As library leaders, we often ask ourselves how we can serve unique populations in our communities. With the number of homeschool families increasing across the nation, have you been asking yourself how to best serve them? On this show Elizabeth Stinnette, Children’s Librarian at the Purcellville Branch Library in the Loudoun County Public Library System in Virginia, provides answers about how libraries can best serve homeschool families. She includes useful information about the history of homeschooling, how homeschool students are similar and different from their traditionally schooled peers, and what never to ask homeschool students and their parents.
Transcript
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Adriane Herrick Juarez:
This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. You’re listening to Library Leadership Podcast, where we talk about libraries and leadership, and speak with guests who share their ideas, innovations, and strategic insights in the profession.
As library leaders, we often ask ourselves how we can serve unique populations in our communities. With the number of homeschool families increasing across the nation, have you been asking yourself how to best serve them? On this show, Elizabeth Stinnett, Children’s Librarian at the Purcellville Branch Library in the Loudoun County Public Library System in Virginia, provides answers about how libraries can best serve homeschool families. She includes useful information about the history of homeschooling, how homeschool students are similar and different from their traditionally schooled peers, and what never to ask homeschool students and their parents. This is a conversation that will help all of us connect with and serve this unique population. Enjoy the show!
Elizabeth, welcome to the show.
Elizabeth Stinnette:
It’s great to be here.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #1: It’s great to have you here. Today we are talking about helping homeschoolers in our libraries. As we start, what do statistics about homeschooler populations in the United States tell us, and what implications does this have for libraries? 01:47
Elizabeth Stinnette:
Yes. Well, the statistics are telling us that the number of homeschoolers is definitely growing. This data is from the National Center of Education Statistics. Starting in the late ’90’s through the early aught, it was usually anywhere from around 2 to 3 percent of American students were homeschooled—it was steadily growing, but, you know, pretty slow. During the 2020 to 2021 school year, it went up to 5.4 percent . Yes, obviously that was affected by the pandemic. Just anecdotally, I’ve noticed in the library that there are a lot more families who are coming in saying that they’re new to homeschooling. This is definitely a community that loves our libraries—that is already using our libraries voraciously for their curriculum. It offers for us, as librarians, a really great opportunity to offer programming specifically for them.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #2: Can you talk a bit about the history of homeschooling? 02:59
Elizabeth Stinnette:
The modern homeschool movement that we would recognize today really started in the 1970’s from two different groups of people. One of the groups came from the hippie movement, basically. They were parents who didn’t want a government influence on their children’s education. They were looking for other ways to educate them—other alternatives.
Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have conservative parents who were looking for a way to give their children an education that reflected their religious beliefs. These groups seem a little bit different with their ideologies, but there are also some things that they held in common. These groups, together, ended up really starting the homeschool movement.
It grew a lot during the 1990’s. As it grew, state governments became aware of it, so then you have more state laws and local laws that are making room for homeschoolers and making it easier for families to homeschool.
Then you get to now—with all kinds of online options for schooling. The pandemic definitely contributed as well. Now you have a really diverse community of homeschoolers out there. Every single family homeschools for a different reason, and every single homeschool is going to look a little bit different as well.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #3: How are homeschool students similar and different from their traditionally schooled peers? 04:25
Elizabeth Stinnette:
I would say probably the biggest way that public school students and home schooled students are similar is—this is a big topic in the homeschool community, it is socialization. When children are going out in the community, are they able to talk with adults, are they able to talk with their peers, or are they able to get along socially in a very comfortable way? It’s a common misconception among people who aren’t in the homeschool community to go, Oh, because these kids are just at home learning with their parents and their siblings, they aren’t being socialized. But with the overwhelming majority of homeschool families I know and work with, that is not the case at all. They are very involved in their communities. They are involved in Girl Scouts. They do volunteer opportunities. They come to the library for programs. They do all these things to really interact with the community and with the public. I will just say, just based on my personal experience as far as socialization goes, homeschoolers tend to interact really, really well with adults. They’ll come up and ask questions, they’ll be assertive, they’ll have opinions about things.
Then with their peers, sometimes there’s a little bit more awkwardness. Not always, but sometimes. But I’ve noticed that it’s sometimes the opposite with public school kids where they are really, really comfortable with their peers, but then when adults like me are interacting with them, they get a little bit more reticent. I see it as just a different kind of socialization for homeschoolers versus public schoolers.
Some other differences I’ve noticed between homeschooled and public schooled students is that homeschooled students tend to be very independent. They enjoy working on projects on their own, doing their own research, and then they also tend to really be drawn to open-ended projects. If you’re doing a project at the library, they’ll love something that really encourages that creativity—that thinking outside of the box. At different times I’ve done holiday ornament crafts where I just set out wine corks and a whole bunch of decorating supplies and a few pictures, and they went crazy making all kinds of ornaments. So, open-ended play like that really appeals to them.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #4: And it’s so fun to get people in who want to come do things like that with us in our libraries. I love that. You talk about what never to ask homeschool students and their parents. Can you share about this with us? 06:51
Elizabeth Stinnette:
I am coming at this from a place where I was homeschooled all the way from preschool through 12th grade, so I know all of this from experience and all these questions I’ve been asked many, many times. Obviously, homeschoolers already love the library, and so if you already know the answers to these questions, they’re going to think you’re amazing. They already like you because you’re a librarian. If you know the answer to these questions, they will adore you.
So the questions are —the first one is, why aren’t you in school? So this question will really sort of set off the alarm bells in some homeschool parent’s minds because especially twenty years ago, and even in some more recent cases, there are well-meaning people who don’t understand how homeschooling works—don’t understand that sometimes the homeschool schedule ends a little bit earlier than the public school schedule, and they’re still learning, but it just ends a little bit earlier. So these well-meaning people will see homeschool families out playing out in their front yards or even at the library, and they’ll think, Oh, no, these kids aren’t in school, and they’ll call the authorities.
That can be a real concern to parents. That isn’t to say, as librarians, if we see something and we suspect genuine abuse, please, please go through your channels— however your system is set up for reporting that. But the overwhelming majority of homeschool parents are very serious about their children’s education, very loving with their children, so it’s not a cause for concern.
Second big question is what about socialization? We’ve already discussed that. Homeschoolers do find lots of great ways to socialize. By providing programs at the library just for them, we’re providing yet another outlet for that.
Question number three is are you religious or something? Increasingly, just in the last few years, homeschoolers are a really diverse community, as I mentioned. I’ve seen all kinds of different backgrounds, all kinds of different reasons for homeschooling. It isn’t just anyone’s presumption of why people are homeschooling. Just like we wouldn’t ask any other personal questions of our patrons, we wouldn’t want to ask that of our homeschool families.
Then the last question—this question I got asked quite a bit, and it is, Do you go to school in your PJs? Usually it’s asked with a little bit of a nod and a wink. The underlying tone of that question is always, you must not take school seriously. To answer that honestly, yes, sometimes homeschoolers do school in their PJs, but they also take school very, very seriously. For the parents, they go to the effort of designing a curriculum—planning with their kids, of creating school from scratch in a sense. They take school very seriously and hold to some really high standards.
Yeah, if you just know all those questions and interact with your homeschool community as people, they’ll love you for it. Yeah, maybe just ask some questions like, Oh, how did you come to homeschool, or how is the homeschool community in your area? Those are all wonderful questions to ask that community.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #5: Such good things to know Elizabeth, thank you. So how can libraries connect with local homeschool communities? 10:22
Elizabeth Stinnette:
The really wonderful thing about connecting with the homeschool community is they’re already coming into the library. You don’t have to ask them to come in. Usually the first thing that I do, or the first thing that I did when I was trying to connect with my homeschool community, was I looked around the library and I tried to see when the homeschoolers were coming in, because in our community our homeschool groups have a lot of co-ops, which is basically, if you aren’t familiar, it’s where a few homeschool parents will get together and they will all teach each other’s children in their area of expertise. Those can be really large communities of homeschoolers—will all be meeting at the same time.
I noticed at my library, a lot of homeschool families were coming into the library and studying for a few hours on Tuesday mornings. So I thought about that and I went, Okay, so there probably aren’t a lot of co-ops meeting at this time, so if I provide a library program, a homeschool program during this time, then they’ll probably be available to come. Sure enough, we get excellent numbers for our Tuesday morning homeschool programs.
Then the other thing that’s really great to do to build those relationships with the homeschool community is try and go where they are. Our particular homeschool community has a Facebook group. I joined it, and I asked them, What would you like to see from the library? I got close to eighty responses, which was wonderful. It gave me so many great ideas.
Another thing is reaching out to those co-ops—reaching out to those homeschool groups, seeing if you could visit one someday. If your homeschool group offers a curriculum swap of some kind or an activity fair, those are also really great to visit. Not only to tell them about what the library provides, but to start to build those relationships and start to figure out what kinds of programs your homeschool community wants.
Then finally reaching out to the parents, speaking to them one-on-one as they come into the library is a great thing to do. I would say the majority—overwhelming majority of homeschool families in my community are really open. They really love talking to the librarians. If you just ask them, What kinds of programs do you want? And, When does your co-op meet? What are some ways I can get plugged in and help you guys out? They will be more than glad to talk with you and give you ideas.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #6: So what can libraries do to figure out how to meet the needs of homeschoolers? 12:57
Elizabeth Stinnette:
There’s several things you can do to figure out what you can provide homeschoolers and figure out what they want from the library. First of all, homeschoolers are really looking for a place to connect socially. Even though our community has a really robust co-op situation, I can’t tell you the number of times the program is wrapping up, and I will see homeschool moms exchanging numbers saying, Oh, let’s meet at the playground. Or, Let’s talk about this program at some point. So, homeschoolers love having that opportunity to connect. We as a library can really provide that, especially if there isn’t a really robust co-op community, we can provide that hub of connection for them.
Next, homeschoolers love programs that they either can’t, or would be very unlikely to do in their own homes. So, think really messy science experiments, think messy art projects, think any kind of activity that would require quite a bit of prep work beforehand that homeschool parents may not have time for. Like one example, my most popular homeschool program ever was acrylic paint pouring. Very, very messy, we did it outside. But, there were homeschool moms calling their friends, and people kept coming and coming and coming. So, anything like that would really be appealing to them.
Next, homeschoolers really like programming that is during their school day because they will often incorporate your program into their curriculum. As I mentioned earlier, homeschoolers will operate on a slightly different schedule from public school where they’ll get started early in the morning, then because they don’t have to do attendance, they don’t have to get in line. They might be done with their school day by noon—then are involved in their volunteer activities, or some other particular topic they want to really do a deep dive on. Homeschoolers want those programs during their school day. They would want something that’s more late morning, early afternoon—before other students are being let out of school.
Then finally, homeschoolers, I’ve just discovered this along the way—homeschoolers really enjoy having prior notice about what your program theme is going to be. There’s been several times that homeschool moms have come up to me afterwards thanking me for putting out flyers with the next month’s programs. They say, Oh, this topic for next month will be perfect, and I’m going to incorporate learning some background on this into my home school curriculum for the month. So, working with them as they provide education for their children is a really helpful thing.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #7: That makes sense. Is there anything else you would like to share? 15:50
Elizabeth Stinnette:
I would just really want to encourage everyone who’s listening, if you aren’t already doing homeschool programming, it is such a rewarding thing to do. I found that creating homeschool programs isn’t just creating another program, it’s really building a relationship with a unique community—to where I recognize all these families by name and where we ask each other how we’re doing. We see the kids grow up. It’s just such a wonderful way to plug into a community that’s already loving the library, already using the library, and providing resources that really cater to their needs.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #8: Do you have any favorite management or leadership books or resources, and why? 16:29
Elizabeth Stinnette:
Sure. Well, I’ll tell you what I’m really enjoying lately and have been going through is Ryan Dowd’s online webinar training. He talks a lot about reaching out to the unhoused community, a lot about high risk groups—various high risk groups. It’s not only wonderful information about how to talk to those groups specifically, it’s also just really great leadership advice for how to de-escalate a conflict, and how to interact with a wide variety of people from a wide variety of backgrounds. I think that that really sets a librarian in any position in good stead.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #9: It definitely does. Thank you for sharing that resource. Elizabeth, in closing, what do libraries mean to you personally? 17:12
Elizabeth Stinnette:
I love libraries. They are a refuge. When even coming into work, it’s like breathing a sigh of relief because there is such community here. There’s so much plugging into the people in your neighborhood. There’s all the books, there’s all the programs, and the library provides such a wonderful community resource that is so needed. I just feel that it’s such a privilege to be able to go to a place like this every day
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
Question #10: Libraries provide wonderful community resources, and it seems that for homeschool families, this can be a real asset. There are so many resources that our organizations can share with homeschool families to benefit everyone, if we are willing to connect with them and ask what they need. So I’m very happy that you were here today to share this with all of us.
Elizabeth Stinnette:
Yes, definitely. Thank you.
Adriane Herrick Juarez:
You’ve been listening to Library Leadership podcast. This is Adriane Herrick Juarez. For more episodes, tune in to Library Leadership Podcast.com, where you can now subscribe to get episodes delivered right to your email inbox. Our producer is Nathan Sinclair Vineyard. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.
We would like to thank the Park City Library for their dedicated support of this show. The opinions expressed on this show are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of Library Leadership podcast or our sponsors.