Homeschool Resource Centers

by Jerry Mintz (JerryAERO@aol.com)Within the next 20 years community learning centers will become increasingly important as educational sources, often replacing what we now refer to as "schools." We now see the beginnings of this movement. Almost every day, AERO is contacted by people who are interested in starting such a center, or for whom this is an answer. AERO is developing a kind of kit for people who want to start such programs.
     This issue features three of these cutting edge centers: Puget Sound Community School and Clearwater School, in Seattle, and Pathfinder Learning Center, in Amherst, MA.
     This year's National Association of Broadcasters meeting was in Seattle. I decided to go to the conference because it would also give me a change to visit Puget Sound Community School at Clearwater School, which are both in the Seattle area.
     I was wonderfully tended to by the greater AERO community in the form of help from PSCS, and Andy Smallman, its director. Arrangements were made for me to stay at the home of Sherry Grindeland, a newspaper reporter and friend of PSCS. We also did a radio show from there as part of a pot luck.
     PSCS represents an important new approach to learning. It was started by Smallman, who had worked at the Little School, a pioneering alternative elementary school. He perceived a need for a learning center to meeting the needs of junior high through highschool students.
     First, the school is not a school. All the students are homeschoolers, where the parents and students take the primary responsibility for their own education. Second, they have an office but not a school building. They meet three days a week in different donated locations, in different parts of Seattle.
     I observed them in all three locations that week. The first one was in a fraternity on the University of Washington campus. The second was in a youth center, and the third was in a community center converted from a firehouse. The students have internships set up for the fourth day.
     In the fraternity location I participated in a video documentary class, and used it to set up the video documentary which I made of this visit to PSCS and Clearwater. After that a went to a class called, "How to make the best use of PSCS." One of the students led me to the UW cafeteria for lunch. On the way back I discovered a dorm with a ping pong table, and later in the day gave a table tennis class to several students.
     The PSCS students are very serious about their classes, perhaps because the classes form a core of their activities since they do not meet in their own building. Nevertheless there were always spaces in which to just hang out, for those students who wanted to do that.
     The students seemed somewhat uncomfortable in the fraternity space, and in fact, arranged a different meeting space for that day not long after that.. Also, when I visited the school was experimenting with a new program, more academically oriented, for a group of its older students. Eventually some in the school were not happy with the separateness of the group and the program is being reevaluated. The point is, the school is flexible and always changing, willing to try new approaches to learning.
     Early one morning I went to a meeting at the PSCS office of their Internet Team in Belleview, across Lake Washington, from Seattle. There I finally got to meet Greg Morris, a PSCS student who has been webmaster of the AERO website since is was 14 years old. He is now 17, 6'6", and is about to go to go away to college, perhaps Stanford, although he has already accrued two years of college credit. It was great to finally be able to thank Greg in person for the wonderful work he's done for us.
     After the meeting I drove across to Seattle to visit Clearwater school. It is also a homeschool resource center, based somewhat on Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts. It has 25 kids, all homeschoolers, aged 5 to 13. They meet at Stephanie Seranto's home, which has a spectacular view, overlooking Lake Washington. They are looking for permanent site. When I walked in there was a mandatory meeting going on, discussing procedures for looking for staff, hiring them, and confidentiality of student files.
     In this story I'm not going to go into much detail, because we have transcribed the radio interview with Stephanie and her son, Cory, in the Changing Schools section, but I do want to tell one story:
     During the mandatory meeting, the two youngest 5 year olds made so much noise they were asked to leave the meeting. they were told they were going to be "written up," that is, the case was to be given to their judicial committee.
     In the middle of the second item it was suggested that maybe this shouldn't be a mandatory meeting. Everybody said, "Great!" and left, except for three girls and the rest of the staff. They talked for a little while longer about this issue and that was the end of that part of the meeting.
     A bunch of the kids went downstairs to play with some little cars which would scoot across the floor, and they were creating games with them. Some of the kids were playing video and computer games.
     It was interesting to me how many similarities there were between Clearwater and my school. For example they did create something like the stop rule (a word cue which was used to prevent fights and conflicts), and they did have a warning system because they didn't want to be too punitive. They just wanted to give members community censure about behavior which was affecting other people's freedom.
     A judicial committee commenced upstairs in the attic space. They were talking about the two youngest kids. As a result of this meeting the committee debated, and decided to give the kids a warning, so that the next time that they would be made to leave the next five meetings without the ability to vote. One of the student members of the Judicial Committee said, "This is probably not much punishment. They probably want to leave anyway!"
     They brought the two five year olds back in and, sure enough, that was pretty much their reaction.
     "That's what we wanted," Lucas said.
     "See, I told you!" said the committee member. But I think they did get the idea that people were not pleased with their behavior.
     After the meeting I talked to Lucas, one of the five year olds (also Stephanie's son). I asked him what he thought about the decision and suggested that perhaps he could make a proposal that he and the other boy could be excused from mandatory meetings, rather than just trying to get kicked out.
     He responded, "That's possible, but I don't think that it would pass."
     I said, "But you could always say that it wasn't fair to you because the vocabulary that people use in the meetings is sometimes too difficult, and you can't always understand everything that is going on."
     Lucas stood up, looked me straight in the eye and said, very clearly "Yes, but that wouldn't be true! I understand everything that's going on."
     I said, "For example, did you understand all those teacher qualifications that they were discussing?"
    "Yes, I did," Lucas responded. "But the meetings are boring!"
      Visiting PSCS and Clearwater was the highlight of the trip. To continue this exploration of homeschool resource centers, please read the radio show transcripts of Clearwater and Pathfinder Learning Center in the Changing Schools section of AERO-Gramme #26. Also, we do have videotape of the two Seattle schools, the Snakefoot Homeschool Resource Center, and the radio show at the Westin ($25) and audiotapes of Andy Smallman of PSCS, Stephanie and Cory of Clearwater, Josh Hornick and students of Pathfinder, and Betsy Herbert of the South Street Centre in Santa Cruz ($10 each).