Due to these drastic changes, more parents in Whatcom County are choosing to homeschool their children, according to Meagan McGovern, creator and admin of Homeschoolers of Whatcom County website and Facebook page.

McGovern said that since the pandemic, the Homeschoolers of Whatcom County Facebook page has received 800 new members, which now makes for almost 2,000 total members.

McGovern recounts before the pandemic, there were three kinds of homeschoolers.

Parents who chose homeschooling due to religious reasons, parents who chose homeschooling who wanted to be involved and provide better education to their children, and parents who chose homeschooling because the school was not meeting their needs.

But now a fourth homeschooler has come onto the scene: the COVID-19 homeschooler. And it has changed the landscape of homeschooling all together.

“So now homeschooling has come to mean a lot of different things to a lot of people,” said McGovern. “And it basically means anybody who’s not in school and that wasn’t what it used to mean. Now it can mean somebody who’s doing an online school, with the school district, using all of the school’s curriculum. And traditionally, that’s not a homeschooler, that’s somebody who’s enrolled in public school.”

McGovern explains with this approach to home education, you lose a lot of freedom and flexibility that traditional homeschooling offers but can still face similar challenges.

Since the start of the pandemic, McGovern has received emails from new homeschooling parents asking a variety of questions regarding how to approach homeschooling for their children.

“A lot of them come in, completely unable to understand what homeschooling is,” said McGovern. “They’ll come in and write me an email saying, ‘where do I sign up for homeschooling?’ and ‘when are the classes?’ And well, that’s not the way homeschooling works. This is the education you have to get on your own, to figure out how to do this.”

But that is why McGovern started the Homeschoolers of Whatcom County website and Facebook page: to provide guidance to parents and guardians new to homeschooling their children.

“So that people who don’t know anything about homeschooling have a place to go and look at local homeschoolers and see how it works here in the community,” said McGovern.

McGovern says she has spoken to many parents who are unhappy with how local schools are operating during COVID-19, with some parents who don’t want their children to wear a mask and/or have their schooling changed by the pandemic at all to other parents who believe unless everyone is masked and vaccinated, no one should be in school.

“And so both of [these parents], outliers on both sides of the bell curve, have chosen to keep their kids out of school,” said McGovern. “Most of the people who are homeschooling for COVID are not the people who would have ever thought they would homeschool; they’re not doing it because they set out on this journey. That’s why their kids were in public school.”

McGovern has always homeschooled her children.

She said homeschooling is an important part of her family’s lifestyle.

“Homeschooling was a way that we could keep together as a family and enjoy each other and learn about the world together,” said McGovern.

Crystal McCracken has been homeschooling her children since March 2020. COVID-19 was the main force that started her and her children’s homeschooling journey.

“I never would have considered myself a homeschooling mom before COVID,” said McCracken.

McCracken’s daughters, ages 8 and 10, were doing virtual distance learning at the start of the pandemic but faced different challenges in their education. One of McCracken’s daughters was ahead of her grade level and needed to go at a faster pace than the classroom setting was providing at the time, according to McCracken.

Her other daughter, age 8, struggled with online learning.

“The youngest was a kindergartener, and we needed a backup right up to the beginning of kindergarten and just pretty much restart with a super solid foundation [with homeschooling,]” said McCracken.

McCracken says that homeschooling was the best thing that could have happened for her family and that the knowledge offered by the prominent homeschooling community in Whatcom County made a big difference.

“There’s such a huge, diverse amount of homeschoolers here,” said McCracken.

And what makes homeschooling special for the McCracken family? “The fact that my kids lead their education,” said McCracken. “My kids get to influence what they learn, which is so absolutely different from everything I was taught as a kid.”

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