Designing an Individualized Curriculum for Home Schoolers

Glen Blomgren, a public school teacher for 14 years, founded Christa McAuliffe Academy 15 years ago. In those early years, students turned in written assignments through the mail. Since the school started offering the online courses, enrollment has boomed, Blomgren said. It now has almost 400 students.

“Many of them come to us out of frustration,” he said. “They find public school unresponsive to their needs.”

That’s why Julya Myers, of Rockville, Md., turned to home schooling her daughter.

“We objected to the curriculum being based on what 30 students need as opposed to what she needs,” Myers said.

Myers was trained to be an accountant. But that didn’t stop her from deciding to teach her 8-year-old daughter at home.

Designing a curriculum proved daunting. She downloaded work sheets from the Internet and bought workbooks, but it all seemed too dry, she recalled.

So earlier this year, after six months of home schooling, she again turned to the Internet, this time to an online school called Child U. The Florida-based company started marketing its online classes to students in grades one through eight in August 1999.

Now, for $69 a month, Marcia logs on to her computer for about four hours a day and takes a full fourth-grade curriculum, complete with art and music courses--two subjects that Myers never felt comfortable teaching.

One art class prompts students to sketch nature scenes. First the students see pictures of a frog and salamander and read excerpts from children’s books about animals and nature. They are instructed to “notice the shapes that make up each animal.” Then they are told to gather sun block and sunglasses and sketch the outdoors.

Through e-mail, Marcia communicates regularly with an e-teacher who helps Myers oversee Marcia’s work.

“The amount of hours it would have taken me to put together that curriculum would have kept me from teaching her,” said Myers, who works out of an office in her home.

While Marcia works on her lessons, Myers tends to household matters or does her accounting, but stays nearby to respond to Marcia when she has a question.

Myers said she refuses to completely abdicate her teaching duties.

“That was one of my concerns. I didn’t want my child to feel like she’s talking to a computer.”