Greetings Eddies,
In the early days of OpenEd, most families who found us were already doing something resembling homeschooling. They already knew you didn't need a teaching credential or six hours of worksheets at the kitchen table to educate a child at home.
But over the last few years, there’s been a shift. The majority of new students are now coming out of traditional classrooms – and they’re often not waiting for the start of a new school year to try something different.
When school isn’t working, June can feel a long way off.
That’s why we’re sharing a series of stories from parents who made a switch.
Take Cassie Shepherd (who shares her family's rhythms at @homecenteredlearning). When her twin girls started first grade, they cried almost every morning and came home with toddler-level meltdowns by October.
One evening Cassie looked over from her desk and saw her six-year-old bawling over a family drawing covered in hearts and marked 10 out of 10, saying, “I just want to be home with my family.” Three weeks after Cassie pulled the twins out in November and dragged a dusty card table out of the garage, “their light came back on.” → Read Cassie’s story
Or Janssen Bradshaw (founder of @everydayreading and co-founder of Savvy Learning). When her oldest daughter started kindergarten on a split schedule, she made it to Christmas before looking at Janssen and saying, “I don’t want to go anymore.”
In the ten years since, Janssen's four daughters have moved between full-time homeschool, a STEM school, Mandarin immersion, part-time high school, and back home again – guided by her mom's rule that “what you choose now doesn’t have to be what you choose forever.” → Read Janssen’s story
Both of these moms made the call in the middle of the school year instead of toughing it out until summer.
If you read this newsletter, you probably know that you have many options for opening your child’s education.
So in many ways, today’s email isn't for you (though I think you'll recognize your own family in several of the stories we’re sharing). It’s for the friend, neighbor, or sister-in-law who pulls you aside at pickup around this time of year and asks:
“How do you guys actually do this? Could we really make a change – and could we do it before June?”
When a parent is stressed out in late October, they aren’t tuning into ads for a program. But we hope that your stories might plant a seed, or in some cases, nudge a parent into taking the leap – if only for a semester – to see how their child responds to a more personalized, home-based approach.
Of course, the one big decision comes with dozens of smaller questions – and no two families share the exact same concerns.
So, we mapped 15 real switching stories to the most common family “archetypes” we encounter, and built a 2-minute quiz that suggests some options based on where they are in their journey.
Here is a look at how different kinds of families in the collection made it work:
The “One Year at a Time” Reset
Plenty of families don't set out to homeschool through graduation. They just need a reset for the rest of this school year, and they decide in the spring what comes next.
Cassie Olguin: “She experienced bullying in kindergarten, and I thought, this is the very first year. I don’t want to do this for the next twelve years.” → Read Cassie’s story
Dave Hoffman: “We visited the school, shadowed her class for a few days, and realized there was nothing happening in kindergarten that we couldn’t do at home.” → Read Dave’s story
Kitchen-Table Teachers (Who Felt Unqualified at the Start)
One-on-one learning at home looks nothing like managing 28 kids in a classroom, and almost nobody feels qualified on day one.
Dr. Claire Honeycutt: A tenured biomedical engineering professor at ASU, Claire saw her oldest daughter's tantrums disappear with homeschooling. When she and her husband tried school again that fall, “It lasted four weeks, and I told my husband, ‘I can’t do this.’”
She left academia in 2024 to homeschool full time and write at ClarifiEd. → Read Claire’s story
Laura Feller: “I kept asking myself, ‘Am I enough to help him?’ The answer was yes.” → Read Laura’s story
Curators, Hybrid Families & Working Parents
You don't have to teach every subject yourself, and you don't even have to choose the same track for every child. When parents work – or when one subject turns into a daily battle – these families curate the week around outside anchors.
Niven Singh: Niven and her husband both work full-time 8-to-5 tech jobs and yet she’s found a way to become the curator of her daughter's homeschool week: her sister-in-law coaches reading at the library on Thursdays, and her daughter attends a local learning community on Mondays & Wednesdays so both parents get two uninterrupted workdays. “I didn’t have to be the one teaching every class. It doesn’t all have to be me.” → Read Niven’s story
Keri Mae: As a single working mom of three boys (and former kindergarten teacher), Keri sends her two younger sons to a bell-free public Montessori charter school while her 12-year-old homeschools independently alongside her remote workday: “You can mix and match for the kid in front of you.” → Read Keri’s story
On the page, you’ll also find stories for the “Weekend Openers” who keep their current school and open things up around the edges, and veteran homeschool families who might want some extra support (without changing how they homeschool).
or browse all 15 stories at opened.co/switch
Applications for a January start close November 13 in most OpenEd states (November 15 in a few).
If a friend came to mind while reading this (or if your own switching story could help another parent feel less crazy for considering a mid-year change) consider one of these sharing options:
Text a friend. Send them the story above that sounds like their house, or send them straight to opened.co/switch. Here’s a note you can copy and paste:
Saw this and thought of you. No pressure, just some stories from families who switched in the middle of the school year: opened.co/switch
Hit reply to this email. Tell me in a paragraph or two what made your family switch (especially if you did it mid-year).
One last thing: We believe families should customize their education, so why not your inbox, too? Set your email preferences to choose which emails you get. (Note: Enrolled OpenEd families will still receive required program updates.)
– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)