Saint Monica’s Podcast | Episode 5 Hybrid Schools
What is a hybrid school?
SHOW NOTES:
St Monica Podcast Encouraging Parents Homeschooling Teenagers
With Noelle Bandy and Angie Nasrallah
Riley Nasrallah - Sound Engineer
If we can do it, you can do it and it's worth doing!!
Episode 5 - What is a Hybrid School?
Let’s Define Hybrid School: Any type of “middle ground” between homeschooling completely independently and having students attend classes with another teacher 5 days a week.
Usually, hybrid school classes meet one or two times per week for teaching and students work independently on reading and assignments at home the other days. A teacher prepares the course of study. Classes are usually smaller, less than 20 students. The teacher will often assign grades and provide transcripts. Hybrid schools are often utilized for high school coursework so parents can outsource the higher end classes and electives.
How is a hybrid different from a co-op? Cooperative classes are usually taught by the parents from the group being taught while hybrid teachers are employed to teach specific subjects where they have expertise or talent.
Providing Community
--Hybrids provide opportunities for your students to learn with other students
--positive peer pressure
--hybrids provide opportunities for your kids to learn under other instructors
--hybrids provide opportunities for memberships in clubs, academic teams, the arts, etc
Different Types of Hybrid Schools
—Academic hybrid schools can be syndicated or local
Syndicated - Classical Conversations: https://www.classicalconversations.com/
Veritas - https://www.veritasschools.com/
Local Hybrids - Kings Academy https://www.thekingsacademy.org/
Metro Academic Studies - https://www.metroacademicstudies.com/
—arts and sports hybrids
Music Hybrids - https://www.nmme.org/
Orthodox Hybrid Schools - https://www.stnicholasacademy.org/
Pros and Cons of Hybrids
Con - stuck with someone else’s calendar to dictate holidays and vacation breaks.
Pro - ACCOUNTABILITY
Pro- another adult is responsible to get things done on time and according to the syllabus.
Pro- The hybrid teachers may provide experiences that you may not be able to give your children such as dissections or puppetry arts lessons
Pro - someone else telling your kids what to do at least some of the time (so it’s not always you!!)
Pro - generally someone with some amount of expertise is teaching the content
Pro-community (Dances, socials, clubs, music, friends, etc)
What our experiences have been from both parent and teacher perspectives
— from a parent perspective
--Nice to outsource challenging upper level courses like AP Calculus or French III
--Get electives from all sorts of people! We had a German lady teach German and a lady from China teaching Chinese, ASL, intensive art classes, web design, etc.
--Option to drop off kids and get groceries or go to workout class
--Choose hybrid schools with qualified teachers, who have field experience or degrees
--Choose instructors with the world-view that you want.
--Have a conversation with the instructor before class begins about issues that are important to you (for example, with a history teacher about he or she approaches the Reformation).
—from a teacher perspective
--Able to focus on your specialties and be true instructors in your field (math, biology, photography, creative writing)
--Able to bring a passion for your field to the students who wouldn’t necessarily have that.
--If you teach one subject deeply rather than every subject at a lower depth it means more joy for everyone.
What to do if you don’t have any hybrid options in your local area. Some thoughts…
Create a “virtual” hybrid school using online classes and including friends (and cousins if possible!) taking the same class. The students are generally able to see each other (or at least see their names in the class list and interact through the chat during class) and can team up online to work and study together during the rest of the week.
Work with other moms to do one or two classes together. If you’ve got one who’s more math-and-science-y and one who’s more history-and-lit-ey then you are pretty well set.
—Courses that meet online (St Raphael) St. Raphael School | Classical Education in the Orthodox Tradition
Taking courses online can be more fun if your kids know some of the other online students in real life. This creates community for them.
If you have any questions about hybrid schools, put them in the comments and Noelle and Angie will respond.
The topic for our next podcast is isolation.
That’s it for today. If you like what you are hearing or know someone else who would benefit from these discussions, please share our podcast online. We’ll see you next time.
God bless, Noelle and Angie
