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SALT LAKE CITY – Not every kid is planning on going back to school in the upcoming weeks. Some educators say the number of kids going through homeschooling has been steadily climbing for years.
Sandy Grant has been homeschooling her children for at least 16 years. It started when her family lived in West Valley, and she didn’t like the schools near her home.
“Then we moved to Riverton, but by then I was already in love with homeschooling. I loved everything about it. My husband wanted them to try the school out here and we did that for one year. But, I just missed homeschooling,” she says.
Grant says she loves how flexible she can be with her children, while they learn at their own pace. Plus, there are a lot more resources available to her to find ways for her children to socialize.
“The most we had were Yahoo groups, which were not very user friendly or highly interactive. Facebook has changed a lot of that. They’re easier to search and find a group you’re looking for,” Grant says.
The Daily Herald recently reported over 16 thousand kids were homeschooled between 2015 and 2016, compared to only just over seven thousand in 2003. Utah Home Education Association Chair Nina Wolf says there is still a stigma around homeschooling and the children who do it, but, she believes that stigma is slowly going away.
“I think we’ve seen a real transformation in that stigma in recent years. As more and more people are homeschooling their children families know someone who homeschools their kids and they have a chance to see that these kids are turning out great. They’re doing just fine,” Wolf says.
However, even Wolf feels homeschooling isn’t for everyone. She believes if a child lives in a chaotic home, the family should try to fix their problems first before they try homeschooling.
“If a family is highly dysfunctional with a lot of problems, homeschooling, I think, tends to give you more of what you have. If you have a good family, homeschooling can make it better,” Wolf says.