Photography by Whitney Curtis
It’s a cold and drizzly Saturday, and dozens of families are quietly milling around in a classroom at the Lutheran Church of Webster Gardens; they’re here for the National Geographic St. Louis Area Home Educators Geography Bee for students in fourth through eighth grades. Though the event was organized by St. Louis Homeschooling, Activities, Resources and Encouragement (homeschool-life.com/mo/share), a.k.a. SHARE, the competing students are from all over St. Louis and the Metro East. The atmosphere is warm, but official. There’s a long table set with potluck dishes covered in foil, as well as a streamer of world flags tacked up behind the circle of chairs where the contestants will sit, but all maps have been stripped from the wall, per National Geographic Society regulations.
Check-in is overseen by SHARE leader Cathy Mullins, who taught special education and first grade before she started home-schooling in the early ’80s. “Back then, people just thought you were nuts,” she says. “But then all these home-schooled kids started winning national spelling bees…”
As an icebreaker, moderator Becca Hubbard asks the kids to give their name, their favorite place, and why they like it. One kid says Hawaii, then quips, “And I like it…well, because it’s Hawaii!” During the preliminary round, the students—nearly 20 of them—get almost every question right. Questions cover basic U.S. geography, world geography, continents, physical geography, state nicknames. What might surprise observers unexposed to home-schooling is that the child’s age has nothing do with his or her level of knowledge—one of the youngest kids is a scrapper, hanging on nearly till the end.
The other thing that might surprise people is that the stereotype of home-schooled kids being isolated is pretty much the opposite of true. In fact, St. Louis has a robust network of independent home-school support organizations (the brochure for the annual Greater St. Louis Area Home Educators Expo lists 50 groups, including a number in Illinois and outstate Missouri), and all of them offer support and opportunities for group educational outings.
“It’s become a little home-school joke among some families: ‘Well, it’s called home-schooling—and we haven’t been home one day this week!’” Mullins says. That’s because a family might, in that time, visit The Magic House; attend a Kinder Konzert at Powell Hall; take P.E. classes at the Salvation Army; or take advantage of a program called Homelink, which offers supplemental classes, including science labs and life-skills courses on subjects like nutrition and sewing.
“There are lots of different bowling groups,” Mullins says, when asked whether groups also offer purely social activities. “We have holiday parties, and dances… We had 225 kids at the prom last year.”
Another big event, the annual Home Educators Expo (stlhomeschoolexpo.com), April 11 through 13, offers seminars for families, including those thinking about making the leap to home-schooling. The expo also offers three floors of vendors selling books, software, and other curricular support materials. “I always tell people, they think the decision to home-school is a big deal—it’s nothing compared to the curriculum you’re going to choose,” Mullins says. Asked whether the 19 kids at the geography bee might have been studying 19 different curricula, Mullins says she wasn’t sure, but it was possible. Home-schooling is unique, she says, because you can tweak your approach until you find something that works for your child—which might be flashcards, or something more unexpected.
“Last year’s winner, I asked him, ‘What did you do to get so smart in this?’ And he said, ‘Well, we have a shower curtain in our bathroom, and it’s a map of the world. Every time I spent a little bit of time in there, I would just study the shower curtain.’ His mom said, ‘Well, we did other things, too,’” Mullins laughs. “But I thought, ‘That’s one way to get a benefit from being a home-schooler—make sure your shower curtain has something educational on it!’”
