Colleen Hroncich
Colleen Hroncich
The 4th Annual National Hybrid Schools Conference is taking place today at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, so it’s fitting to feature a hybrid school this week.
After a 17-year career as a public school teacher, Sarah VanDerVliet wanted something different. She was an ag teacher, so she ran the Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapter along with the school’s farming and agricultural programs. Sarah and her husband have a farm, and they were trying to figure out a way for her to be home more and working on the farm. They toured a farm in Nebraska in early 2022, and the conversation landed on homeschooling and the hybrid model the family used. “We just talked the whole way home and thought maybe this is something we want to do,” Sarah recalls. “It was just crazy how instantly it was like, OK, I’m going to start a school. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Sarah got a group of parents together who she knew had been considering homeschooling or were already homeschooling. “We just started brainstorming ideas, like what does this look like? How do we do this? And then it basically was God-led from there,” she says. She completed the rest of the school year along with her summer FFA duties. Buffalo Christian Homeschool Academy opened in Colton, SD, in September 2022, just six months after Sarah learned about the hybrid model.
The school meets two days a week in a converted farmhouse on the family farm. There are currently 31 students ranging from first through twelfth grade. Parents handle math and English at home since those are subjects where skill levels can vary a lot. Doing them at home allows kids to go at their own pace in a smaller setting. The agriculture aspect is a big part of Buffalo Christian, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/friday-feature-buffalo-christian-homeschool-academy