What is your teaching cooperative like? How does it work?

Question

I'm curious because I think the teaching cooperative of the local homeschool group to which we belong may be different than most.

We actually have two. One for elementary and one for middle / high school level courses. Both have a governing board comprised of parents.

With our teaching co-op, the teachers get paid by the parents.

Also... what type of courses are offered at your co-op?

With ours:

Elementary -
Phonics
History
Bunches of electives (art, photography, etc.)

Middle & High School level
Spanish I & II
Algebra I & II
Geometry
Latin I & II
Ancient Literature
Biology (with lab)

Our high school courses are run much as a university course with 2 classes of 1 1/2 hours each twice per week and a ton of work in between.

Like other answerers, many of these teachers are certified p.s. teachers who have left the profession to home school their own children.

Answer 1

I'm on the planning committee of our local HS co-op as registrar (a.k.a. datahead!). This fall (3rd semester of existance) we grew from 42 students to 127!

We have a former parochial school building where we meet for three hours on Fridays. We have five classrooms, a gymnasium, a "meeting hall" room, and a kitchen available. So we have eight classes each hour - 24 total. They run in 55-minute periods.

Most of our teachers are HS'ing parents, but some are from the community. We have retired art teachers who teach art, a university music professor who teaches music and guitar, my DH who is an engineer teaching robotics, etc. Each teacher is paid $20 per student per hour. We also have "facilitators" in certain rooms like the nursery and strategy games. They receive $5 per student. It's a lot less because they do not have all the planning time involved in their classes. The supply fees vary by class - from free to $30 (plus your own supplies - guitar, cooking utensils). We also charge a $15 building fee per semester per family that we give to the church for the use of the building.

Every family has to volunteer one hour each week as a classroom aide, hall monitor, nursery worker, etc. and one set up or clean up time slot per semester. Those who can't, or choose not to, are charged a $60 "buyout" fee. We then use that money for printing costs, paper goods at the party, etc.

Our semesters always have 12 class periods, and then the last meeting is an end-of-semester culmination party. The Karate kids receive their belts and demonstrate, the music, guitar, and drama kids perform, other classes present, and then we have "static" displays in a "fair" format for sewing projects, science projects, photography, art, and Rube Goldberg contraptions. We have refreshments, too.

Our classes run in age from Preschool to 12th grade. Then we also have the nursery, too. We try to have several choices each hour for each age range.

Here is our current set up:

* Early Elementary Sign Language (Pre-2nd)
* Geometry (7th-10th)
* Rube Goldberg (5th-12th) - in two different classrooms
* PE Fitness (President's Challenge) (3rd-8th)
* Elementary Art (1st-5th)
* Drama (4th-12th)
* Strategy Games (3rd-12th)
* Advanced Math (6th-12th)
* Early Elementary Fun (Pre-2nd)
* Spanish I (5th-12th) and II (5th-12th)
* Karate (1st-12th)
* Cooking (3rd-8th)
* Guitar - Beginning (5th-12th) and Intermediate (5th-12th)
* Elementary Science Fun (1st-5th)
* Elementary Math Club (Math Olympiad) (4th-6th)
* Sewing (3rd-12th)
* PE Fun (Pre-2nd)
* Advanced Art (5th-12th)

In the past we've also had, as we cycle through courses:

* Beginning and Intermediate Chess
* Photography
* Journalism
* BEST Robotics
* Pre-Algebra

We are the "formal" co-op in our city. There are a few other informal ones - high school biology lab, geography, FIAR, etc.

Answer 2

Our co-op is pretty big, we rent an after-school club facility once a week so there are classrooms, a cafeteria, a kitchen, a fenced in yard w/picnic tables and playgrounds... it is very convenient.

It is set up so that we meet once a week at the co-op (though there are park dates and field trips on other days) There is a
14 week sessions in the Fall and 14 sessions in the Spring.
There are 4 periods in a day plus a lunch period.

We have a lot of teachers; some are parents and some are professionals and some ex-teachers.

There are a lot of classes offered; here's an example of our class schedule for the Sept-Dec session we just finished:

Period 1:
Kinetic Sculpture
Discovery School (a science thing)
Yoga
Kids Guitar
Math Boot Camp I
Intro to Video Game Design

Period 2:
Science 1
Kites
Chemistry 1
Embryology
Ballroom Dance- Beginners
Jr. Engineering w/Legos 1
Guitar 1

Period 3:
Ballroom Dance-- Advanced
Newspaper Creation
Jr. Engineering w/Legos 2
Science 2
Pre-Algebra
Art 1

Period 4:
Science 3
Art 2
Math Boot Camp 2
Brain Games
Kids' Music
Puppetry

Every session there are new courses, but there are quite a few favorites that are regulars and given every session. We have a wide variety of ages, too, from toddlers to teens. Most classes center on a range (4 to 8, 6 to 9, etc.).

Class costs can vary. A handful are free w/just a small material fee for the 14 weeks. A couple are more costly, especially when taught by a professional and not a parent; I think the most expensive is video game programming, which is $150 for the 14 weeks, but you do get to keep the software. Most classes are much less than that, but not free.

Answer 3

We don't have teaching co-ops here like I hear about from the US. (I'm in Alberta, Canada.) There is one weekly program that kind of sounds like a co-op, and perhaps it would qualify as one, but nobody calls it a co-op because it's not a group of homeschooling parents who put it together; it's private business unaffiliated with any particular homeschool group.

The only thing that's come close to a co-op is homeschool parents getting together to cover, say, grade 5 science one year. There are 5 topics in our provincial curriculum and they would have 5 families for that group and each family would be responsible for one of the science topics. They would meet for 5 full days, spread out during the year, and cover the year's worth of science (to a certain extent).

Co-ops I've heard of from those living in the US have not had paid teachers. The parent members of the co-op each took turns in running a class or series of classes. They have not had anything quite as... school-like... as you have listed.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

Many, not just the paid teachers do a lot of volunteering, and put on activities during the year. The best, and most thoughtful gift would be a "coupon book" where each parent/young adult designs a coupon, on which they promise to volunteer for a class during the coming year, or to prepare materials/snacks; reward them with your time and talent. Nothing has a greater value, nor can it be more reasonably priced.