Welcome! We're Willie and Lynda Lockhart, and this year we're the coordinators of the Harvest Homeschool Co-op, which means we're the ones whose phone rings at 6:30 on a Friday morning when somebody's car won't start. We live in the suburbs northeast of Atlanta with Gabriel (9), Olivia (7) and Bridget (4), and we have been homeschooling since the fall of 1996.

Lynda taught kindergarten for seven years before that, so she knew exactly what she was getting into, or thought she did. Willie is a mechanic at the city bus garage. He works four ten-hour days so he can be at co-op on Fridays, where he teaches nothing and fixes everything.

(Willie here: I also carry things. A co-op is ninety percent carrying things.)

A co-op is not a school. Every family is still in charge of its own children's education, Monday through Thursday, any way they see fit. On Fridays we get together so the kids can do the things that are hard to do at a kitchen table: dissect a frog, sing in parts, give a speech to a room full of people who aren't their mother, run around a gym, and have lunch with forty other children. The parents get to do things that are hard to do alone, too, like talk to another grown-up before noon.

That's the plan. Here's the truth: the first Friday of the semester we started first period at 9:40, the preschool room got into the fingerpaint before the teacher did, and a third grader threw up in the gym. The second Friday we started at 9:20 and only lost one lunch. By October it usually runs like a clock. The rest of the year it runs like a clock that somebody dropped.

The rule we never bend: no drop-offs. Every family has a parent on site, working, every minute we're there. That's what makes it a co-op. It's also why we can let forty-seven children loose in a church without anybody getting sued.

Everybody teaches or helps every period. There is no "sitting this one out." If you're not in a classroom, you're in the nursery, the hallway or the kitchen. Here's who's doing what this fall (teachers' classes are on the class schedule):

Registration is $40 a family for the fall semester. $25 of it goes straight to the church as a thank-you for the building, the heat and the lights. The other $15 buys paper towels, copier paper, toilet paper (so much toilet paper) and the first aid kit. For eighteen families that's $720: $450 to the church and $270 for supplies. Jill Cordell keeps the books, and she will show them to anybody who asks, and nobody ever asks, because Jill.

Some classes have a small supply fee on top of that, paid to the teacher the first Friday. Those are listed on the class schedule. If a fee is a hardship, tell Lynda privately. No child sits out a class over five dollars.

New families always ask this first, so here is the short version as we understand it. We are not lawyers. Read the law yourself, and if anything is unclear, call your school superintendent's office. They have always been polite to us.

• Declaration of intent. You file one with your local school superintendent within 30 days of starting to homeschool, and again by September 1 every year after that.
• Attendance. You send the superintendent an attendance report every month. Lynda does ours on the last day of the month, at the kitchen table, with a cup of coffee and a sigh.
• 180 days. School has to meet the equivalent of 180 days a year, four and a half hours a day.
• Subjects. The program has to include at least reading, language arts, math, social studies and science.
• Testing. Your child takes a nationally standardized test every three years, starting at the end of third grade. You keep the results. You don't send them in.
• Progress report. Once a year, the parent writes an assessment of each child's progress in each subject, and keeps it.
• The teacher. The parent who teaches needs a high school diploma or a GED.

That's it. Keep good records. Keep them for years. Willie bought a filing cabinet at a yard sale in 1996 for $8, and it is the best eight dollars this family ever spent.

We're full for the fall. We take new families in January, if we have room, after they've visited for two Fridays. E-mail us and we'll put you on the list and tell you which Fridays are good for a visit (hint: not the first one, and not the one before Christmas).

If you're thinking about homeschooling and want to see what a day at home looks like for one family, we love Homeschooling the Parker Kids. Dana Parker puts up her family's schedule, the books they use, their own Friday co-op, and the honest truth about the hard days. Lynda read the hard days part out loud to Willie and they both laughed until they cried, which is the most accurate review we can give.

Fall Classes & Teachers  |  Field Trip Calendar

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Write to Willie and Lynda Lockhart: [email protected]
Last updated September 25, 1999