Home away from homeschooling, 10 February 2008, Aurora Beacon News, Aurora, Illinois

Fifteen years ago, Doug Pierson, now the executive director at Crossroads, noticed a lot of homeschooled kids coming to the church’s gym for physical education. Some of the parents asked Pierson if he would start an organized P.E. class, and he obliged. Two years later, that class evolved into a junior high basketball team composed of home schooled kids, giving them an opportunity to play organized basketball they wouldn’t otherwise have. The Crossroads Crusaders were born.

“I remember we went out there and we were terrible,” Pierson said of the team’s first game. “But the kids seemed to enjoy it.”

  

Susan at Corn and Oil has more on another aspect of the article — antipathy toward homeschooled kids:  “I hope your kid is getting as much homework as mine”

  

posted by Valerie

  

Sioux Cityans create team for students who aren’t in public schools, Sioux City Journal, Sioux City, Iowa

… The team, made up of homeschooled students from the Sioux City area, is playing its second season. The boys play for the same reasons that a kid from any of the big Sioux City public high schools would play.

…

“One thing we did find out, there’s a lot more that goes into this than meets the eye,” O’Halloran said.

Insurance to cover the boys at practice and games? Check.

A place to practice and play? Check. …

Uniforms? Check. …

Referees? Check. …

Schedules? Check. The team put together a 17-game schedule against other homeschool teams and Christian Schools in Iowa and Nebraska. This year the Warriors have 18 games.

posted by Valerie

Why do so many people and groups want to save homeschoolers? (or anyone else, for that matter?) Don’t get me wrong. I believe in charity and lending a helping hand, but hearing the repeated attitude of ‘oh, you poor things’ wears one down. We’re not maimed creatures in need of saving, our lives are just as wholesome and fulfilling as anyone else’s.

Home-schooled children get taste of sports, 24 January 2008, The Coloradoan, Fort Collins, Colorado

Although children who are educated at home can get the physical exercise they might need during the day, they don’t always get the social interaction or team-building skills that come from playing sports or participating in multiple-player games, said Jeff Benjamin, a physical education teacher at Rivendell School.

…

“We started this last year with a group of kids that played soccer and did some throwing activities, and then we were going to play kickball, and most of them had never played, and I thought, ‘How can you go through life being a kid and never play kickball?’” he said.

…

“It’s been phenomenal,” she said. “There are P.E. opportunities through gymnastics, but there’s nothing that teaches them all different sports, and it’s so important to get them exposed to all these different sports.”

“How can you go through life being a kid and never play kickball?” Probably the same way you can go through life being a kid and never play Sevens. Perhaps you’ve never heard of Sevens? Strange. How can anyone go through her childhood without having played Sevens? That was t.h.e. hot ball game among the girls on our playground when I was in elementary school.

Sevens at school was a ball game against the wall by yourself or on a beam. You had to catch the ball on the full seven times, throw against the wall then one bounce 6 times, 5 bounces on the ground, 4 – you threw under your leg and against the wall, 3 – against the wall, bounce and then bounce 3 times on the ground, 2 – bounce on floor, wall, floor and catch, and 1 – against the wall, bounce and you spin around and catch.

The first round you did was both hands, the next right hand, the = next left hand – and I never got beyond that.

We didn’t do right hand and left hand, we did clapsies, which meant you had to clap immediately after throwing the ball. The 6th graders often got up to to 2-clapsies!

Sevens wasn’t a team game, but we all took turns — turns that were rigorously enforced by whoever didn’t have the ball at the moment.

The photo is of me playing Sevens — it looks as if I was up to 1-clapsies.

Just because something’s a local phenomenon, doesn’t mean it’s universal.

“… it’s so important to get them exposed to all these different sports.” Why? Okay, it may be interesting, and it may be something the kids enjoy very much, but that can be said about many activities. I would have liked to have been exposed more to horseback riding when I was a kid (I was a manic horse-story reader), but it didn’t happen very often, so there you are. I had to make do with swimming, sailing, water-skiing, bowling and riding my bike.

I don’t intend to demean enthusiasts and parents for organizing group activities, but it isn’t as if the poor homeschooling families can’t put together their own activities, or as if kids can’t just go out and play.

Time for Family Baseball, May-June 1997, Home Education Magazine

Spring is here and it is time once again for our support group to begin playing Thursday morning Family Baseball. This has become one of our most enduring gatherings because, for five months out of the year, it is our weekly community meeting place where we chat, share snacks, fly kites, meet friends, check out the bulletin board, and even play baseball. After the game the parking lot becomes the launch area for spontaneous excursions to the beach, fishing expeditions, and picnics.

The desire to help out with the kids, or put together a program, or just have a good time with the kids, whether they’re homeschooled or not, is not the irritant. The irritant is the latent condescension. Homeschooling families may not mirror public school families or private school families, but we’re whole just the same.

posted by Valerie

Home-schooled athletes more common in college, 27 December 2007, Superior Telegram, Superior, Minnesota

Only students who are enrolled in a public school can play on an athletic team, according to Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association rules, which leaves home-schooled students to fend for themselves.

…

“So, there are possibilities for home schoolers to continue in sports, but it takes more time and effort on the parent’s part,” Gnacinski said.

The SWCHA is the largest athletic group for home-schooled students Gnacinski has heard of in Wisconsin. As a whole, home- school leagues and teams are thriving in the southeastern part of the state as well as around major metropolitan areas.

…

With the quality of home-schooled athletes continuing to play sports into college, the development of home school leagues will likely get a boost. Mulhern said he may be looking to draw from that pool of talent in the near future.

posted by Valerie

A decade (and more) ago, I read Earl Stevens’s “Talk About Learning” column in Home Education Magazine. The title of one column comes to mind today concerning sports and “P.E.” The column’s concept resonates deeply with me because it reminds me of the pick-up games I played as a child and as a teenager. Those games ranged among marbles, jacks and tic-tac-toe, red rover, freeze tag and the dangerous ‘crack the whip,’ hopscotch, “Chinese” hopscotch, and foursquare, whiffle ball, baseball and football.

Parents, other adults, and especially teachers, never had a thing to do with our everyday games.

Time For Family Baseball

I think it is easier for one or two parents to organize and advertise family baseball in a newsletter or bulletin board and by word of mouth than for the entire support group to hash out all the details and to delegate responsibility for them. All it takes is somebody who cares about the game and is willing to lug the equipment to the field once a week.

Because of these earlier influences, it’s always with bemusement that I read about homeschooling groups needing a school to provide “P.E.”

PE for home-schooled students, 4 October 2007, Puyallup Herald, Puyallup, Washington

What looks like a regular gym class at the Robert Miller Gymnasium is actually a group of local home-schooled students gathered together to play games and team sports.

Home-school P.E. focuses on giving home-schooled students an opportunity to play with a larger group, said instructor Rebecca Oetter, a recreation specialist for the Sumner School District.

posted by Valerie

I’ve added a category for the ‘homeschooling can be hazardous to your health’ type of article. I’ve called it “Don’t try this at home.”

The snips from the following articles ran on so much, that I was in danger of glaringly violating copyright. Because of that, I’ve just added some comments.

Parents learning to say it’s okay to stay home, Estes Park Trail Gazette, Estes Park, Colorado

Federal reequirements: There are no federal requirements, much less “many” of them, … unless, of course, one uses a publicly-funded program that requires NCLB testing. The testing of homeschoolers, as compared to kids enrolled in publicly-funded programs, must be a Colorado requirement.

• “Socialization is the easy part. I just corner the kids in the bathroom every few days and steal their lunch money.”

The second article in the series is a bit more upbeat, but an “Uh-oh” tone still comes through.

Bringing it home: a look at the daily lives of homeschool families: Transition from home to classroom is as simple as sitting at the kitchen table, Estes Park Trail Gazette, Estes Park, Colorado

“Enter a world:” They’re at home, for goodness sake. It isn’t as if they step through a worm-hole between the sheets and the shower.

Long hours: How are the ‘hours’ any longer than combining a career with chauffeuring children (since the ‘lost income’ from a homeschooling parent’s job is so damaging)? I’ve worked with a child in school, and homeschooled, and — concerning time — all it boils down to is where you’d rather spend your time. Regardless of where they’re schooled, if you have kids, you’ll:

• have a busy schedule
• spend more money than you probably would on just yourselves

Socialization — the dreaded s-word.

The writer contrasts “other” resources with school activities. “School” is normal, “other resources” are aids for these social underachievers.

This quote appears in both articles: At times I’m definitely overwhelmed by the curriculum …

Homeschooling “obstacles:” Sending your kids to public school has its own set of “obstacles:”

• schedules, school clothes, supplies for the classroom
• teacher in-service days, snow- (hurricane-, sandstorm-, windstorm-) days, vacation days
• PTA/PTO meetings, parent-teacher conferences, papers to sign
• allergies, head-lice and mono.

Regardless of what you do, ‘it’s always something.’

I generally try not to pick to pieces articles based on style, but some of them just beg for it. I’m assuming these two articles were supposed to be ‘about’ homeschooling, but the negativity is obvious. Word choice conveys feelings that either the writer wants to convey, or perhaps is unaware of:

• little or no meaning
• task of homeschooling
• not a simple one
• responsible for many financial considerations
• which often prevents at least one parent from holding fulltime employment
• definitely overwhelmed
• are we doing it right?
• allowing students to spend time away from home
• regardless of the many enrichment programs that exist to support alternative education families, many still question a homeschooler’s ability
• regardless of the many precautions parents take
• aren’t always clear lines drawn
• boundaries … often become blurred
• enter a world
• despite the long hours
• many others have criticized homeschooling parents
• While most homeschool students participate in school sports
• hardest challenges
• common problems
• periodical doubt
• inevitably persists
• many obstacles
• questions and concerns for the future of homeschooling
• lack of income
• visible obstacle

The combined effect of the word choices plays down any positive attributes. Some people call this ‘balance,’ but I look at it as having a lack of focus.

If there is a third (or more) article in the series, it hasn’t yet come to light, and I didn’t find it at the website.

posted by Valerie

Talks continue on home-school, charter-school athletes: Hang-up involves reimbursement of member schools, 14 August 2007, Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, Utah

For the fourth time in three months, state legislators discussed with the Utah High School Activities Association how charter and home-school students might be more uniformly offered the chance to play prep sports for their home boundary public high school.

…

Most of the legislators on the Administrative Rules Committee lean toward making public school programs, like athletics, available to charter-school and home-school students. And while home-school students are more easily accommodated, charter-school students are a more complicated situation.

First of all, they are still considered public school students. The tax money associated with that student follows him if he decides to attend a charter school. That money does not follow private school or home-school students.

…

The other problem that the UHSAA can’t solve is forcing districts to absorb those students if they don’t want to or can’t work out financial or educational issues.

The difficulty with sports for kids in the U.S. is that the various pots of money meant by the taxpayers to pay for the kids’ educations ties football and basketball to English, biology and business math. Separating sports from academics would enable all kids in a community to be eligible to play for the glory of the town, if that’s the purpose of the sports programs. It would help if we sorted out what the purpose of the teams is, whether it is feeder teams that lead to the professional leagues, or sports for kids.

The intent of a taxpayer-funded education also comes into play. Is the intent of public education to provide an education for those who choose public school, or is the intent to provide a tailored education for all children?

I understand that changing the structure of the various sports associations across the country from ‘some kids eligible’ to ‘all kids eligible’ would be hard. It would not be impossible, but the people who want their kids to be able to play on group sport teams are the ones who will have to put the energy into the change. Budging a monolith isn’t easy.

At the article’s site, it is hard to tell if the intent behind some of the comments is because it is hard for people schooled in the current model to think of another solution, or if the root feeling is a ‘you made your bed, now sleep in it’ ‘punishment’ of families who chose a non-public education for their children.

posted by Valerie

Pedal to the dirt: Lynchburg cyclist wins national event, 25 July 2007, Lynchburg News and Advance, Lynchburg, Virginia Hollis Owens caught some unexpected air after hitting a mogul near the end of her winning ride on an expert slope at Mount Snow, Sunday in West Dover, Vt. She wasn’t aboard skis or a snowboard, but her mountain bike, and she nearly crashed over her handlebars just 300 yards from the finish line of USA Cycling’s Mountain Bike Championship junior women’s Super D.

…

The rising sophomore home-schooler plans to compete at the national cyclecross championships in Kansas City, Mo., in December before returning to Mount Snow next summer to try to defend her title.

posted by Valerie

D-300 sidelines home schoolers, 25 July 2007, Northwest Herald, McHenry County, Illinois The closest that Hampshire home-schooler Eric Bender will get to high school football this fall is the stands after District 300 officials announced Monday that they would not change the policy on participation in extracurricular activities. Bender’s parents had asked the district to let their son, a district resident, play on the team.

The district’s legal counsel recently advised against opening district sports to nonstudents, saying that the district should avoid giving even tacit approval to any home-school program or curriculum.

This contrasts with another Illinois school district: Illinois town vote allows homeschooler sports participation.

posted by Valerie

Vote includes home-schooled students, 23 July 2007, Northwest Herald, Crystal Lake, Illinois Home-schooled students living in Richmond-Burton Community High School District 157 will be allowed to participate in district athletic programs and extracurricular activities next year.

The District 157 school board voted, 6-0, Thursday night to let home-schoolers become members of district sports teams and clubs. However, the board will re-examine the issue for 2008-09.

See:

• My standard opinion on sports for kids.
• My standard opinion on “homeschoolers pay taxes.”

posted by Valerie