In which my homeschool co-op dies a fiery death.

Also could be titled how not to deal with disagreements, and its all my fault.

Also how business should not be carried out over email.

When my daughter was in 1st grade I joined the homeschool co-op that happened to meet at the church we were currently attending. At the time it met our needs and we liked the people so we continued to attend.
Two years ago I was approached to join the board. The long time members who had been running it had children close to graduation. At the time I was actually already considering not returning, but knowing that the co-op would not continue if I didn’t join and thinking I could change some of the things that I did not like about it, so I agreed.

The next year was fine. We still had the original moms guiding our decisions, and plenty of moms to share the burden of running the co-op, but there was a problem. Nearly half of the families involved were leaving. I was already starting to think that continuing this was a bad idea.

We managed to attract 4 new families which filled our younger classes making it hard to get any more families. I wasn’t thrilled, but I thought we could make it work. So we pushed on. I ended up agreeing to teach a science class to first graders as well gym to the older students.  I really was not happy about teaching gym but no one else would do it. So I (foolishly?) did.

That semester was close to a disaster. Two of the new families quit before we started the semester, one the night before! This left only 2 children in our Jr. High aged class, my daughter and one other child.  I spent the night before class frantically putting together my lessons, and not sleeping well due to anxiety. If you are saying why didn’t you plan in advance? My mind just doesn’t work that way. Maybe that can be another post. To add to my misery, I have a darling son who is old enough to know better but too young to care, who really hates gym class, and made no effort to behave in my class. (ohh I’m such a bad mom, I should train him better) and he started picking on one of the other kids in my class who happens to be the child of one of the other leaders of the group.

Towards the end of the first 8 week session trouble is brewing. The other leader is mad at me about how my son is treating her child, I haven’t noticed the extent of it because I”m busy teaching the class and trying to deal with my child who is angrily stomping off almost every class. The last board meeting we have is super frustrating when we spend half the time talking about that, and the other half brainstorming for the far off future when we haven’t even planned the next semester. I was frustrated. Most of our board meetings were unproductive. I was upset about how my child was acting. I was even considering trying to have him go to his grandparents on co-op day.

Meanwhile at the end of that semester another family quit. I was starting to think that we should just end this, but the other leaders seemed to think it was fine. Even tho we had just had an exhausting fall semester with no breaks and I was already approaching burn out.  We held a meeting with all of the moms involved to plan the next semester (which was great since we had accomplished nothing at last board meeting, the other moms actually had some great suggestions and we worked out a plan) I announced that I intended to step down from leadership at this meeting, as long as someone was willing to take my place

Before that meeting was even over, trouble started. One of the teachers had been planning her class already, and when we made the switches I said that she was already planning so she should keep her class. Another board member approached me after the meeting and asked if she should really be the teacher, and I affirmed the other teacher, and she said to me “I doubt she has really planned that much.”

There was a whole lot of drama over that teacher over email. Should i have just let her tell her she wanted to teach it and the other teacher couldn’t? At this point Im feeling done. I don’t want to be involved in a co-op like this. But I feel obligated to see it through to the end of the school year.

Well the second semester was super awkward, but everyone was friendly to my face. We had no board meetings. Which didn’t bother me since nothing got accomplished at them anyway. We did email some and chat some after classes. Again it was friendly in person but awkward in email.  We had several problems. One that we were only going to be able to use the building for one more year.  Two the other 2 leaders kept saying how the older kids classes needed to be more challenging. Since co-op was more social than academic for us and we had a distinct lack of teachers capable of providing that challenge, I objected to that point. Since I was planning on leaving anyway I became a little bolder in sharing my opinions. I got strangely passive aggressive emails back. Things like children who misbehave will have to stay with their parents. Is that about my kid? I don’t think any parent who has their kid kicked out of class is gonna want to come back. Well ok then. I laid out another email about my concerns for the future and was met with a nasty response basically saying that paren’t whose children misbehave like that aren’t obeying the Lord.  (ok thats not at what it said but thats what I read into it) And at that point I was done.

Except I wasn’t. There was a moms meeting. Which I should have just refused to go to. We spent a few minutes going over how the year went and what we desired in the future. They tried go right into the code of conduct then, but I interjected how we needed to be mindful that this group can only be what the moms who make it up can give and want out of it, and we should be forcing any other ideology on it. THere was a moment when tensions rose between the teacher who the leader didn’t want to teach and that leader.

Then it came time. We haven’t been abiding by the code of conduct and we need to hold it to the letter of the law. Name calling and fighting cannot be tolerated. The younger kids need to be able to look up to the older kids. Now lets stop right here. Our group of “older kids” were only 7 children and 3 of them were mine. So we all knew they were talking about my kids. And as far as i know the name calling and fighting was mostly between themselves except for the incident the previous semester with the other kid (which was all but gone in my mind, I hadn’t heard any complaints from teachers so I figured it was fine, other than the few scuffles i heard about from my own kids) So if you couldn’t abide by the code of conduct don’t come back.

How embarrassed was I? I knew it was a bad situation but I was neglecting my own family to run the dang co-op, and the kid just probably was in want of attention.  Not only that My husband also had some health issues at this time, and I was just burnt out from all directions. Those are all excuses but my mental state really was not great at this point.  I was already planning to leave. Now it was going to look like i was leaving because of the code of conduct, which wasn’t true. So I wrote an email stating that I was disappointed that I was not directly contacted about the behavior rather than embarrassed by this meeting which I was not named but everyone knew who it was about. I called the other leader out about talking about people in length behind their backs and not confronting them face to face, this was in reference to the teacher issue but I could only assume the same had been done about me since I was not informed of the content of the meeting beforehand.

I didn’t get a response for awhile, and when I finally did, it didn’t actually address the problems that I had stated. Except that the other leader had talked to me in the fall, and I guess they thought that was good enough to move forward in this way, and that she would be sending another email addressing one of my points. I waited.

And then I got the email. A whole chain of forwarded emails. One of them being from this other board member, listing every single time she witnessed my child being mean to his siblings. Plus all the issues from the fall, and some other things where she either lied or twisted my words.

I didn’t even finish reading the email. I quit immediately. And never heard back from any of them, except for one person who was to take over one duty I still had. A week later I heard from her that it wouldn’t be necessary. The co-op was no more.

So a few takeaways from this. Little problem swept under the rug lead to big problems. If we had all been honest with each other we could have parted more gracefully.  If you are in leadership, listen to what the people actually want. If you have a grief with someone deal with it in private as quickly as possible until it is satisfactorily resolved. I thought the fall thing was done and over but that was still one of her main issues. If you are on the other end and you feel like you are getting the shaft, its ok to leave. I think my biggest regret is that I pushed through when I wanted to be done the minute it started to be drama. Also that whole doing things because no one else will do them. Maybe thats not the best way either.

There was some good of this. My husband finally listened to me about the incessant fighting and we have been working with our pastor on it. Without the stress of co-op the tensions in the house lifted instantly. Maybe our family isn’t cut out for that type of thing.  I have been to hell and back on the judgements of others with my face to ground crying out to the Lord that I would be acceptable to Him. He reminded me that His Son died and did what I could never do.