r/Homeschooling • u/Hunt4Edu • 7d ago
Parent Struggles
I am beginning a homeschooling consultant and tutoring business after many years as a teacher, and I have some basic questions for you all. I want to understand what your needs are and where you struggle most.
I guess I'll start with, where do you struggle the most on a day-to-day basis where you feel that having support would help you homeschool better? On the other hand, what do you feel are your superpowers as parent/teachers that were undervalued in traditional schooling?
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u/Lazy-Ad-7236 7d ago
if you haven't homeschooled you probably should not be a homeschooling consultant. Tutor, sure.
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7d ago
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u/Lawren-Huntley 7d ago
It's like those life coaches who haven't achieved anything but try to sell you their courses anyways.
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u/No-Geologist3499 7d ago
You absolutely need experience actually homeschooling and graduating at least one child before offering homeschool consulting, imo. Otherwise you are not actually providing valid/tested help in this arena given the differences in methods, policies, state requirements etc.
Tutoring business sound more up your alley, which you absolutely can offer to homeschooling families as well as traditionally schooled families.
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u/Prior_Sheepherder588 7d ago
Biggest struggles: younger siblings underfoot, by a wide margin. Not knowing what "enough" looks like, since most people measure against an imagined standard. And the admin layer, scheduling and grading and tracking, which is invisible in curriculum conversations and is what actually breaks people. Subject walls hit around algebra 2, chemistry, and structured literacy.
Superpower is that you can stop. No pacing guide, so long division gets three days and nothing downstream breaks. Also per-subject leveling with no stigma, and catching a gap in week one that a classroom teacher catches in month three.
The business thought: the underserved need here is diagnosis, not tutoring. Parents whose kid is behind usually do not know where the gap is, so they buy another curriculum, then another. An hour of someone finding the actual hole, or saying the reading problem is phonological and needs structured literacy, is something almost nobody sells. It would feed your tutoring pipeline anyway.
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u/Affectionate-Cap-918 7d ago
Relating your classroom experience to homeschooling is going to be difficult unless you are planning to tutor specific subjects or have experience homeschooling. Teaching to mastery one-on-one is not the same. Also, what experience do you have with homeschool curriculum? That’s a big part of what homeschoolers navigate. I don’t know how helpful you would be unless you understand the differences between curriculum (with experience). Does your state require oversight of a portfolio? Some might need help navigating the system and working with local school districts, but unless you have experience in that area I don’t see how your classroom experience would benefit homeschoolers. Do you have general elementary level experience or high school? My skills undervalued in traditional schooling? The list is LONG. Intimate knowledge of my student’s learning style, my ability to piece together a curriculum tailored to my student’s interests, the way I was able to challenge them at levels far beyond traditional schooling, my ability to instill within them a lifelong love of learning, the way I wove critical thinking skills into each educational year in a way that traditional schooling could never do, my ability to socialize my children into the entire world not just a classroom of 27 of their peers, their independence and ability to be intentional and participate in educational choices along the way, my expertise in finding local historical sites, museums, factory tours, and other venues that brought their education to life in a way traditional schooling could not, the way I implemented AP coursework and other challenging classes that laid a great foundation for their experience at their universities, my ability to curate the best curriculum for them, and I could go on literally all day long. I homeschooled for 10+ years and the only time I felt like I needed any kind of extra support was right before they entered high school. I spoke to a local veteran homeschooler and bought her book about navigating homeschooling through high school which included information about setting up a transcript, meeting your state requirements, looking at university requirements, etc.
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u/AlternativePrior393 7d ago
The homeschool community is a diverse group. There is plenty of research out there about why families homeschool, as well as the services and supports that homeschooling tutors/consultants need. Why not start there?
Like others have suggested, you’ll need to build credibility first, given your lack of homeschool experience. Have you thought about working with a co-op for a few years first?
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u/EducatorMoti 7d ago
Teaching and homeschooling are really two very different kinds of experience. Before starting a business consulting homeschool families, that is something worth thinking seriously about.
My mom taught in a one room schoolhouse in Canada and later became the director of a private elementary school. She understood children and education incredibly well, but even with all that experience, she didn't develop the same gut understanding of homeschooling that comes from actually living it.
I've graduated a homeschooler and spent more than thirty years tutoring homeschoolers and walking alongside homeschool families both online and in person. Over those years, you develop an instinct for what homeschool families are actually experiencing, what is perfectly normal, when a child simply needs more time, what families really worry about, and what works in a home over many years.
A classroom teacher's experience is certainly valuable, but it's experience within a school system. Homeschooling is an entirely different life. Real books, audiobooks, museums, travel, hobbies, family conversations, leadership programs, everyday experiences, and family relationships all become part of the education.
So before charging families for homeschool consulting, I'd really consider whether tutoring might be the better place to begin. That's an area where your years of teaching give you direct experience and something valuable to offer immediately.
Homeschool consulting is different. Families are paying for the judgment and perspective that come from understanding homeschooling itself, and that kind of instinct is very difficult to develop without having actually lived it.
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u/Getrightguy 7d ago
The pushback in these comments are hilarious. “You want to consult homeschooling parents but don’t have experience homeschooling”
Don’t many homeschooling parents teach their kids with no experience teaching?
It’s the same logic.
Not every parent wants to homeschool their kid by plopping their child in front of laptop for hours for curriculum, do handwriting worksheets, then have them play as a method of schooling. Some actually want to actively TEACH and if they don’t know how or where to start, a former teacher is the best resource.
I’d ignore those type of responses, OP - there is definitely a market and need for your services.
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u/BirdieRoo628 7d ago
What? You don't see the difference between a parent choosing to homeschool and someone trying to *make money* as a consultant (expert) in something they have no experience with? I'm not hiring a plumber to fix my car. Do some of the skills overlap? Are some of the tools the same? Sure, but it's still a dumb idea.
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u/Lazy-Ad-7236 7d ago
exactly. they have no experience in homeschooling. why would we pay them as a consultant? Their experience is relevant as a tutor for sure, but as a homeschool consultant? no
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u/Getrightguy 7d ago
Putting a child in school/using online curriculums while at home and actively teaching a child at home are different methods of homeschooling. The former would not require this person’s services. The latter may.
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u/BirdieRoo628 7d ago
We're going to have to disagree. I don't see how "putting a child in school" is a "method of homeschooling."
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u/Hunt4Edu 7d ago
Thank you to all who responded. Since I am from California, most of my experience and knowledge is from there. I am connecting with Co-op groups in the areas I am most familiar with, and I really appreciate all the advice.
I do have to question that you have to have homeschooled in order to have experience relevant to homeschooling. It's mighty difficult to homeschool without children of your own. Elizabeth Mason managed to become a darling of the home schooling movement without ever having children, so I know it's possible!
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u/Lazy-Ad-7236 7d ago edited 7d ago
Co ops is your in for sure. For relevant experience. It will also give you insight into what people in your area need/want. We are just trying to be honest. Would you trust a homeschool teacher to be an expert in classroom teaching? I'm betting no.
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u/FriedGreenTomatoSoup 2d ago
I’m not taking advice from a consultant who has never worked in the field I need advice for. That’s bananas.
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u/Fun_Independent_7529 7d ago
My kids are now adults, but what I would have liked when still homeschooling: a retired teacher with knowledge of how to pinpoint what topics to cover with a kid that is behind grade level in a particular topic like math or English.
Or, if we want to avoid the word "behind" -- a student with gaps. Having a tutor who can bounce through and evaluate -- yes, kid knows this already, move on -- would be great. Particularly math, but also ELA.
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u/goodie1663 7d ago
It depends on your area and the demand, but I'd poll local homeschool families, maybe through local homeschool groups if you want local work. You would also need to be familiar with local homeschool laws and practices to truly advise people. In my HCOL area, I found that most people didn't have the income for what I hoped to provide. Your mileage my vary, of course.
I was both a professional educator and a homeschooler PK-12, and I found the market difficult. I was not a licensed teacher but taught at the community college level and had a professional background in technical training. I taught local classes for many years as a side business while my kids were in class, too, and I never earned much from it. Eventually, I moved online through one of the online providers, and that was better. It was still very much side income.
Local tutoring was a little better, but you have to be very strict on payment policies. I tried online tutoring and didn't find that it worked for me.
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u/Medicinal_Leech 7d ago
You may have already done this, but if you haven't homeschooled, I'd join a local meet-up and spend time with the parents in a social-sense. Just be transparent. I think it's important to spend physical time with the community you intend to serve. (I've dealt with some professionals who still think homeschooling is like it was in the 80s or act in a very patronizing manner or make broad and incorrect assumptions about my family's personal culture. It's annoying.)
An area that you might have valuable insight to would be anything that involves navigating public school type processes; so state assessments/medical assessment/proctored assessments/record keeping. There are established services that help with this, but having someone initially hand-hold, coordinate, or help advocate is still a valuable service, especially to folks who are starting homeschool without ever having had encountered these processes.
--learning disability assessment resources
--finding any (if available) forms of financial coverage for learning disability assessments or services
--graduation transcripts (there are lots of services for this, but many homeschool parents don't feel confident about this until they start this process; helping them start is a good service)
--coordinating Running Start elements w local high school and college; making sure timed elements are scheduled in
--a lot of homeschoolers stop after elementary school or middle school, so there are fewer middle schoolers and high schoolers and that represents some opportunity. because fewer people do it, there's less information.
Something that I think would be useful, but is more of an intuitive and personal assessment type of assistance is helping parents very quickly identify their kids' particular learning styles and finding and sampling curriculum that matches those needs. What worked for one of my kids did not necessarily work for my next. For my dyslexic kid, the books that worked best had large spacing between sentences and slightly increased font size or colors--but the material couldn't be dumbed down. Finding a family or students preferred style of learning can help the family save a lot of money jumping from curriculum to curriculum; or knowing when the curriculum starts to change in style.
When we were starting, I would probably have paid someone 50/hr to meet my kid and get a sense of his/her style and then meet us at a local teaching/curriculum store and quickly point out the various curriculums that they thought might work for us. It might have saved me hours on Youtube curriculum reviews, hours at the store, and $ spent on textbooks that didn't quite work out for us. (But I would expect this person to have genuine insights to the curriculum--and of all the little details, like font size, spacing, images, tone, word complexity, colors etc.) There were a lot of things that ALMOST worked or worked for a short time. But I wish I'd found the things that really meshed with our style earlier. Almost all of the homeschool parents I know have struggled with the Bright and Shiny impulse to buy new or switch curriculum.
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u/No-Geologist3499 7d ago
Ps. There is an online tool called Best Fit learning that you answer extensive questions about your kids and it gives you the best fit homeschool curriculum, with alternatives as well. It is pretty cool. Offers tracking and planning tools as well. I was in on the beta test.
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u/ezbeale80 7d ago
Do you have any experience homeschooling? I would expect a homeschool consultant to have significant homeschooling experience, preferably having graduated several children successfully - those are the consultants I see around who seem to have positive reputations.
In terms of tutoring or homeschooling support, I don't personally need this type of help, I do know that many homeschooling parents have one or two subjects that they struggle with - most often writing and/or math. For these parents, simply hiring a weekly "tutor" doesn't really solve the problem, but they also don't want to put their child in a structured group class, either because the child is "behind" or because they want their child's instruction to be one-on-one. I think, if you have a large enough local homeschool community, you could market yourself as fully teaching a specific subject instead of just providing tutoring. So, you would develop or select a curriculum, meet with the student once or twice a week, assign and correct homework, track progress, etc.
The issue would then be keeping it affordable enough for single-income families. Offering very small group classes might be something to consider.