TEXARKANA MAGAZINE
Hope Aubrey teaching her children at home, around the dining room table.
CHANGING CULTURE CHOOSING HOMESCHOOL BY TERRI GRAVITT
“THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME,” Dorothy said as she clicked her heels, eager to return to the comforts of her own little bedroom, surrounded by family. We all long for a place where we feel comfortable, safe, and loved. However, for many post-COVID-19 Americans, increasingly troubled by growing safety concerns in schools, there has been a definite cultural shift. Homes across America are now doubling as replacements for neighborhood public schools and offering parents a place where they can more individually target their children’s learning styles and individual needs. It has become a place where concerned moms and dads can play a bigger part in helping their children reach their full potential academically, spiritually, and socially, and they have the opportunity to take on topics like politics and sex in their own way. Research suggests that homeschooling was growing in popularity before the pandemic and became officially recognized as an option in all 50 states in 1992. According to surveys done to
examine the impact of COVID-19 on American life, the percentage of Texas families that homeschool their children tripled after the pandemic. Data collected by the Texas Homeschool Coalition, a nonprofit organization that promotes and advocates for homeschooling in the state, shows about 30,000 students across the state withdrew from a public or charter school and switched to homeschooling during the spring of 2021, a 40% increase compared with the previous year. This trend was also seen locally, according to Legacy COOP founder, Whitney Jackson, MS. “We noticed a spiked interest in our program the next year because I believe mommas had more confidence in their ability to homeschool their children,” she shared. Whitney previously served as a public school teacher and counselor for seven years, and it was during the last three years of her public school career that she and her husband, Travis, began
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COMMUNITY & CULTURE
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