Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 25, 1994 TAG: 9410010025
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
For Jay, 8, and Scott, 6, school is just a short walk downstairs to the basement family room. Their teacher is their mom, Emily, and in between the academic subjects, they learn lessons in life, such as yard work, making pancakes and vacuuming.
The Hamiltons are among several hundred Roanoke Valley children who are taught at home. Some parents ''home school'' because of their religious convictions, but "the main reason people get into this is the personal attention" the public schools can't provide, said Kenneth Johnson, vice president of Greater Roanoke Valley Home Educators. The 8-year-old organization is the largest home-education support group in the valley and has 200 member-families, including the Hamiltons.
Some children "just don't fit into a classroom situation," Johnson said, and for them, home schooling "is like tutoring." In families that home school for religious reasons, parents can control the content of lessons and teach "from the point of view we want to pass along to [our children]," he said.
Jenny Ethel, of the Northern Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association, said that parents have several options when they decide to home school. Virginia has the fourth-largest home-schooled population in the United States, she said, and it is "one of the easiest states to work with."
Parents can go before the local school board and apply for a religious exemption, which entitles them to choose their own methods and curriculum and waives the requirement that the children take yearly standardized tests.
Otherwise, they can file a letter of intent showing the names and ages of the children, the parents' educational background, and the state-certified curriculum they intend to use. Unless they are certified teachers, they are required to have the children tested every year, either through their correspondence course, or by using the local school board's standardized test. Home schooled children are required to score at or above the 23rd percentile.
Garland Jones, assistant superintendent of Botetourt County schools, where 67 children are taught at home, said that most of the home-schooled children pass the tests. "Most of our parents do really well," he said.
Home-school children generally have no trouble getting into college, Ethel said. Some even have gone on to Harvard, although home-school graduates have had problems meeting the paperwork requirements of military schools.
Ethel said that 70 percent of families who teach at home do so for religious resons. The majority of these don't apply for the religious exemption, however, said Karen Boyer, president of Home Educators of Rainbow Forest, a 30-member, family support group sponsored by Rainbow Forest Baptist Church in Blue Ridge. Many families "are more than happy" to have their children tested, so they can keep track of how they're doing, she said.
Until 1984, a parent who wanted to teach at home had to have a bachelor's degree, Emily Hamilton said, but that requirement has been dropped. She has a degree in elementary education. Her sons use one of the hundreds of curriculums that are available, as do many other families.
Priscilla Trice, one of the founders of Greater Roanoke Valley Home Educators, has been teaching her six children at home for 14 years. Most of the teaching is done by mothers, she said, and, while some families set aside certain times of day and specific areas around the house for study, others are more flexible.
The Hamilton boys study at a small table in the family room, usually from 8:30 a.m. to noon. In addition to their mother's instruction, the boys have access to a computer and spend a lot of time at the library. Hamilton reads to them in the afternoons and evenings, and, at night, they often go outside with their father to study astronomy.
Because of the individualized attention, and the fact that it takes so little time to go from activity to activity, the entire day's schooling is done by lunchtime, including the homework, Hamilton said.
"When they get it, they've got it," she said. "They go at their own pace. If they don't understand, we spend longer on it."
She and her husband, Kevin, decided to school the two older boys at home because "we really felt that we could do just as good a job," she said. The public schools in their suburban neighborhood are good, she said, but they subject the children to peer pressure and expose them to influences they don't have to deal with at home, such as schoolyard violence and disrespectful attitudes toward adults.
Some home schools are in session year-round, Trice said, but Hamilton quits for the summer "because I get burned out," she laughed.
Jay Hamilton said learning at home "is more fun than public school." At recess, he and Scott can play with the computer and with their toys so they don't get bored. The kids in the neighborhood "don't really say much about it. They don't make fun of me," he said.
At the other end of the spectrum is 8-year-old Ivan Zuidhoek of Southeast Roanoke. His parents, Rurik Zuidhoek and Katherine Devine, both artists, split the teaching duties "50/50," Devine said.
"We want to give him the most natural environment possible," she said. There are no set hours for lessons, and Ivan is allowed to sleep as late as he likes, and does not have to study every day, if he chooses not to.
Devine said that she and Rurik are not pushing subjects such as reading and writing on Ivan, because their research shows that boys do not develop their full cognitive skills until age 11 or 12.
But "you've practically got to hit a kid with a brick to keep him from learning," Devine said, and Ivan plays chess so well that she is looking for adult opponents for him. He also draws cartoons and makes paper cutouts to sell on the Roanoke City Market at his father's open-air business, Devine Inspirations.
The rest of his studies consist of activities such as helping his father in his workshop, building things, being read to, and catching and identifying bugs. When he gets older, Devine said, Roanoke City Schools' science labs and other facilities will be open to him, and she plans to sign him up for a correspondence course later.
Although they do not belong to a traditional church, they have their own beliefs, Devine said, and have a religious exemption to teach Ivan at home.
Devine has started a support group she calls HOORAH (Helpful Organization of Roanoke Area Homeschoolers), which sponsors activities for children from five or six families.
One of the biggest myths about home school families is that the children don't get the opportunity to socialize, Devine said, but, besides participating in organized activities, her family lives across the street from a city park, where there are plenty of children to play with, and Ivan spends a lot of time with his parents' friends and their children.
The Hamilton boys are involved with 4-H, take art lessons and gymnastics. They play baseball, and Emily teaches piano, both to them and to neighborhood children.
The GRHE offers picnics, park days, skating and swimming parties, field trips to museums and other facilities, and seminars for parents. The Rainbow Forest group offers similar activities. And HOORAH is working on an art show.
Attitudes toward home schooling have changed since she began doing it, Trice said. People are more accepting of it now, she said, especially if they have children who need personal attention. Ethel said the number of home-schooled children has grown at a rate of 25 percent every year since 1990.
Most home schoolers are "serious, dedicated people," Trice said. "They're really aware of what's going on around them."
To teach at home, a parent must be "self-motivated and they have to know how to study." They also must be able to get the children to obey them. If not, Trice said, the children won't be able to learn at home.
Trice believes that almost anyone who wants to can teach his or her children, but Hamilton disagrees.
"It's very demanding," Hamilton said, to be teacher, mother and homemaker all in one.
by CNB