For the past year, one of the things I’ve constantly talked about and brainstormed was “How can I turn our little homeschool into something bigger?” I absolutely love schooling my kids. For starters, my husband and I can control what they do and don’t learn. We don’t have to worry about them learning something that may or may not interfere with our religious beliefs. Secondly, we make the school days super flexible. Our typical school days begin at 9:20 with P.E before they move on to their schoolwork for the day. Lunch usually begins around 11:20 and ends between 12:20 and 12:25. The school day typically ends by 2:00 PM, although sometimes it might be slightly earlier or slightly later. We also run on a four-day-a-week schedule. Most weeks, we’ll do school Mondays thru Thursdays, leaving Friday as a make-up day for the kids in case they get behind, need extra help, or fall ill during the week. My husband and I will also use the extra day to lesson plan, update grades, and prepare any projects the kids might have the following week. We’ll occasionally school on Tuesdays-Fridays but that is rare and only happens if a holiday falls on a Monday. This schedule has been wonderful for us and our kids. All work gets done and we still have plenty of time for other activities outside of the school day.
Taking all the above into consideration, I’ve thought about ways I could recruit others to join our homeschool. My initial goal was to launch the pilot program for the 2023-2024 school year and then possibly launch it to the public the following school year. I already had a long list of people I was going to approach about this and see if they’d be interested. However, things don’t always go as planned and the pilot launched shortly after the school year started.
Back in September, my dearest friend decided to homeschool her children using a charter school. I gave her some basic tips and let her know if she needed me to help, reach out. Reach out she did. Not only were there struggles with the charter school, but her kids were also struggling. After a couple of weeks of talking to her, helping her set up a schedule, and even talking to her kids, I knew what I needed to do. One evening when she and her family were over for dinner, I started talking to her about schooling her kids alongside mine. I showed her the curriculum I use, and the schedule and went over everything I could think of. Before she left that night, she happily agreed to my proposition. One week later I started schooling two of her three kids. Our pilot program was officially launched.
I wish I could say the transition was easy but there were a few bumps along the way. Within a week of our official launch, Covid hit both families and everybody wound up quarantined for two weeks. There were also some minor behavioral issues that had to be dealt with but as of right now, everything seems to be going well.
With our pilot officially launched, we’re now looking at going public next year but we still have a lot to consider, such as tuition costs, procedures if someone comes down with COVID, FLU, or any other illness, and so forth. Launching the pilot program for Z.I.L. has taught us quite a bit but we still have a lot to learn and to consider if we want to officially open to the public in September 2023. It’s an exciting time but also extremely nerve-racking. I can’t wait to see what materializes over the next few months, so stay tuned.