If there are specific subjects that you don’t feel comfortable handling in the homeschool classroom, you can form a homeschool co-op that allows your homeschool students to take classes with someone who is an expert at the subject. In exchange you can offer classes to students in subjects that you are comfortable with. This works out more economical than having to hire a tutor, or paying for online classes for your homeschool students. Here’s some pointers to get the homeschool co-op class exchange started.
Pick the Participants
There will always be people in the homeschool community who have children in similar grades to your homeschool students. Get in touch with them about your idea to hold a homeschool co-op to teach different classes. See who all are interested in participating. To be fair, each child who is enrolled for a class should have a parent who is taking another class for the other homeschool students. Most homeschool parents will be happy to pick up a class if their children are going to attend one taught by someone else.
Distribute the Subjects
Once you have clarity on the number of people who will be teaching the classes, have them pick the subjects and grades they want to teach. The homeschool students should also be divided up on basis of the subjects that they need to be taught. Ask the teachers handling a particular subject if they feel comfortable handling different grade students in the same session. Most of them should not have a problem with that considering that they are homeschool teachers with different ages children in their own classrooms.
Design the Schedule
This will probably take the most amount of time as you will be coordinating with a number of people about the best timings for them in the week to take classes as well as send their children to classes. However once this step is done, all you need to do is take a printout of the schedule sheet and hand it over to all participants. This can be used as the basis for the schedule for the next year as well.
