Kentucky Edition | Homeschooling | Season 1 | Episode 211

Schools may have reopened, but three years after the COVID 19 pandemic began, many children are still learning at home.

According to the US Census Bureau.

The number of children who were homeschooled increased by 63% in the 2020 2021 school year.

That number dropped by only 17% in the 2021 22 school year.

The most significant increase in the number of black families who are homeschooling.

The Census Bureau data shows the number of black families homeschooling their children increased from a pre-pandemic level of 3% to more than 16% during the 2021 22 school year.

Play Cousins, an African-American collective in Louisville, is creating a space and providing resources for black families who are choosing to homeschool.

More on tonight's segment on Education matters.

Our homeschool co-op began as a part of one of our gathering circles.

There were many families that were saying that they wanted an alternative to sending their children to public school, but that they were concerned about their ability to do that.

You know, where they have the resources, where they have the knowledge, where they have the time.

And so that's what our homeschool co-op really looks like is us coming together and sharing knowledge and also hosting classes and allowing our children to to develop those social and emotional skills with one another.

I feel like homeschooling falls under the umbrella of parenting.

As parents, we teach our kids everything.

I feel like I always homeschool them because we've always done some form of learning, even just as before.

pre-K ages.

The reasons why people homeschool because they're looking.

They're trying to carve out safe spaces for their children to become fully realized.

You know, for them to fully understand who they are as people, for them to develop their interests.

The advantage is that you're creating a learning environment that is truly supportive and responsive to the needs of your child, that they're not going to be measured by somebody, what someone else thinks of them.

I didn't come from a homeschooling family.

I didn't see home schoolers around me.

This was a whole new venture.

There wasn't a lot of black and brown people in these programs and when I would research it, I would see a lot of white homeschool families, a lot of white homeschool programing, a lot of white homeschool curriculum.

So until Play Cousins, I was pretty isolated in my homeschool journey.

Not any of the programs that we really found are geared toward like African-American families or help them learn about their culture and who they are and where they come from.

So this co-op was perfect for us.

It empowers them as individuals because it's creating a community and they are members of this community where they are learning who to go to for what.

By keeping my children out of as many systems as I can, I feel like it gives us our power back.

I think that a lot of families have reservations around the curriculum that is present within the public school system when it comes to race and history.

I can't imagine a world where I am not allowed to teach my child about who he is and what our people went through.

When you learn about black history, it's often focused on slavery.

You know, it's this month of learning about the atrocities that happened to your people.

Sometimes many times that's how it is for our children.

And so when they think about who they are, they don't want to be black at the end of the day, because of all of the things that they've been taught about what it means to be black.

And so I did not want that for my child.

And many families don't want that for their children.

And being given the opportunity to teach something different I think is just an eye opening thing.

I think the community here, it's probably been the best part for us and maybe they're learning too, but the community has been huge for us.

This is somewhere they can go and actually live it and be around people that are like them.

It's huge for for me and my kids because I'm learning as much as they are.

It's a movement that is building because it's setting this framework and this this this idea that maybe other parents couldn't even have imagined.

But to see this working.

It's like, oh, this is a thing that could work.

And just to have an idea that this exists and if you don't participate with our co-op, it's definitely something that you can create yourself.

The way that we create these black and white systems when we have this multidimensional world that just doesn't fit and homeschooling is an opportunity for us to mess it up a little bit and allow for us to be in the same space and to have a deeper experience with.

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