Monique Abbett
Academic Coach &
Piano Instructor
Alternative Options for K-12 Education in the Pandemic Era
What a strange time we are living in! Perhaps you are one of the many families grapping with homeschooling. You're exhausted! Overwhelmed! Cooped up! You have questions ... please allow me to address some of these here.
In a time of so much change and stress in schooling for kids, many families face difficult choices. If you have found yourself deciding that homeschooling is, at least for now, the right choice for your family, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. Perhaps you have most of your homeschool under control, but could use a little help. Or a lot of help.
Some families are choosing microschooling as a part of their homeschool choice. What exactly is a micro-school? A micro-school is a sort of (tiny) one-room schoolhouse. Micro-schooling looks a bit different from family to family, but the main goal is to provide a small number of students whose schooling has been upended with a structured, safe, at-home learning experience facilitated by an educator the families trust, along with the parents' combined contributions, energy, and other resources. Micro-schools (or pods) connect families, educational consultants, and other professionals who build "pods" with each other and with the resources needed to share homeschooling duties and create a richer experience for their children. As the LAUSD and many other schools remained 100% online at least through Fall 2020, micro-schooling became an appealing option for families to get their kids off of screens and into safe small group learning environments that will stimulate their minds, bodies, and hearts for healthy growth. As it turned out, many of these microschools are continuing to thrive, so these families are still schooling this way. I find this fascinating, as my family was a microschooling family in the 1990s! We just didn't have a label for it back in the dark ages of homeschooling :)!
Parents are doing their darndest!
Forming a micro-school requires careful organization and planning. If you'd like more information on how to form a micro-school, please contact me to schedule a free strategy session. I'm happy to host you (safe & socially distant!) in my backyard if you're local (Brentwood, West Lost Angeles) or on Zoom so we can strategize what might work best for your families this fall. I'm also available to support any aspect of your homeschool, including developing your curriculum.
