What If Great Teachers Could Homeschool Your Kids For You?

As anyone with kids in school knows, the current school system is lagging and lacking. Don't fault the teachers. Most teachers are terrific but they all have more work then ever, fewer resources, less support, bigger classes, more challenging students and a league of hovering, annoying parents with whom to contend.

The system needs an overhaul from the top down so that we can put the students first. It's not going to happen any time soon so parents look for alternatives.

One of those alternatives is homeschooling. For a longtime the idea of teaching kids at home was associated with crop-planters, tree-huggers and church-goers but homeschooling is shedding its long skirts, as it were.

The number of kids homeschooled in Canada has doubled in the last decade and is growing every year. Universities actively seek homeschooled kids these days because they out perform their peers in public  and private school. 

Lots of parents are scared to admit they homeschool even though they made the choice for very practical reasons that had nothing to do with religion or wheatgerm and everything to do with making sure their kids got the best education they could, address a particular learning style, be more challenged, get away from bullies, to name just a few of a long list of reasons.

(I toyed with idea a few times when my kids were small but to be honest I don't think I could teach drunk and that would be the only way I could pull it off.)

There's one misconception that keeps cropping up - some folks think kids that are homeschooled are weird and socially goofy, and some are ... but there are just as many kids who socialize all day in public school who are weird too. It’s incumbent upon the parents and teachers to help kids learn to socialize, doing it well is not a product of a big school and nor is doing it poorly a result of a kitchen classroom.

Nope, the socialization thing didn’t worry me. All joking aside, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to teach the hard stuff, like math. And, I was pretty certain I didn't have the patience it would take. I am also a practiced procrastinator so blowing of the school year and cramming it all into June was a likely scenario. 

I would like to have been able to out-source their homeschooling. The same way I did their swimming lessons and will do with their driving lessons. Turn it over to the pros.

It would have been great to have them disappear for the morning to be taught in small groups by great teachers and then I - Fun Mom - would sail in on a nap and a shower at noon to take them to the zoo, the museum, the science centre, the park, the gym, art class or out to hang out with other kids who are done for the day at noon. 

That’s the kind of education model I wish I could have found when my kids were little and heading into the system ... and now it has arrived. 

There is a new school opening this fall in Calgary. 
Only 15 spots will be open this year with more added each school after this. 
It's called the N.A.S. Project. NAS stands for Not A School, love it. 
At the helm is my friend and engaged educator Lani Donaldson. 

Watch this video

And head here for more details and to register. www.nasproject.org