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Thursday, March 6, 2008

Home-School Group in Works

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
    Home-schoolers unite!
    That may well be the battle cry of Stephanie Shope-McDaniel, who is looking to start a home-schooling association in Torrance County.
    She's been home-schooling since the time her own 11-year-old daughter, Shelby McDaniel, was in second grade.
    Part of the reason she chose to home school was so she and her daughter could do dog shows together with their pack of Australian shepherds.
    Training Australian shepherds is a kind of a tradition with Shope-McDaniel's family.
    Her mother, Anne Shope, even has a kennel in the Australian Shepherd Club of America Hall of Fame, and Shope-McDaniel needs only one more title, of about 40 necessary, to have her kennel in the hall of fame.
    "It's a family operation and a family passion. ... Literally, our life has gone to the dogs," Shope-McDaniel joked.
    Because Shope-McDaniel has lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease, her mother is not only involved with the dog shows, but also helps out with home-schooling sometimes.
    In spite of her disease, Shope-McDaniel still manages to keep a startling number of things going.
    Along with a kennel full of dogs, she also keeps sheep, ducks, and cattle on their 480-acre ranch in Estancia.
    "We usually sell (the cattle) towards the end of winter, and then they go in our freezer," she said.
    Not only has home-schooling afforded her daughter the freedom to participate in competitions and be part of the ranch at home, but Shope-McDaniel said she also retains more of her education because she is home-schooled year-round.
    "You can teach your kid a lot more, different things," Shope-McDaniel said. "When you take a summer off, you kind of lose some of those fundamentals."
    In addition to math and reading, Shope-McDaniel's daughter is learning Latin and Spanish using Rosetta Stone language software.
    Shope-McDaniel said she got a discount on the cost of the program, $139 rather than over $200, through a Web site that gives discounts to home-schoolers.
    It is those kinds of tips for home-schoolers, along with others, that Shope-McDaniel hopes to share through an association, she said.
    "We hope to have guest speakers," she said. "Someone to talk about agriculture or teach about elections ... going to someone's house and learning about home economics ... it's endless when you tap your local resources."
    Field trips, a newsletter, and building up a resource library are a few of Shope-McDaniel's ideas for the association.
    So far there are six families interested, but she hopes there will be more interest as the group develops.
    "Some (home-schoolers) are very private with what they want to expose their kids to," she said. "I can understand that. ... I should have more of a feel for what kind of an interest we've got by the end of March."
    Anyone interested in joining an association or in more information can e-mail Shope-McDaniel at legendsranch@hotmail.com or call 384-2547.