Nan Reed Twiss did not want to home school her children. They asked her. She said no. She felt it would be too much work.
But when her family moved in September from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Evanston, she realized her children would be away from their friends for more than a year as her husband finished seminary studies, so she changed her mind.
“I decided I’m going to use this time as a mother to really devote to my kids,” Reed Twiss said. “This is my gift to them.”
She said home schooling is difficult but rewarding, and that the Chicago area has many groups and museums for parents who teach their children at home.
“I’m not blazing any trails,” Reed Twiss said.
One group is Evanston Home Educators, which has about 90 families, said Evanston resident Joyce Elias, who home schools her 12- and 18-year-old children. The group has grown from 30 to 40 families eight or nine years ago, she said.
Reed Twiss allows her children – ages 4, 6 and 9 – to explore places such as The Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium. Her kids have gained “an incredible enthusiasm for how much there is to learn,” she said.
Twiss also believes it is important to treat her children as individuals. “Children respond so much to relationships. They’re sitting in my lap,” she said. “It’s a really nice time together.”
Like Reed Twiss, some parents came to home schooling unexpectedly. When Sheila Brenner’s foster child was 8 years old, he had problems in both public and private schools, so Brenner looked into other options.
She discovered HOUSE by the Lake, a chapter of the statewide Home Oriented Unique Schooling Experience. HOUSE by the Lake operates in north Chicago and the northern suburbs.
“I never thought I would home school,” she said. “I thought it was for religious crazies.”
Parents said home-schooled students do fine socially, regularly playing with other kids at meetings and events.
In the United States, about 1.1 million students were home schooled in 2003, up from about 850,000 in 1999, the most recent U.S. Department of Education study said.
In Illinois, as long as children receive English-language instruction in basic subjects such as history, math and science, home schools are considered private schools and are free from state regulation. Other states are not as relaxed. Kentucky parents, for example, must maintain attendance records.
“People move to Illinois to home school,” said Kate Flynn, a member of HOUSE by the Lake.
Flynn initially enrolled her children in a private Montessori school, which cost $12,000 a year per student. Each day at lunch, boys at the school teased her then 4-year-old daughter, Rainey, who came home sobbing.
“It wasn’t academic excellence – it was breaking the bank, and it gave my daughter a breakdown,” said Flynn. She then decided to home school her children.
Most parents don’t begin with a background in teaching, but even for those that do, home schooling requires much preparation.
Flynn, once a Montessori teacher, said she spent the entire first year of home schooling researching. Reed Twiss, a former English teacher, said she almost gave up after a few weeks of teaching her children at home.
“I’ve had to involve them more in the daily maintenance of the family,” Reed Twiss said. Her children agreed to do more chores so they wouldn’t have to go back to public school.
Teaching goes on all day, said Rogers Park resident Sharon Appelquist, who home schools her three children.
“My daughter comes to me at night and says, ‘Make me some more math problems.'”
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