A school for home-schoolers

Mathis Winkler

Each day, Peter Beck would ask his son, Robert, what he’d learned in his

second-grade class at Newport Elementary School.

The answer was simple: “Nothing.”

Beck ignored his son’s response at first, brushing it off as something

most kids say. But soon, he realized Robert wasn’t getting enough out of

school.

Then a teacher gave Robert an assignment to read a book to a vegetable --

for reasons of “political correctness,” because not every student has a

dad, mom, sibling or pet living with them.

“And in the process you will turn my son into a vegetable, too,” Beck

said to the teacher.

That assignment prompted Beck to pull Robert out of school and teach him

at home.

“The school that I went to before was way too easy,” said Robert, now a

10-year-old fifth-grader. “I was sitting at my desk, bored. This is much

more challenging. And I like challenges.”

The Becks haven’t given up entirely on public schools. Robert and his

8-year-old brother, Ryan, are enrolled at the Irvine Home School. As part

of the Irvine Unified School District, the program gives guidance to

parents and monitors student work.

Twenty years ago, home schooling remained largely confined to families

with strong religious convictions, said Peggy Frick, the school’s lead

teacher. But since then, more families without religious ties are

catching on.

“Parents have learned that they can offer their children the best of both

worlds,” said Frick, who’s worked with the program since its inception 11

years ago.

The reasons why people home school their children vary. Some kids, such

as Robert, are bored in a regular classroom setting. Others, ranging from

the average student to special education children, can benefit from an

individualized education, Frick said. A nationally ranked ice skater and

young film actors also have taken advantage of the program, she said.

More to offer

About 80 kids from Newport-Mesa Unified School District and Irvine are

enrolled in the school. Because Newport-Mesa does not maintain its own

home-schooling program, families such as the Becks are referred to Frick.

“The important thing to realize is that traditional schools can be

wonderful,” she said, adding that as a working mom, her two daughters

attended public schools in Irvine.

“It’s hard to live here if both parents aren’t working,” she said. “But

some quit their jobs to help a child through a difficult year.”

Karen Lehrer didn’t stop working when she decided to pull her 5-year-old

daughter, Elizabeth, out of kindergarten in February. She was already at

home and believed she could offer her daughter more than she would get in

school.

“She’s extremely bright,” Lehrer said, as she waited outside the

program’s portable classroom at University Park Elementary School.

Inside, Elizabeth was discussing a classmate’s latest tooth loss during

one of the optional workshops kids can attend. To ensure that students

keep up, they have to give their teachers work samples at the end of each

month.

“The curriculum for kindergarten was not enough to keep her challenged,”

Lehrer said.

It was Irvine Unified officials who informed Lehrer about the option of

home schooling her daughter. In the beginning, she felt a little uneasy

about becoming a home-schooling parent, seeing it as “nursing 10-year-old

kids and clinging onto children.”

Too much isolation?

Lehrer’s views have changed in the past couple of months. She’s come to

see the home-schooling experience as an opportunity for her daughter to

bloom.

Still, Elizabeth will join her older sister at Stonecreek Elementary

School next year. Despite contact with other children at the home-school

program, Lehrer believes her daughter needs to socialize more with other

kids.

“It’s the only hindrance,” she said, putting her in line with critics of

home schooling who lament the students’ lack of interaction with their

peers.

At Irvine’s home-schooling program, Frick said, lack of socialization is

not an issue.

“Our kids are not isolated,” she said. “If anything, they socialize in a

more real-world setting.”

Grouped with students from other grade levels in weekly workshops, the

students form friendships regardless of age, Frick said.

Additional visits to libraries, museums and other learning institutions

also help prepare home-schooled children much better for life after

school, Frick said. Unlike traditional schools, Frick’s program also

offers many field trips, such as a recent one to Sacramento.

“You could say that I’m just a cruise director,” she said jokingly,

sitting in her office in the portable building adjacent to the school’s

classroom. “But we always make it relevant to the curriculum.”

Doing his job

Beck agreed with Frick that he’d like to offer his sons more than the

ordinary classroom experience.

On Wednesday, he worked with Robert on math problems at the family’s

kitchen table while Ryan read “Winnie the Pooh” on the sofa in the living

room. From their study place, the trio overlooked the ocean. The breaking

waves and occasional lifeguard announcements were the only sounds heard.

Beck, an environmental consultant who works with Eastern European

nations, frequently takes his children on trips to Russia and other

countries. The weekly assignments from Frick and her colleagues are faxed

along and returned the same way.

“I put these children into this world,” said Beck of his reasons for

schooling his sons. “They are nobody’s responsibility but mine. Not the

government’s. Not the school district’s. They are mine.”

On the kitchen counter stands a framed picture of Beck’s two sons

standing in front of a plane.

Underneath, seemingly as a daily reminder, Beck has written the following

text:

“Priorities: A hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank

account was. The sort of house I lived in. Or the kind of car I drove.

But the world may be different, because I was important in the life of a

child.”