Final-minute touchdown by Southwestern drops East, 37-30

Comment by Watchdog: Friday, September 10

I knew it - East Jessamine always were Colts at heart!...read more...

Final-minute touchdown by Southwestern drops East, 37-30

Comment by zerovic: Thursday, September 9

Kind of looks like Mr. Stark had gotten bored reporting about East Jessamine in the third to last pa...read more...

Two candidates eyeing Jessamine County clerk seat

Comment by jjhle6: Thursday, September 9

Finally someone else running against her! Joseph Hagen, you have my vote and my support for your cam...read more...

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School is in session. The teacher, Mrs. Long, instructs her pupils to begin taking notes.

“Lesson three — ‘Seals and sea cows.’ That’s what you want to write. Who can spell seals?”

An 8-year-old answers without even looking up.

“S, E, A, L, S.”

“OK,” the teacher replies. “Make sure you put the date on it. What animals do we have for the ocean box so far?”

The class discusses different marine animals to put in a diorama: a right whale, a narwhal, a beluga whale.

But then a 13-year-old boy points out a problem, addressing the teacher by a slightly less formal name than Mrs. Long.

“Mom, we don’t have that much room in the box.”

This isn’t a normal school. This school has five students from first grade to 10th grade who all learn together.

This school’s teacher assigns household chores to each of her pupils. This is Fred and Shannon Long’s home school in Wilmore.

The Longs’ five children — Hannah, 15; Nathan, 13; Gabby, 10; Sam, 8; and David, 7 — have never been enrolled in public school.

They are taught by their mother at home with some help from their father, who is a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary.

The Longs planned to home-school their first child, Hannah, when they lived in a desolate part of Milwaukee. They moved to Indiana in the summer but decided to follow through with the plan to educate her at home.

Hannah became good friends with a boy of similar age over the summer, but the Longs were disappointed to see how the boy’s social attitudes changed after he started attending public school.

While the school system doesn’t affect everyone the same way — Shannon noted she was a product of public schools and that “it can go a lot of different ways” — the Longs decided to stick with home-schooling and have done so ever since.

“Seals, sea lions and walruses are mammals that scientists call pinnipeds, because they belong to the order Pinnipedia.”

Mrs. Long pauses to help the students spell the unfamiliar word, then continues.

“The name of the order comes from two Latin words. Nathan, can you imagine?”

He shakes his head.

“Pinna and pedia. Pedia you should know. When you do your toenails you get a — ?”

“Pedicure.”

While younger students are learning how to spell new words, older students are studying roots of new words. And although the father of the family teaches during the day, Fred still meets with his kids to monitor their progress in his area of expertise.

“Nathan and Hannah are learning Latin, and that’s one thing that I did farm out last year,” Shannon said. “My husband knows Latin, but I don’t have time to learn Latin, and it’s not something that I want to have to keep up with ... he’s pretty busy himself, so I don’t rely on him a whole lot, but he gives them assignments and then meets with them once a week.”

Fred also helps with a family Bible lesson each morning before he goes to work.

After that, the kids start their math independently and then move on to a different subject. Today, it’s science.

Mrs. Long holds up a picture of a seal in a textbook and passes it around for the students to get a closer look.

“I think they bark, too — barking kinds of noises,” she says. “And they have large eyes.”

A 10-year-old girl suddenly gets up and runs away from her desk and up a flight of stairs.

“Where’d Gabby go?” Mrs. Long says. “Oh — I think she’s going to get her seal.”

The fifth-grader returns moments later with several small figurines of pinnipeds to pass around to other students in the class.

The classroom feels every bit like a conventional school. The kids sit around a table and take notes as the teacher goes through a text and explains it. A student getting up and running upstairs to her living room is one of the few events that give the classroom away as a home school.

The biggest difference from public schools is in the make-up of the classroom. The children sitting around the table are at vastly different places in their education: 15-year-old Hannah is reading the 400-page “World of Captain John Smith;” 7-year-old David is learning how to read.

Shannon manages the five different grade levels simultaneously with the help of the “Tapestry of Grace” curriculum — a four-year plan of study that cycles through world history while challenging each student at his or her own learning level. But sometimes she has to get creative to involve each of her children in the learning process.

“It is hard, because you want to make sure, like when we’re doing science, that Nathan is getting challenged,” Shannon said. “Sometimes I actually give him the book and say, ‘You’re teaching the lesson.’”

On the far side of the room, while the rest of the class continues to study aquatic life, a 10th-grade girl sits in a chair by a fireplace. She reads by herself as the other four students draw sea lions and make animals to place into an ocean diorama.

Hannah isn’t excluded from her siblings and their learning; she’s just on a different level and subject where she can teach herself.

“Through reading, you can learn almost anything that you want to,” Shannon said. “So I want them to be excellent readers.”

Shannon has always paid special attention to teaching her children how to read; once they can, she has the ability to send them off to do independent work.

“I try to do as much as I can in a group setting and then from the beginning, try to train them to go off (on their own),” Shannon said. “For their math skills, most of the time, they can do it fairly independently.”

While completing work and grading work independently can create an opportunity for dishonesty, Shannon said this is part of the children’s education as much as reading or math.

“It’s more than just the academics; it’s the integrity; it’s the work ethic,” she said. “ ... I’ll do everything that I can, but what I want them to be able to take away from this is not just knowledge but an excellent work ethic and understanding of how to handle yourself as an adult.”

Although many might assume the nature of home schooling would be harmful to children’s socialization, Shannon suggested that it merely provides a broader form of social education.

“They probably don’t socialize as much as other kids, but I’ve heard that the definition of socialization is actually learning how to behave in public,” she said. “So I fail to see how a group of first-graders are going to teach David how to be in public.”

The Long children are all involved with musical groups at their church.

They have also worked with other home-schoolers through programs Asbury College has offered, and they frequently play with the other 20 children who live on their cul-de-sac.

But Shannon said her kids don’t even have to leave the house to have beneficial interactions with others.

“I feel fortunate,” she said. “They’ve got a community here. There’s always something going on here; nobody’s ever bored. There’s always somebody to do something with.”

And whereas some children might only interact with others their own age, Shannon said her children’s community in home school broadens their socialization outside home school.

“Hannah will play with a 10-year-old,” she said. “That doesn’t bother her that she’s playing with her sister and her sister’s friends. A lot of Nathan’s friends are a few years younger than him, and I think he likes it because they look up to him.”

Although they may occasionally feel overwhelmed by the many subjects and many grades they teach, the Longs’ focus remains not on book knowledge but on preparing their children for life.

“These are my goals: a good academic foundation, practical skills, direction and maturity,” Shannon said. “We’ll see. I haven’t graduated anybody yet.”

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