Homeschool Literature Course
January 7th, 2007 | 
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Question: What is your teaching cooperative like? How does it work?
I'm curious because I think the teaching cooperative of the local homeschool group to which we belong may be different than most.
We actually have two. One for elementary and one for middle / high school level courses. Both have a governing board comprised of parents.
With our teaching co-op, the teachers get paid by the parents.
Also... what type of courses are offered at your co-op?
With ours:
Elementary -
Phonics
History
Bunches of electives (art, photography, etc.)
Middle & High School level
Spanish I & II
Algebra I & II
Geometry
Latin I & II
Ancient Literature
Biology (with lab)
Our high school courses are run much as a university course with 2 classes of 1 1/2 hours each twice per week and a ton of work in between.
Like other answerers, many of these teachers are certified p.s. teachers who have left the profession to home school their own children.
Answer: I'm on the planning committee of our local HS co-op as registrar (a.k.a. datahead!). This fall (3rd semester of existance) we grew from 42 students to 127!
We have a former parochial school building where we meet for three hours on Fridays. We have five classrooms, a gymnasium, a "meeting hall" room, and a kitchen available. So we have eight classes each hour - 24 total. They run in 55-minute periods.
Most of our teachers are HS'ing parents, but some are from the community. We have retired art teachers who teach art, a university music professor who teaches music and guitar, my DH who is an engineer teaching robotics, etc. Each teacher is paid $20 per student per hour. We also have "facilitators" in certain rooms like the nursery and strategy games. They receive $5 per student. It's a lot less because they do not have all the planning time involved in their classes. The supply fees vary by class - from free to $30 (plus your own supplies - guitar, cooking utensils). We also charge a $15 building fee per semester per family that we give to the church for the use of the building.
Every family has to volunteer one hour each week as a classroom aide, hall monitor, nursery worker, etc. and one set up or clean up time slot per semester. Those who can't, or choose not to, are charged a $60 "buyout" fee. We then use that money for printing costs, paper goods at the party, etc.
Our semesters always have 12 class periods, and then the last meeting is an end-of-semester culmination party. The Karate kids receive their belts and demonstrate, the music, guitar, and drama kids perform, other classes present, and then we have "static" displays in a "fair" format for sewing projects, science projects, photography, art, and Rube Goldberg contraptions. We have refreshments, too.
Our classes run in age from Preschool to 12th grade. Then we also have the nursery, too. We try to have several choices each hour for each age range.
Here is our current set up:
* Early Elementary Sign Language (Pre-2nd)
* Geometry (7th-10th)
* Rube Goldberg (5th-12th) - in two different classrooms
* PE Fitness (President's Challenge) (3rd-8th)
* Elementary Art (1st-5th)
* Drama (4th-12th)
* Strategy Games (3rd-12th)
* Advanced Math (6th-12th)
* Early Elementary Fun (Pre-2nd)
* Spanish I (5th-12th) and II (5th-12th)
* Karate (1st-12th)
* Cooking (3rd-8th)
* Guitar - Beginning (5th-12th) and Intermediate (5th-12th)
* Elementary Science Fun (1st-5th)
* Elementary Math Club (Math Olympiad) (4th-6th)
* Sewing (3rd-12th)
* PE Fun (Pre-2nd)
* Advanced Art (5th-12th)
In the past we've also had, as we cycle through courses:
* Beginning and Intermediate Chess
* Photography
* Journalism
* BEST Robotics
* Pre-Algebra
We are the "formal" co-op in our city. There are a few other informal ones - high school biology lab, geography, FIAR, etc.
Literature Part I Unit 4
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