Have you ever wished that there was a homeschool co-op in your area? If so, you’re probably not alone. There are likely other homeschool families that would like to see one, as well.
Starting a homeschool co-op isn’t hard, and you know what they say? “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If there isn’t one in your area, consider starting one.
In this article, you’ll find the basics of what you should consider when starting a homeschool co-op.
So, why start a homeschool co-op?
There are many reasons to start a homeschool co-op. It may be that you want your child to get experience learning from other homeschool parents. Maybe it’s because you want them to have enrichment in subjects that you aren’t as familiar with. Or, possibly, it’s simply for the small group community that you know you will get in helping your children build new friendships.
Purpose of a homeschool co-op
When you start thinking about starting a homeschool co-op, it is helpful to determine what kind of mission statement you’ll be working around. What’s your purpose in starting a co-op? If your main purpose is making a homeschool group with just a few families, for socialization, and as a homeschool support group, you may not need to go through all of the steps listed below. A mission statement will help you get started thinking about how big and how many of the following steps are actually going to need to be done.
Benefits of a homeschool co-op
Whatever the reason for wanting to be a part of a homeschool co-op, they can be beneficial to your children in many ways.
- A homeschool co-op can identify interests for your child that you, and they, didn’t even know existed. By taking elective classes that you might not be willing to, or think you have time to, teach, they could find a new hobby or passion.
- Some classes work better in a group setting. When it comes to high school science classes, for example, it is sometimes easier to teach in a group rather than individual students. It can be hard to find a lab partner at home and doing a play is certainly more fun with multiple students. And, it can be beneficial to learn alongside others, by learning to work in groups and practicing group skills like delegation of tasks, being a team player, and resolving conflicts that might arise.
- Maybe you don’t have the skills to teach a Chemistry class. We all have our unique strengths and weaknesses. What you may lack in teaching Chemistry, you might make up for in teaching photography, foreign language, or language arts skills. That’s what makes a co-op beautiful – homeschool moms and dads working together for the benefit of the whole.
- Students can learn to take direction from multiple people. We all have different learning styles and teaching styles. By allowing your children to learn from others, you’ll be giving them the opportunity to learn by different teaching styles, learn to follow a variety of classroom expectations, and learn different ways of student-teacher interactions. This can help them prepare for college experiences, as well as work experiences.
Find a location for your homeschool co-op
This can be the hardest step of the whole process. You’ll want to look around your area and brainstorm about different locations that might allow an outside group to come in once a week or a couple of times a month, depending on how your homeschool co-op will be structured. Before you start looking for a location, think about the times you will want to meet to be sure the location doesn’t have time requirements that won’t work for you. For the location, you might consider churches, community centers, libraries, or even parks that might have rentable buildings. It is possible to also meet in homes if there is one that can accommodate the number of families that you’ll have.
Wherever you decide, there will be some things to consider. Outside of an individual’s home, there will likely be some sort of contract to be signed or a fee to be paid. It will likely include the exact times you’ll be in the facility, how many will be in the facility, rules for what space you can use in the facility, clean up and leave procedures, and who will be in charge of being the point person for the facility. You may even have to go ahead of time and do a walk-through with the person you are contracting with.
Set a schedule and guidelines for your homeschool co-op.
Making a Schedule for Your Homeschool Co-op
When you begin to think through your schedule and guidelines for your co-op there are many things to consider. This list will begin to get your brainstorming session in motion.
Start by coming up with a schedule. You’ll need to secure a location first so that you’ll know if they have any requirements in that area. You want to determine how often you’ll meet when you set your schedule. Many co-op’s do either one day a week or twice a month. What time of the day will you begin and end? Will you go for the entire school year or offer just for a couple of months at a time? Maybe it will be broken into semesters?
Preparing Guidelines for a Homeschool Co-op
When determining your guidelines, you’ll want to consider these things:
- How many co-op classes will you offer? Some of that will be determined by how many hours you have in your session.
- Is it open to all age groups? What about ability level classes instead of age level? Is childcare going to be available for those families that have younger siblings for those participating?
- Will you require homeschool moms and dads to teach a class if they have their children involved?
- Will you allow field trips or park days or other social activities to take place, either on co-op day or outside of co-op? What will that look like? What kinds of safety guidelines will you have in place for that?
- Will you, as the director, choose a homeschool curriculum, or will you leave that open to whoever is teaching each individual class? In addition, if you have a curriculum that requires individual pieces for each child (workbooks, manipulatives, etc) who will cover those costs?
- What will you do with non-consumable materials when the class is over?
- Will there be a cost for being involved in the co-op? Per child? Per family?
- Will you require that parents hang around while their children are in attendance?
- Will one person be in charge or will there be a team running the show?
- How will you handle behavioral problems?
- What if classes have to be canceled? How will you get the word out? How much time will you allow?
This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. Only a list intended to get you started thinking in the right direction.
Determine who will teach in your co-op.
There are usually two options when it comes to deciding on who will teach in your co-op. It’s either a parent of co-op students that are participating or hiring teachers to fill the role.
Of course, choosing the parents to do the teaching is the easy, and cheapest choice. They’ve already committed to your group and it can be made a part of the guidelines so they know when they sign up that it’s part of the registration process. There may even be some of your co-op parents that have teaching experience or professional experience in an area they want to teach.
Hiring teachers for a homeschool co-op
If you are considering hiring teachers, although it is a great option, can have some downsides. If you are in a small area, hired teachers may be hard to come by if you want teachers that are qualified by the state with a teaching degree. Although they can be very passionate about and skilled in the subject they’re teaching, they may be hard to come by, depending on what time your co-op is held. They also may require a higher salary.
The middle ground is hiring parents that will have kids at the co-op anyway. Maybe they are parents looking to make a little side-hustle money or they are parents that are teachers by trade who no longer teach, or a professional in the area of the class.
Whichever option you choose, it will need to be decided on early so you can determine other guidelines that will be set up around this qualification of your homeschool co-op.
Advertise your co-op and find members.
Lastly, once you have everything in place, you’ll want to advertise your co-op. It is important that you know exactly what your numbers will be. Once you start advertising, the numbers may grow rapidly and you will want to have a waiting list in place prior to starting, in case that happens to you.
Tap into your local homeschool groups via social media, if it’s available. Groups generally have a Facebook group that can be joined and advertised in. You can also attend local meetings of your local homeschool community to market your co-op.
One last word of caution, don’t forget to keep your own children’s education as the top priority during your planning period. It is easy to take on too much, with all of our responsibilities and experience burnout. Home education can be so rewarding but we do need to guard our time with our families so that we don’t allow too much to sneak in and overtake our day-to-day. We used to laugh and tease in our family that our homeschool family would occasionally be a home-based family. Be sure you don’t rely on the latter over the former. Happy planning!
