A lot of parents are understandably worried about sending their children back to school this fall with so many questions still lingering about COVID-19, and what constitutes a safe and healthy environment in regard to the pandemic. With this in mind, some parents are considering switching to officially homeschooling their children for the coming year, and giving both themselves and their kids a break from some of the anxiety.
I received a request for a quick-and-easy guide to getting started for parents who would like to officially switch to homeschooling for the upcoming year, so here it is! A couple of important notes before I get started:
Disclaimer: A lot of homeschooling involves reading and interpreting the homeschooling laws and regulations. In this post, I provide information about, my experiences with, my understanding of, and some general knowledge about the regulations. However, I am NOT a lawyer, and nothing in this blog post should be construed in any way as legal advice. It is each parent’s responsibility to read, understand, interpret, and follow their own state’s homeschool regulations.
I live in New York state, and therefore my knowledge of and experience with specific regulations are focused on those in New York state. However, there are some general resources and guidelines here that may be helpful for those who are living in any state.
Know the Regs: Getting Your Paperwork in Order
Homeschooling is legal in every state, but each state has its own regulations regarding how homeschooling is to be reported, what subjects must be covered, how many hours of instruction are required, etc. Some states have more lenient regulations, and some have stricter regulations. New York state, where I live, is one of the states with the strictest regulations.
Regardless of what state you live in, it is incredibly important to make yourself familiar with whatever your state’s homeschooling regulations are. Try not to be daunted: homeschool regulations are laws, and are therefore full of legalese, but as someone with 10 years of homeschool experience in one of the most difficult states for homeschooling, let me assure you that the regulations aren’t really as scary as they may first appear.
This is the official New York State Department of Education website for homeschooling regulations.
This is a link for NYHEN (New York Home Educators Network), which includes the homeschooling regulations for New York state, as well as several additional resources. Particularly helpful is the Department of Education’s Questions and Answers on Home Instruction that clarify some of the regulations. (You may even want to read that part first.)
Here’s an outline of the paperwork the New York state regulations require you to submit to the Superintendent of your local school district (or, in the case of New York City, to the Office of Homeschooling), as I understand them. The regulations specify what information must be included in each of these documents.
Letter of Intent – Often referred to as an LOI, this is a brief letter you send to notify the school district that you plan to homeschool your child. Per the regulations, it is due by July 1 of each year, or within 2 weeks of the date you decide to homeschool (if it is after July 1). Within 10 days of receiving your letter, the school district is required to send you a copy of the homeschool regulations and an IHIP form (see below), and they often send a packet of other forms as well.
Individual Home Instruction Plan – Usually referred to as an IHIP, this is your plan of instruction for the school year. The school district is required to send you an IHIP form, but many parents choose to create and submit their own forms, which is a generally accepted practice (although some districts can be sticklers regarding form use). Regardless of whether you use your own forms or those provided by the district, you must include on your forms any information required by the regulations. Certain subjects and a few special topics must be covered each year, depending on the grade level your child is in. Within each required subject, parents choose the topics that are to be covered, and there are many resources available that parents can use as guidelines for determining what topics serve as “grade level” for your child. (I have included some later in this post.) Parents also determine their child’s grade level, and the dates they will be submitting their quarterly reports (within guidelines). Per the regulations, IHIPs are due by August 15, or within 4 weeks of parents receiving the copy of the homeschool regulations from the school district (whichever is later). Within 10 business days of receiving your IHIP, the school district is required to send you a notice indicating whether or not your IHIP complies with the regulations.
Quarterly Reports – Quarterly reports are required to show your child’s progress each quarter (similar to a report card), including what was covered in each subject that quarter, the amount of instructional time they received (there’s a required number of hours each year), and their grade for each subject or a written evaluation of their progress. Parents choose what grading options they will use, which can range from percentage or letter grades, to pass/fail, to satisfactory or unsatisfactory achievement. Per the regulations, quarterly reports are required to be submitted four times per year on the dates you outline in your IHIP.
Annual Assessment: Test or Narrative – Per the regulations, an Annual Assessment report is due by June 30 of each year. The assessment can be either the results of a state-approved standardized test, or a narrative evaluation, depending on the child’s grade level.
For New York state, the regulations were written in a way that allow for homeschooling to begin and end at any point within the year. If you are on the fence about whether or not to homeschool, you may feel more comfortable with your decision by knowing that whatever choice you make does not have to be a permanent one. If you homeschool for the fall, and the pandemic is over or under control by winter, you can enroll your child back in school if that is what you choose. Or you can choose to homeschool for the entire year, and give your children a chance to focus on their studies without the distraction of the back-and-forth decisions to open or close the schools, or the daily fear of getting sick.
Know Your Kids: Making Your Plans
Of all the reports required for homeschooling by New York state, the IHIP can feel like the most overwhelming. Why? Because it requires you to think about and set up your educational plans, not just for tomorrow or next week, but for the whole year. Some parents feel a sense of panic when it comes time to make these decisions, start to worry about making the right decision on textbooks and curriculum, and end up just giving up on the whole idea. If that sounds like what you’re feeling, I encourage you to take a deep breath and just take things one step at a time. Here are some tips:
First, give yourself and your kids plenty of room for failure and making mistakes, especially when setting up your plans for the year for the very first time. If you have never done anything like this before, it becomes a whole new learning experience for you. Know and understand that you will not get it right the first time around. Probably not the second or even third time, either. And that’s okay. Eventually, you and your children will settle into a groove that works best for you. Feel confident that it will not last and you’ll have to change it up again as your kids grow and develop and change, as you find new and better resources, and as you learn what does and doesn’t work for your family. And that’s okay, too. Give yourself and your kids permission to fail, to try new things, to adapt as needed. If that means adapting your paperwork by sending in a revised IHIP halfway through the year, or by noting the change on your quarterly reports, so be it.
Second, it really helps to know your kids. No two children are the same, even identical twins. Each one has their own learning styles, interests, habits, fears, goals, rhythms, personalities, and motivations. Some kids do well with hands-on instruction and demonstration, others prefer online resources and videos they can watch 100 times until something makes sense. Some need to be able to do something themselves to really understand it, and others would rather study quietly on their own with a book in their hand. Some enjoy writing down what they learn, and others prefer drawing diagrams and pictures. Some prefer using all of those methods, and more, as a way to really understand a topic deeply, and others are just as happy skimming the surface of a lot of different topics, the more the merrier.
Even if you think you know your kids already, take some time to get to know them even better, and make it an on-going activity, because there’s always something more you can learn about them. Talk to them about what they like and what they don’t, what they’d like to accomplish (both big goals and small ones), and where their interests lie. Watch them to see what their patterns are throughout the day, such as when they wake up and when they get tired, when they seem bouncy and energetic, when they would rather take it slow and curl up with a book. Listen to them when they ask questions, share their fears, and express their emotions about anything. Pay attention to what they are having trouble with, be it math or bullies or falling asleep at night; and what they are good at, be it math or music or asking questions.
The key to success in homeschooling is taking all those things you learn about your children and using them to make more informed decisions about what will help them the best. Use this information when you set up your IHIP, when you decide what resources you will use, when you plan out your daily schedules and routines, when you decide on projects and activities, and when you make determinations about what you consider passing or failing.
Third, try to be open to alternative ways of learning. For most of the general public, thinking about education and school brings to mind lines of desks, textbooks, chalkboards, teachers at the front of the class, lockers, busy hallways, papers, assignments, and homework. For a homeschooling family like us, thinking about education brings to mind cuddling up on the couch reading and discussing a good book together, attending live theater performances and concerts, taking a historic walking tour, playing board games with an educational component, writing letters and blog posts, talking about what’s living and growing in the garden, and borrowing stacks and stacks of books from the library. Homeschooling provides opportunities for learning that would be difficult or impossible to provide in a school setting. By allowing yourself to think outside of the school-shaped box, you open up your options for educational experiences that are also memorable life experiences for yourself and your children.
Resources for Grade Level Topics
When writing up your IHIP or your plan for the year, here are some resources you could use for deciding what topics you plan to cover in the various required subjects at various grade levels:
World Book Typical Course of Study, K-12 https://www.worldbook.com/typical-course-of-study.aspx
Home Learning Year by Year, by Rebecca Rupp https://www.rebeccaruppresources.com/blog/my-books/
Scholastic School Success Guides, K-8 https://www.worldbook.com/typical-course-of-study.aspx
What Your First Grader Needs to Know, one of the titles in a series of books by by E.D. Hirsch, available from preschool to grade 6
Know Yourself: Teaching, Record-keeping, Organizing, Staying on Task
As important as it is to know your children, it’s equally important to know yourself. I tend toward being a natural teacher, and spend a lot of time discussing things with my kids, helping them find answers for their questions, reading aloud to them, doing hands-on projects and activities, and breaking things down into pieces they can understand. I also know several parents who don’t feel as comfortable in the role of teacher, or whose personalities clash with those of their children, and therefore prefer to rely more on assignments, bookwork, videos, online programs, or tutors. I know parents who hate math or history, and so leave those topics up to the other parent, a grandparent, or another other family member, or set up shared classes with other homeschool families. There is no one right answer, and possibilities abound.
It’s important that you find out what your teaching strengths and preferences are, how those mesh with the needs of your children, and determine potential solutions for areas where problems might arise. The online distance learning that the pandemic forced on everyone at the end of the last school year may have given you some clues in this regard, but be prepared to adjust your teaching methods as you learn more about yourself and your kids.
As you begin your homeschooling adventure, you’ll find yourself having to keep records of what your kids are learning and how much time they spend on it, organizing paperwork and projects, and having to get things done on a certain schedule. It’s important that you take some time to know your own habits, strengths, and weaknesses, and to think about how those are going to come into play in the near future, and how you can plan to succeed around them. I want to stress that now is NOT the time to set New Year’s-like resolutions about how you’ll be better organized and finish all your projects. Know yourself, and arrange your homeschool responsibilities around that self.
Here are some tips for different types:
The Writer: Do you like writing on real paper? Using colored pens, markers, and highlighters? Keeping notebooks and journals? Making lists? I recommend keeping a large family calendar posted on the wall for events and due dates, a planning notebook for what you plan to teach and do, and a homeschool journal or gradebook to keep track of what was completed.
The Techie: Do you like playing with your phone or laptop? Taking photos? Using apps? I recommend using a shared online calendar for your family’s events and due dates, setting phone alarms as reminders, using Pinterest or Evernote (or a similar program) to keep ideas and instructions for what you plan to teach and do, and taking photos of your kids while they are mid-project or of completed projects and assignments to keep track of what gets done.
Some general tips for keeping things organized:
Plan a place for completed projects in advance. Kids create LOTS of stuff, and they like to show it off. If you designate a space for finished projects to go once they’re complete, they’re easier to keep track of and less likely to be found under foot or couch. I suggest some combination of a shelf, a bulletin board, and a bin or a basket to hold 3-D projects, papers for display, and everything else (respectively).
Set up a space to store your homeschool materials. There’s nothing more frustrating than spending an hour searching for your child’s math workbook so he can spend fifteen minutes on his math problems, or planning an art project only to realize you are out of blue and yellow paint. Whether it’s a backpack, a set of shelves, a closet, a dresser, a trunk, or a whole room, set up some kind of designated space where the majority of your child’s homeschool materials are kept, and require them to keep them organized. This not only makes materials easier to find when needed, but more obvious when you are getting low on supplies.
Keep copies of reports. Regardless of the state you live in, I strongly recommend keeping copies of ALL of your communications with your school district for your own records, including any letters or reports, and to keep them all together in one place. I keep printouts of all our paperwork together in a big binder specifically for homeschool records and reports, with a divider for each school year.
I hope this brief guide is helpful to anyone considering the switch to homeschooling. I know I haven’t covered everything, and I hope that you’ll post your questions and suggestions in the comments section below. If you like what you see here, and want to receive notices of future posts, be sure to subscribe. Best of luck on your homeschooling adventure!