By Bryan Marshall
BEREA — Janet Futrell remembers what homeschool was like during the “trailblazing years” when she first moved to Berea in the 1980s.
A year before she moved in 1986, she visited Berea and discovered that there was a small group of families who were home schooling their children — a concept she had been thinking about for her then-7-year-old son Andrew and then-6-year-old daughter Brooke.
However, when Futrell’s family arrived to make Madison County their new home, the homeschooled students had all returned to school.
“We came in the middle of a school year and had been thinking about homeschooling, so we decided to just try it,” she said. “We just never quit.”
“When we started homeschooling, as far as we know, we were the only homeschoolers in the county,” Futrell said. “So, it was an interesting time because no one understood what we were doing. Every time we were out, people would ask why they weren’t in school and the kids were asked all these questions.”
Brooke had been in kindergarten and Andrew went through half of second grade in public schools in St. Louis before the move to Berea.
Now, they spent their time reading, writing journal entries and playing learning games at home.
“We approached homeschooling like we were learning in the course of our whole lives,” Futrell said. “So, we didn’t do a lot of sit down school at home. We were living out in the country on a piece of land. My husband was a professor at EKU, and he was at home doing a lot of preparation. They would go in and out of his office. I worked part-time and they could work with me. We approached homeschooling more like community-based learning.”
Andrew was bored attending public school by second grade because the instruction was not individualized, Futrell said.
“He was a follower,” she said. “So, we thought, if he’s bored and a follower, he’s going to be in all kinds of trouble. We were very glad to have those years where he could develop on his own and just go to town.”
Now 29, Andrew recently earned his Ph.D. and is an ecologist researching fresh water ecosystems at the University of Georgia.
“He spent at least half of every day roaming in the woods when he was young,” Futrell said. “That’s the root of his work.”
Andrew eventually did return to public school in the eighth grade while living in Madison County.
However, his mother said he did not feel it benefited him.
“He started at Model Lab because it was smaller,” Futrell said. “Then, he finished at Madison Central. He had a couple good teachers at each place that really challenged him. The rest of the time, no one challenged him. I discovered his learning was very chopped up. At home, it had all been very integrated.”
“He told his sister, who went all the way through in homeschool, that when he was done that he was dumber than when he started school,” she said.
Like her brother, the influences and surroundings Brooke experienced growing up as a homeschooler is evident in her life now.
The Futrell family worked with refugees from Central America when Brooke and Andrew were young, meaning Spanish-speaking people were in and out of their house all of the time.
The 28-year-old Brooke, who is married to an Ecuadorian, now lives in Ohio working as a Spanish-speaking contact for the Latin American office for National Cash Register.
“She focused on that,” Futrell said. “When she got into high school, she studied on her own, and then went over to EKU and took Spanish classes. By the time she got to college, she passed out of a lot of the initial Spanish and dived right in. She lived in Mexico for awhile and did a lot of stuff to develop that language.”
Having been a homeschool graduate, the process of being admitted to college proved a little trickier for Brooke, who graduated from Earlham College in Indiana with a degree in education, Spanish and sociology.
“When Brooke got to Earlham, she was a National Merit Scholar, and they told her she had to take her GED,” Futrell said. “They had never had a homeschool student before. They didn’t know how to deal with it. She told them no. She had this other stuff she could show them that meant so much more. So, they conversed with her and they developed a new policy for admitting people.”
Eventually, Brooke had to submit an education profile describing what her learning experience was during her high school years.
Three years after moving to Berea, Futrell helped start a homeschool support group in Madison County with eight to 10 families.
“Before that, we had to go to Winchester or Lexington to find other homeschoolers,” she said.
Wanting to educate other interested parents, Futrell also started conducting workshops through Eastern Kentucky University Community Education to let others know that there was another educational option.
“A lot of people are afraid of it because they feel like if they don’t know everything themselves, how are they are going to facilitate their own children’s learning,” she said. “I’ve done workshops to help people understand that you don’t have to be an expert on everything to be able to set an atmosphere and find resources for your kids to learn anything they want to learn.”
Futrell still conducts workshops and also is a coordinator for Red Cedar Learning Co-Op in Berea. The cooperative allows homeschooled students to gather together twice a week to further enhance their education.
“We have this rich community with a college and a university and lots of people who are willing and ready to be resources to kids,” Futrell said. “Our kids would come up with something they didn’t know and we didn’t know anything about, and we would call the appropriate department at EKU and tell them that we had a group of kids who are curious. Our response in every case was, ‘You have kids who want to learn what I know?’”
Since more than 20 years ago when she began homeschooling her children, Futrell said the number of homeschool students has dramatically increased and resources are more readily available.
The stigma about homeschool also has changed, she said.
“In the community, it’s like night and day,” Futrell said. “No one understood what we were doing. We rehearsed answers if someone asked us questions. They were always having to legitimize themselves out there in the community. Now, if you’re out with kids, people will just say, ‘Oh, you’re homeschoolers. That’s cool. That’s interesting. I wish I could do that.’”
Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.
