Reinventing Homeschooling: PacPrep's Role in Empowering Families
Discover how PacPrep offers personalized homeschooling support, helping families navigate the growing trend of customized education. From curriculum guidance to community engagement suggestions, we empower parents to create a tailored learning experience for their children.
A national movement is underway as families increasingly opt to customize their children's education, rejecting reliance on the conventional system. As is becoming more evident in 2024, there is a vast sea of resources available to design an academic program that is truly tailored to each child’s particular learning needs, as well as that reflects each family’s priorities and values. “Homeschooling” is no longer outside the mainstream - according to this Washington Post article, the number of homeschooled students has risen 51% over the past six years, and its “surging popularity crosses every measurable line of politics, geography and demographics.”
Despite the clear evidence that families are considering learning outside the system in eye-opening numbers, the truth remains that this seismic shift on an individual family level can be extremely daunting. Parents who work full-time outside the home wonder how they could provide a safe and supervised environment for their kids to learn, while others who stay or work at home worry about their lack of education background and how to combine the role of parent and teacher. Still others are overwhelmed by the number of curriculum resources to choose from and how to evaluate their quality.
Reflecting the national trends, we are seeing an increase in the number of families reaching out to PacPrep to be a partner in their kids’ curated academic experience. Families can choose to enroll their kids in a math or English Language Arts course with our experienced teachers utilizing high-quality, personalized curriculum, while they utilize free/low cost resources like Outschool or co-ops in their local area to cover social studies and science. As part of our commitment to supporting our families, we are glad to offer advice, support and resources to fill in any gaps in their kids’ programming. Our team utilizes a range of high-quality curriculum resources and our COO, Mel Nichols, homeschools her own kids. We often compile a comprehensive and tailored list of suggestions, like this one. In addition to a robust range of academic options, we are glad to help families identify social networks within their communities to truly round out their kids’ experience. In fact, when students enroll with us full time, we send them our K-8 and 9-12 course planning guides that include ideas and suggestions for ways to learn in and engage with their community, such as music lessons, art classes or sports teams.
While we as a society wait for systemic change to address the shortcomings of our conventional school system, we’re glad to be a part of guiding families everywhere who are taking matters into their own hands. They’re learning that a rapidly growing system of resources available to students learning from home does not have to be daunting, or impossible.