{"id":503,"date":"2008-07-13T10:59:37","date_gmt":"2008-07-13T17:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=503"},"modified":"2008-08-01T08:28:04","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T15:28:04","slug":"homeschoolers-and-library-programming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/homeschoolers-and-library-programming\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeschoolers and Library Programming"},"content":{"rendered":"

posted by Teresa Walls<\/i><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[42,38,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library-design-and-accessibility","category-programming-ideas","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}