Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.
Our educational journey has taken us to all corners of the schooling spectrum so far. All of my three boys have started out their early education as part of parent cooperative nursery play schools, attended NYC public school, have been homeschooled, attended private schools and more recently participated in remote learning.
What is a cooperative preschool? This type of school is organize by a group of families usually in the same neighborhood who share similar philosophies and learning goals for their children. The parents meet to discuss and agree on discipline policy, schedule, snacks, hours, location/space rental, curriculum, emergency/injury policy, finances/payments, interview and hire a teacher and even outings/field trips. The parents arrange to hire a teacher to provide their children with a quality preschool eduction for several hours a day ( usually about 3 hours) in this cooperative school setting. The class size is small, usually between 6-8 children and the children are between 2 years old and 5 years old. The parents usually rotate volunteering to assist the teacher during the schooldays or they may even choose to hire a teacher’s assistant.
My experiences with the parent cooperative preschool models have been great. We enrolled all three of my boys into neighborhood cooperative schools when they were about 2 years old. This allows them to get used to the idea of being away from us, their parents and socialize with other children around their own age. I believe these early schooling experiences have encouraged my boys to be more independent and able to transition to new experiences easier.
After these early co operative school experiences, we decided to enroll our oldest son into a local NYC public school Pre-K program. At that time, he was accepted into a half day program and attended in the afternoon. He seemed to really excel in this new environment due to the amazing teacher, assistant and small class size.
He graduated from Pre-K and we enrolled him into a different NYC Public School Kindergarten program because he was not zoned to stay in the same school where he attended Pre-k. This experience for him was not the best. The model of this school was large class size (approximately 60 children) and 3-4 teachers in a large one room schoolhouse set-up. He got lost in the crowd of students and seemed to be slipping through the cracks since he was a pretty quiet child at school. After, three months in this school, we decided to pull him out, homeschool him and join a homeschool coop.
What is a homeschool coop? A group of families who meet together and work cooperatively to achieve common educational goals for their children. Some activities/classes may be led by parents or parents may hire teachers or they may pay for group classes or activities.
The early education homeschooling allowed us to focus on a combination of his interests, the grade-level expectations and subjects that we wanted him to learn. This experience benefitted his younger brother and I was able to create and implement a differentiated curriculum where the boys would learn the same material but would delve into it at their own levels. Lots of our day was spent reading, practicing phonics skills, hands-on experiments and crafting with lots of outdoor time and field trips. We would attend weekly Science and Art classes with other students in our homeschool coop.
We decided to give public school another chance after my boys took and passed the Gifted & Talented tests for NYC public schools. Their experiences in these programs were varied, the class sizes were still much larger than we would have liked (28-30 students in Kindergarten thru 3rd grade). But after about two years, we placed the boys in private schools which offered much smaller class sizes and a bit more challenging curriculum for them.
We even started a Boys and Books bookclub where the boys and some friends would read and discuss a grade-level book they read. Many public libraries offer free meeting rooms that are perfect for these small group learning pods.
What is a learning pod? This is a new term to describe a small group of students learning together where a teacher facilitates the learning. This can take place in a home, a rented space or even outdoors (weather permitting).
With all of the uncertainty surrounding the 2020-2021 school year, learning pods have become an option many parents are considering. This option allows the children to still socialize and be taught by a certified teacher in small group settings. We are considering a cooperative learning pod model for our boys which would definitely reminds me of the good old days from our cooperative preschool.