ROCHESTER, N.Y. — According to the Empire Center for Public Policy, families in New York state have flocked to home education at rates twice the national average. According to Skill Ademia in 2019, prior to remote learning, approximately 2.5 million students were homeschooled in the United States. This number has risen significantly, with estimates indicating that almost 4 million students are being homeschooled nationwide.
To meet the needs of the community, Greece Public Library has been distributing updated homeschool kids providing supplemental materials for students’ required curriculum.
Being a parent can often be a handful, but for Léa Bouillon, she has chosen to wear many different hats; from being a mother of three, teaching French and English and even exploring classical music.
They are lessons, Bouillon says, you would not typically find in your everyday classroom.
“I’m an opera singer and I have a degree in French literature, so we focus on classical arts, classical music artists,” Bouillon said. “I try to maintain a balance between stretching them to something that is new and pointing them in a new direction, that they can really relate to.”
Which is why Bouillon has brought the classroom to her own home.
“What is wonderful about homeschooling is that you really get to think about your own education all over again and maybe reconsider your own strengths and weaknesses and how they can be improved,” Bouillon said.
According to the Empire Center for Public Policy, families in New York state have flocked to home education at rates twice the national average. Bouillon and thousands of other families making the switch have made New York second in the nation for homeschooling growth.
“Really choose a curriculum, to choose an education that is a little more specific to your children,” Bouillon said. “I wasn’t homeschooled, so I don’t know what I’m doing. So I think it used to be that there weren’t a lot of resources for some parts of homeschooling. And now thankfully there are so many resources.”
As public schools have seen the surge, so have their local libraries. Distributing homeschool kits, Greece Public Library provides materials that cover a variety of topics.
Librarian April Newman has spent over a year crafting materials for families like the Bouillons in hopes they are provided the proper supplemental materials.
“The supplemental materials include music and art and STEM, Vocabulary, Spanish,” librarian April Newman said. “So it’ll be things that people don’t have in their home school curriculum, per se, but they want to have an add on because the curriculum for the home schools and the co-ops, they’re not going to be including all subject matters sometime. So it’s really helpful for the parents if we give them some new materials.”
As families continue to show a growing interest in alternative learning models, Bouillon has found beauty in being her own teacher.
“Just to be the one who gets to pour into your children and build this deep relationship with them is a real privilege,” Bouillon said.
And she’s finding the world to be the true classroom.