Okay, I'm lost in a technical muddle today. Really. It's a trend, actually. Yesterday I spent probably an hour trying to sort out user names and passwords on two services I use. You know you're having a bad day when you can't even remember your own name.

Today I am deep in thoughts on what my ideal coop for next year would look like. I am reading around and have been trying to gather ideas for myself. As Walter and Ollie get older, I am finding that I am wanting more substance. I love this idea of a cultural studies coop or group--one where you study a particular culture, perhaps in depth for several weeks. I'm wondering if I could incorporate that into my Latin class or Latin work for the boys next fall. There are a number of homeschool "academies" in our area, but they all seem to have a strong Christian component, not that I'm not Christian, but these really have the focus on the religious element more than the academic in many ways, or the academic is purely presented and viewed through the lens of a "Christian worldview." On one level I'm fine with that, but is this my Lutheran-Presbyterian worldview or something else? Add in that often the classes they offer costs hundreds of dollars, sometimes even stretching a bit toward piecemeal private school tuition, and with three children, they just don't make sense. I can't say for sure at this point that I'm looking for a small-scale Westminster Academy, one such homeschool outsourcing school in our area, but I wouldn't rule that quite out, either. What I'm hoping for is creativity and high-engagement, but with a strong substance component.

There seems to be an ongoing question among homeschoolers about whether one can truly do "school" with other families or whether anything that happens outside of your own home can only aspire to enrichment/fun, but not have any impact on what goes on at home. Perhaps it's my severe slacker ways, but I myself believe that meat and substance are, indeed, possible when you cooperate with other parents and their children. At the very least, my children are open to listening and taking direction from other adults in a way that they aren't always willing to do with me They get exposed to topics that I might not have given much thought to. They are motivated by the opportunity to share their work with other people. Knowing that they will be need to present information or explain homework or share what they know or care about provides the kind of meaningful context that can be lacking in a homeschool life at home. Sure, I could assign them a book report or a presentation about electromagnets, but without either the extrinsic motivator of a grade (the old "We write so that we can get a grade from our teacher and because he told us to do it and we'll be in trouble if we don't") or of an actual audience other than me, who is not giving a grade...well, there doesn't feel like there is a point. Communication feels so vitally important to me across the curriculum. Writing, of course, is all about sharing ideas and communicating with an audience. Remove the audience, especially if you yourself are not writing for your own personal gratification (and my boys generally aren't, if truth be told), and there's simply little meaning left in the process. But even something like science or a language is about expressing what you know to someone else. What good is it to translate in isolation? Isn't a primary goal of experiment and discovery to make known and make useful what you have learned?

With those ideas in mind, I am trying to imagine my ideal situation for the fall. And needless to say, my utopian schoolyear is not taking into account a certain fellow who revels in ripping paper, writing on non-consumable materials, and throwing heavy objects at our heads and legs while we are trying to do timed math drills. But details, details. I would like to have all three of my children experience a discussion of literature of some kind. It could be Junior Great Books, which we have been using both in our classes in the past and sporadically at home. It could be novels that they find interesting (though I'm wondering whether a whole group of 8 year olds finds the same books exciting...unfortunately, mine seem to have inherited my own lack of interest in the fantasy/sci fi genre, which nearly obliterates common fascination with other readers). I would also like to have some opportunity to share learning about the social sciences. This is Ollie's particular interest, and he would be rather keen on doing research in any number of topics--US politics, international relations, current conflicts, anything related to history, comparative government, US government... The list goes on. Walter would enjoy some sort of science class or opportunity to present material and do experiments. For Frances, something involving thinking games, critical thinking, exploration of world cultures, and a chance to discuss stories or do writing would be what I'm looking for. She also has not had the benefit of doing many of the simpler science experiments I used to do with the boys, so something concentrating on kitchen chemistry or experiments you can eat or something like that would be fun for her. Or studies of animals and biology.

There's something about coops that is, well, so confusingly uncooperative. Or maybe things just become more difficult than they need to be, or the focus becomes too narrow and constricting. I don't know that it has to be this way. We get kind of stuck in our ruts of how things have been in the past or the paradigm of what we did last year, and it becomes more difficult to imagine other boxes, other alternate schemes. I'm hoping that this Thursday's meeting won't end up being divisive, or worse yet, result in no coop at all...my largest fear. Instead, I hope that we'll be able to come in with fresh ideas and a commitment to working out something that will be in the ballpark of what everyone is looking for.