We had to call another planning meeting, last Spring we tried planning both semesters at the same time, but nearly half the ladies that signed up to teach something aren’t co-oping with us next semester, so we have gaps to fill. Calling a night time meeting with no kids is hard on families – there is such a dirth of babysitters in the world, husbands have to work late…but some things can’t be decided by grabbing someone in between classes.
I suppose we could avoid co-op wide meetings if I assigned jobs to everyone – but I can’t remember who is the math phobic, who is the music lover, who needs to teach the same grade as a child who is having a rough year…And when we’ve tried to let the kid play in the playground while we have a meeting…with 20 families, 48 children, late lunch, constant interruptions, it just doesn’t work. What we compromised on was: two of the teen aged daughters will man the nursery, so any family that needs to bring kids can do so, as long as we don’t overwhelm the girls.
Oh I hated panicking the new members this week when we made that announcement! Faces literally drained of color. My Mother in Law (who homeschooled my youngest brothers in law) was even concerned that I did this to the co-op, though the mention of the teen aged volunteers made her sigh with relief. Sometimes I hate being the bringer of bad news. (Of course it’s fun to pretend I nonchalant-ly drop emotional bombs on people and sail smoothly away…)
It should go quickly though, if people are brave. The hard part seems to be ladies deciding that if they can teach their own, they can learn how to teach a group of other people’s kids. For some reason this is very intimidating for folks. I guess the dynamic is different between teaching your own and a group of someone else’s; and for some people, traditional classroom management is part of what they are avoiding by homeschooling in the first place. But it really is hard for me to be too sympathetic when we’ve tried to show the 7 law’s of the learner video series to help strengthen nervous ladies, and they haven’t come.
I’m confident we’ll get things organized though, because we’ve done it before in under 2 hours, and I have a chart. I don’t know why, but hokey homemade charts lower my blood pressure. This one is made out of vinyl sewn over poster board, to make pockets. I made cards with all the co-op ladies names on them in various sizes, so they can stack and be visible in the pockets, and the vinyl holds them still so they don’t blow around as we make decisions. This way we can build the schedule, and see when we do things, so we don’t wind up scheduled to do two thing at the same time.
The co-op also hired a teen aged computer wizard to code a scheduling program for me. Instead of pay, we gave him free domain on our rented web space. Don’t know if he’s using it or not. If all gets de-bugged in time, we could have a recorder type in our decisions on his on-line database program, and print out schedules for everyone by the end of the meeting. Maybe that can wait for next year, we are still on the beta version.
I have been homeschooling for 7 years now, from the start. It is my observation that some, maybe not all, co-ops are trying to be like schools, with grades and rules, so many rules, I don't know why they are putting themselves through all the trouble. I can't imagine myself being able to deal with it all.
My alternative to co-op group is getting the family involved at our church. My 12 yr old daughter is going to the otherwise adult Quilting group at church. It's great to be there with the ladies who are really making things, not for a grade, but because they WANT TO, and they are following in the tradition of their mothers and grandmothers.