No one would argue that when it comes to teens, each and every one is unique. No surprise, then, that there is a great variety of learning styles among teens. What works well for one may not work for another, which makes a “one-size-fits-all” educational strategy counterproductive for many.
“Some get straight As in school, but feel bored or unchallenged; others refuse to accept the structure of traditional schools and therefore struggle,” says Joel Hammon, co-director of the Princeton Learning Cooperative, a learning center that supports teenagers and their parents to use home schooling as “a means to design and pursue their ideal lives.
“Some have learning differences that schools cannot or will not address or they may have or medical issues that prevented them from regularly attending school,” Hammon continues. “Others have passions they want to pursue, but feel that school and homework take up too much of their time; some want a learning environment that fosters respect for each individual and understanding among peers.” PLC is housed at the Paul Robeson Art Center on Witherspoon Street in Princeton. “Our members share a belief that they can learn more and that their lives will improve without school,” Hammon says.
On Thursday, February 23, from 7 to 8:45 p.m., PLC (www.PLCTeens.org) is sponsoring a panel discussion, “Outside the Box: Educational Alternatives for Teenagers,” at the West Windsor Public Library. The event is free and open to the public and will feature a panel of educators who will talk about their work with teenagers.
Among the panelists is Barbara Rapaport of the New Jersey Homeschooling Association. She is a West Windsor resident who home- schooled all three of her children. Carly, 26, studied voice performance at Westminster Choir College and earned a masters in opera at Temple University. Hannah, 23, majored in theater at Muhlenberg College and is living in France. Jeremy, 19, is a sophomore at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, double majoring in political science and music. The father of the entire crew is Peter Stein, a doctor who trained at the University of Pennsylvania and the Yale-New Haven Hospital and is now a research director at Johnson & Johnson.
“I had been home schooling our children for most of their lives, but by the time our oldest was in high school, my husband thought I had lost my mind,” says Rapaport. “‘She won’t be accepted at college; this is insane,’ he told me. And then when she wanted to go for a degree in vocal performance he thought we were both crazy. Now he is a strong proponent for home schooling as an option but he didn’t get there at the same time that I did.”
Rapaport got there — that is, arrived at the conclusion that she wanted to home school her children — many years ago, when she and her husband still only had two children and they had just moved to Georgia from Connecticut, where the girls had been enrolled in a private, progressive school.
“I couldn’t find anything like the school they had been in, and I didn’t think they would be academically challenged,” she says. “And then I found out that paddling kids was legal in the public schools in that part of Georgia, and that confirmed my decision.”
The family moved to Princeton Junction in 1999 when their oldest child was in eighth grade. And though they settled into a home just a stone’s throw from High School South, even then touted as one of the state’s finest public high schools, Rapaport still was home schooling.
“Every year we offered the kids the option to enroll in a high school or home school, and they made the choice,” says Rapaport. “It was a way of life that suited them for a variety of reasons. Our two older kids were theater-focused, and they did lots of community theater, including at Kelsey Theater. My son was interested in mock trial. South didn’t have a program at the time. I started a home school mock trial team so he could compete.”
Rapaport says that she was able to tailor his mock trial experience to his needs and strengths. Even though her son is now in college, she is still working with the home school mock trial team and this year helped guide the team to the county finals for the fourth year in a row.
Rapaport remains active as a good friend of the PLC and trusted advisor to parents and teenagers trying to navigate the challenges of stepping “outside the box” of traditional education. Rapaport also serves as co-leader of a homeschool group called “E-Cubed — experience, explore, education” together with Alison Snieckus, a Plainsboro mom who also home-schooled her two sons and volunteers at PLC.
“Many parents may have the feeling that the system is not working for their children but they don’t know what the options may be or they may not know exactly what to do,” Rapaport says. “Part of what PLC strives to do is to help families who might want to home school but because both parents are working, they might not have the time to figure it out, or they are not as equipped as they would hope to be. That’s the niche that PLC serves. They work with teenage students to help them devise learning plans to learn the things they want and need to learn and to support them in their efforts.”
Tuition for full-time students is $12,000 (there are some part-time students) but co-director Hammon says, “we don’t turn anyone away for financial reasons if this is something that will benefit the child.” As a 501(c)(3), PLC’s funding is derived from tuition, charitable donations, and fundraisers, some of which is used for tuition assistance. The program’s nonprofit status also enables it to hire Princeton University students at a quarter of minimum wage. That’s a lot of brain power for very little financial output, says Hammon. PLC has 13 students this academic year.
Rapaport says that she recently saw a screening of “Race to Nowhere,” a grassroots film that is galvanizing a dialogue on a public education system that is causing alarming rates of dishonesty, disillusionment, burnout, and dropout.
“There are lots of students and families who are happy with the public school experience, and there are those who are not. And those that are not are discontent with a whole variety of issues,” says Rapaport. “We want to give people hope that there are other ways to support your teen and to understand there are different ways to learn. If they are not sitting inside that box, they can step outside that box, and that could be the opportunity for that kid to blossom. If they are miserable in school, they shouldn’t feel like they are obligated to stay.”
Rapaport herself is a product of the New York City public schools, raised in Queens with two older brothers by a stay-at-home mom and a father who had gone to college for one year to study chemical engineering before World War II broke out. He then served four years with the army in Europe and North Africa before settling back to life back home in a variety of jobs, the last as a short order cook.
Rapaport says she loved school but at the highly competitive Barnard College she had a different impression of what her K-12 education had been like. “I realized that my public school experience was about rote learning and not so much about real learning,” she says. “At Barnard I found out that kids who came from private schools had a different foundation than I had had. What I tried to provide for my own kids was closer to a college approach to education, with breadth and depth that required asking real questions rather than memorizing facts.”
Rapaport majored in American studies and should have graduated in 1978, but actually just graduated officially last May. “It turns out I had some lost course work so I had to write a thesis,” she says.
Her thesis, “Government Schools v. Disorderly Persons: A Case Study of New Jersey’s Compulsory School Law and Homeschoolers,” challenges New Jersey’s constitutional definition of an “education.”
She writes that the state “requires the legislature to ‘provide a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State.’ The statutes implementing that constitutional requirement compel parents to send their children to public school or provide an equivalent education elsewhere than at school, are penal by design, and carry with them the implication that the knowledge of what a thorough education is, as well as the best means to impart that education, properly resides with the State.” She argues that despite the State’s failure to adequately educate its poorest citizens, state legislation deems anyone who violates their definition of education is deemed a “disorderly person.”
In addition to her volunteer work with home schooling organizations, she is currently working towards a certificate in college advising through an online program offered by UCLA.
She says home schooling was the perfect fit for her own children, and she encourages people to come out for the Princeton Learning Center event so they might come away with a sense of the possibilities for their children to learn outside the traditional model of education. She echoes the words of PLC co-director Joel Hammon with this wish: “We also hope they will start conversations in their community about what makes for a good education and how best to support children to become competent adults.”
Outside the Box, Princeton Learning Cooperative, West Windsor Library, North Post Road, West Windsor. Thursday, February 23, 7 p.m. “Educational Alternatives for Teenagers” presented by a panel of progressive educators including Tom Wilschutz of Solebury School; Robert Burkhardt of Eagle Rock School; Joel Hammon of Princeton Learning Cooperative; and Barbara Rapaport of the New Jersey Homeschooling Association. Moderated by Jane Fremon of the Princeton Friends School. Free. 609-851-2522 or www.plcteens.org.
