I have had the pleasure of talking with over a hundred different families, some via e-mail, some on the telephone and others I have met in person. All families are unique in their own respect and it is important to note that family dynamic is not always the prevailing indicator of the diversity of families. The African-American home schooling community also boasts a wide spectrum of families who utilize different teaching styles and philosophical approaches to home education. As such, I also met S. Courtney Walton, an Arizona mother of four and Unschooling advocate, who started a thriving community of African-American unschoolers (www.afamunschool.com) and is the Editor of an unschooling e-zine that celebrates the diversity of home schooling in the African-American community. Never realizing that there was such a growing number of African-American unschooling families, Walton nonetheless started a Yahoo! group that quickly evolved into a full-fledged website. It is through conversations with mothers like her that I glean a better understanding of the progressive stands and homeschooling initiatives that more families are taking for the betterment of their children's education and for the homeschooling community as a whole.
NAAHA now has over 400 members and I have noticed that while some of these families have been homeschooling for five or more years, the vast majority of them have only just begun. Some families have even been homeschooling for over fifteen years. Now, those are statistics worth noting especially when there is a face behind each number.
Jennifer James is the Founder and Director of the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance and homeschools her daughters, 5 and 2, along with her husband in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She has been featured on Fox News.com and interviewed by Reuters, Newsday and The Christian Science Monitor.
Resources: National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance: http://www.naaha.com African-American Unschooling: http://www.afamunschool.com
