Why some Oregon parents are making the switch to homeschooling. (Featuring Rosalyn Newhouse, VH Staff and President of Oregon Home Education Network) By Rolando Hernandez, January 27, 2023 As schools shut down during the beginning of the pandemic, students had to quickly pivot to virtual learning at home. This shift led to an increasing number of Oregon parents opting to homeschool their children, even after schools reopened. As the Oregon Capital Chronicle reports, homeschool enrollment numbers today are 40% higher than what they were pre-pandemic. Rosalyn Newhouse is a volunteer and board president of Oregon Homeschool Education Network. She joins us to share the reasons some parents made the switch and the challenges it can have. Listen to the episode HERE Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer. Geoff Norcross: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Geoff Norcross. Most Oregon school kids spent about a year doing distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. When the schools returned to in person instruction, many parents decided it was better to keep their kids at home. According to the Oregon Capital Chronicle, home school enrollment numbers are 40% higher than they were before the pandemic. We wanted to get a better sense of why parents are increasingly making this choice. Rosalyn Newhouse is the board president of the Oregon Homeschool Education Network (OHEN) and she joins us now. Rosalyn, welcome to Think Out Loud. Rosalyn Newhouse: Thanks for having me on. Norcross: How do you explain this shift that we’re seeing to more homeschooling? Newhouse: Well, homeschooling has been growing gradually over the years for a number of reasons and the experience a couple of years ago where everyone was asked to stay home, really kind of pushed a lot of people into the idea of homeschooling without any sort of planning or expectation or sometimes even interest. I think what happened is that a lot of people discovered that homeschooling was sometimes easier than they expected; it would sometimes be more beneficial than what they’ve been experiencing in public school. And sometimes it was just a little bit of a bandwagon thing. When everybody’s homeschooling, we veteran homeschoolers kind of became the experts in the field and everyone was asking ‘how do you do it?’ And so there was an appearance of ‘oh everybody’s doing homeschooling;’and then when school started opening up it was a little bit of, ‘well, let’s go with the crowd and do homeschooling.’ And it’s a little deceptive because still only about 4-5% of Oregon children are homeschooled, which is not a huge percentage, but it is a lot more mainstream and it’s a lot more recognized and therefore a lot more popular. Norcross: Did you hear from parents who, before the pandemic, had never even considered homeschooling, but came around to the idea because of their experience in 2022? Newhouse: Oh, absolutely. I think the first reaction for most parents whose children were suddenly at home was, ‘oh gosh, how do I recreate a school experience in my living room?’ And what they discovered is you don’t have to recreate the school experience in your living room or kitchen. Homeschooling can be something completely different from the traditional educational model. And it’s one of the reasons that homeschooling started to become popular, too. Norcross: You started teaching your own daughter at home in 2003. Can you talk about why you made that choice then? Newhouse: She wasn’t really having good experiences in a group setting. And this is something that a lot of people experience with kids, especially younger kids who aren’t necessarily competent at existing in large groups. In a school setting where you’ve got anywhere from 15– in an ideal situation–to 30 or 40 kids in one room with one teacher, maybe a couple of teachers’ aides, it’s hard for those kids to get the kind of attention that they need or want. It’s hard for them sometimes to navigate. Think of a six-year old who’s suddenly experiencing not only having to exist in a group of a whole lot of other people who also think that they are the most important people in the world and at the same time experiencing a lot of academic pressure to learn this and learn that. And there isn’t a lot of time to spend with each kid in a large group. For a child, it can feel rushed, it can feel stressful, it can feel pressured. Some kids do great with it and some kids don’t. Some schools have great environments that really nurture all and each of the children in the classes and some don’t. So there are a lot of variants in how a school can really respond to the needs of a child. And where you get their disconnect between those needs and the responses, that’s where homeschooling can be a really good option. Norcross: You’ve mentioned a few of the reasons that people have for making that choice, including the one that you had for your own daughter. Can you point to another one or two big reasons for wanting to do this that people come to you? Newhouse: Well, I think especially in middle school as children start developing some real personal interests like someone might decide that history is really history is a real…. Norcross: Rosalyn Newhouse, do we still have you? Okay, well, we seem to have lost Rosalyn Newhouse. We were talking with her. She is the board president of the Oregon Homeschool Education Network. And we’re talking about the bump in homeschooling among students in Oregon; there seems to be a 40% increase in homeschooling in Oregon ever since the pandemic. Rosalyn Newhouse, do we have you back? Newhouse: Apparently so. Norcross: Okay. Well, live radio, isn’t it great? You were talking about some of the big reasons why people are homeschooling these days. Can you pick that back up again? Newhouse: One of the reasons that people choose to homeschool is that children at… Norcross: We seem to have