What’s Hybrid Homeschooling and How’s It Changing Education?
Hybrid homeschooling is the future of education.
If you’re looking for the best education options for your child or find yourself interested in an innovative approach to education, then this article is for you.
During the last couple of years, COVID-19 disrupted how children worldwide receive their education. As a result, innovation was required to deliver education services in ways that answered the unique challenges posed by the pandemic. However, some of these ideas have been so successful that I think they are here to stay. One of them is the concept of hybrid homeschooling.
Keep reading to learn all about hybrid schools and hybrid homeschooling. I also threw in some of the pros and cons of this type of education.
Additionally, you’ll learn some of the challenges you may find along the road if you decide that this is the type of education you want for your child.
What Is the Definition of a ‘Hybrid School’?
Providing a hybrid school definition is problematic. Every hybrid school works differently. However, they all use a “blended learning” or “hybrid learning” approach where “students mix traditional school attendance with home instruction.”
In this learning style, the school chooses the curriculum.
Don’t worry, parents are still involved in their children’s education. But teachers are the ones providing the primary instruction and assigning grades.
What Is Hybrid Homeschooling?
Hybrid homeschooling is a relatively new tendency in education. In hybrid systems, students “attend formal classes in traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms for part of the week, and work from home the rest of the week.”
In this education model, kids may spend two days at home and three at school, two at school and three at home, part of the day at home and part of it at school.
Any other variant of time distribution between home and school works! However, there’s one big difference between hybrid homeschooling and hybrid schools. I
It allows parents to choose the curriculum and are responsible for most of their children’s education.
In hybrid homeschooling, parents decide how much control they want to have in their children’s education and how much they want to delegate to an institution.
What Is It a Reaction To?
One could argue that hybrid homeschooling was a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a sense, it was. However, it’s also true that the number of homeschooled students in the U.S. doubled between 1999 and 2016. Currently, 3% of American students are homeschooled.
So the pandemic explains one aspect of this education model that needed to adapt to the challenges brought by a once-in-a-generation health emergency.
But what was behind the growth of homeschooling before the pandemic?
Among other reasons, parents wanted to avoid adverse school environments and help satisfy their children’s special needs. Hybrid homeschool programs offer a halfway approach that increasingly catches parents across the U.S.
What Is It the Solution To?
Hybrid homeschooling solves two main problems:
- The need to offer flexibility to students during a pandemic and to move forward
- The need for homeschooling parents who want their children to develop some skills (such as social and artistic ones) that are harder to produce at home
Hybrid homeschooling is changing education because it answers questions from both sides of the education tandem: schools and families. By providing a flexible approach to education, hybrid homeschooling may have found the path to where education is heading in the future.
Who Does It Benefit?
First and foremost, hybrid education benefits the students.
One of the traditional criticisms of homeschooling is that it denies students the social interactions that are so important at those ages. Well, hybrid homeschooling smartly solves that issue. Without giving away too much about the other main feature of a homeschool education: control over the curriculum.
Nonetheless, hybrid homeschooling is also beneficial to schools looking to find new ways of delivering their services and growing their student population.
In other words, it’s a win-win situation.
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How Hybrid Homeschooling Is Changing Education
According to Forbes, hybrid homeschools blur “the lines around what we consider a school.”
Additionally, with the arrival of new technologies, families find it easier to get high-quality resources and networking and collaborating opportunities.
Another great benefit is that hybrid schools “aren’t bound by centralized state curriculums.”
This allows communities of similar-minded families to collaborate. They can also work alongside colleges or educational networks to create curriculums according to their interests and/or beliefs.
Hybrid Homeschooling Pros
I’ve already mentioned some of the main pros of a hybrid education. Now let’s dig deeper into some of its benefits:
- Parents still have a say in curriculum-design
- Students get to socialize with kids their age
- Personalized attention
- Some states allow homeschool expenses to be redeemable through their Educational Savings Accounts programs
Hybrid Homeschooling Cons
As with any disrupting idea, hybrid homeschooling also offers its own array of difficulties to be considered before deciding on following this path:
- It eliminates the time flexibility that traditional homeschooling offers (travel plans aren’t as easy to organize)
- For families with several children, it can become challenging to manage the different schedules that each student may have
- It requires a lot of planning and organization
- Offers less control over a child’s education than traditional homeschooling
- Students may find a “negative environment” or a “negative influence” at school
What Are the Challenges for Families Doing Hybrid Homeschooling?
Naturally, I can extrapolate the challenges.
First, I think that the main challenge of hybrid homeschooling is logistics. Planning a week with some days at school and some at home can be difficult. This is particularly challenging when parents and kids are used to a more typical routine.
Hybrid homeschooling also requires an open mind both—from parents and students.
Remember, this is a style of education that offers a lot of advantages. But it’s still in its initial phases and, as such, will undoubtedly suffer some growing pains.
Finally, I think the hardest challenge is ceding some control over our children’s education.
Is Hybrid Homeschooling the Right Fit for Your Family?
That’s a question that nobody can answer for yourself.
New technologies and our ever-changing societies constantly bring different approaches to education. Hybrid homeschooling is a fascinating system that may satisfy your family’s needs. I recommend you do some research. You might want to start by looking if hybrid homeschool options are available in your area.
In the end, hybrid homeschooling is about the future of education. Maybe this is what you’ve been looking for your child.
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