posted by Teresa Walls
Recently I had a discussion with a friend who has a second-grader who attends a public school. She questioned all the special programs for homeschoolers, programs that are available at various places all through our county, library included. The proverbial straw was the special time during the afternoon in the summer in which no one else could swim at her local YMCA because the homeschoolers were using the pool then.
While I couldn’t speak for the YMCA, I could share my experience of attendance numbers and how too often programs are offered for the general public and no one comes, or sometimes, seemingly worse, one person attends. However, I can understand the perception that a group of people are being offered preferential treatment. In fact, an upcoming ALSC Blog podcast is about Time 2 Chime, a handchime choir of homeschooled children, at the Allen County (IN) Public Library. The handchimes are made available during other programs when other families could bring their children, and I’m certain if any public or parochial school group expressed an interest, the class would be scheduled for a program using the handchimes.
My own experience has been that the attendance numbers are often larger with the homeschool crowd, especially if you aren’t scheduling it at the same time the majority of them might be at the pool. I had offered an “Explore the World of …” series while I was working as a full-time children’s librarian. Program topics included architecture, Indiana history, polar regions, space, inventions & inventors, jazz, art & artists, and branches of the U.S government. The program was offered twice on a Thursday, a morning and afternoon session, and on a Saturday afternoon. Few attended these approximately two-hour programs offered on Saturdays.
Jazz was the one exception. Only two homeschooling families attended the school-day session (of course, one family in the morning and one in the afternoon), but for the Saturday program two fathers with children came specifically for the event. We listened to jazz and introduced specific jazz musicians, played along with various musical instruments, practiced improvisation and syncopation and rhythm and taking familiar songs and making them into something different rhythmically. It wasn’t a huge crowd, but more than I had experienced with the other Saturday “Explore the World of …” programs.
I doubt I changed my friend’s view about homeschoolers having more available to them. I know that is why a few of my friends have chosen to homeschool their children. However, when it comes to the public library and programming, how do you strike a balance?
Abby
This is a really interesting question to me because my library is currently trying to establish some programming for homeschoolers. Of course, our programming is open to the public and there’s no reason why homeschooled kids wouldn’t be welcome at our after school programs, but they don’t tend to come to them. We had a homeschoolers’ open house a few months ago to try and connect with homeschooling families in our area, but it wasn’t very well attended from what I gather. I guess I don’t have any solutions right now, but I’m interested to see what others will have to say…
Elizabeth
I’m always trying to promote the homeschooling families at the library. We have special programs once a month for them but at the same time we don’t want to be too selective. We have an open attendance policy but the homeschooling programs tend to be during the school day.
Our concern is that they don’t come to similar programs that are open to everyone. We feel they are missing out on some really great activities. We have a limited budget so it’s hard for us to have a lot of programs just for them.
One of our biggest struggles is when we have a program set up for the families and no one registers so we cancel it only to find out afterwards that a large number of the families were coming. We understand that many of their plans are fluid and flexible but we really want to provide them with a great audience.
Overall we want homeschooling families to have a great experience at the library and to be seen in a positive light to the public. We do a project fair every year and this past year we had an amazing turn out from the students. Many of the schools visiting were amazed at the quality of work that the homeschoolers were producing.