Elena 
One of my old debate buddies from AOL, Janette, asked a question last week that made me stop and ponder. This was in regard to this.
What does that say about your homeschool group?
My homeschool support group is very unique to my particular area and I would love to hear how it might be the same, or different from other homeschool support groups. Everything I am writing is common historical knowledge now. In my particular homeschool group, the families were drawn together by a deep, deep love of their Catholic Faith. Some of the earlier members had even belonged to a very conservative, I would have to say cult-like, Catholic group and suffered very much under the group’s leaders and then later when the Bishop stepped in and disbanded the group. It was an interesting time and I just missed it by five years or so. Nonetheless, the families in that group, in my opinion, longed for the same feeling of community and belonging they had experienced there. As their children grew old enough to attend school, becoming homeschoolers seemed like the way to meet both needs.
When I came into the support group, many of the moms were still exploring curricula. I did not hear much about learning styles per se, as much as I heard about Seton vs. making up your own curriculum. I heard a little bit about unit studies, but frankly most of what I heard about that was from reading and attending homeschool conventions. The majority of moms in my own group wanted to find books and curriculum choices to get through the school year successfully with their children. Standardized testing was and is very big in my homeschool group too as a measure of how the students have done in the school year.
So basically the majority of the homeschoolers in my support group, I would say, were interested in (1) A strong faith community for their children and family, (2) Curriculum and books that would work well for each student and (3) doing well on the standardized testing.
As I look back on it, a lot of the developments that came into the group stemmed from those three criteria. Charter schooling became legal in Ohio and a large majority of my homeschool support group signed their kids up for charter schooling at home. ODHELA and Ohio Virtual Academy are the most popular. My oldest also attends a charter school sponsored by the local school board, which is very uncommon. As a book buyer, it was great because most of these families sought to get rid of most of their homeschooling supplies. As a bookseller, it was bad, because no one in my group is buying locally! As a mom who was still homeschooling with my own curriculum, I felt I lost a bit of camaraderie, as other families were not experiencing the same struggles I was. Their curriculum and lesson plans were already there for them and I was alone…
Outside classes have become a big part of life for many of the homeschoolers in my group. We participated in the composition class this year, but I know many families who go to composition class, Latin class, Spanish class, Science Class etc. For older families this was great! It got the kids out of the house and into new stimulating environments. I found though that for my family, where I still have little kids that need a lot of focus and attention, it was a distraction and I felt it did not enhance our homeschool as much as I would have hoped. It was also expensive.
Lastly, since faith was the main reason for these families to join and not educational philosophies per se, many have left the group to enroll in high school. Some left even earlier if the moms determined that being a homeschool mom was not really what they desired to be, and they found a way to meet their needs as part of a faith community in other ways. Eventually this meant that the families were free to move away from each other too. When we first started homeschooling, there were six other homeschool families in our parish. Now we are the only ones. The others have moved out to the suburbs because the type of school district they lived in began to matter more to them.
I have made many friends over the years and I value the love and support I have gotten there. However, I am finding that I am more and more drawn to what I see on sites like this and this as well as this. That is the type of homeschooler I am becoming and I probably will not find a likeminded kindred spirit in my area to share that with any time soon.
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