co-ops can in some ways pretend that one size still fits all.
I’m not saying to ditch the co-ops necessarily. But I am saying that parents might take a step back and re-think things.
The CHEWV website has a listing of support groups, but most of them aren’t support groups at all. They’re co-ops.
I recognize that co-ops often provide mom with the fellowship she needs. While someone is teaching her kids, she can fellowship with the other waiting moms. But I can testify that it’s possible to find fellowship in the old-fashioned support group – or to start one if one doesn’t yet exist. Plus, with the explosive growth of homeschooling, we should be finding fellowship and support in our churches!
Church fellowship is the perfect situation really. We should see fellow homeschoolers every Sunday. Built-in fellowship through the God-ordained encouragement of the church should be the answer. To that end, CHEWV is working diligently to see what we can do to encourage churches and pastors to support homeschooling families. Right now, that’s called our Pastor Project and we covet your prayers for wisdom!
In the meantime, we call you to think about the history of homeschooling. Knowing how we got here can help us make wise decisions for the future, because homeschooling itself is not enough! Rather, homeschooling is a means to stronger families and discipleship. But only if we use it in that way.
You’re on a good path! Just don’t hem yourself in by peer pressure in the homeschooling community. Choose wisely and prayerfully, trusting the Lord to guide your path!
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