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This fall, Molly Russakoff will set the record straight: Home-schooling does not have to take place at home. She believes it can be found in her community and all across the city. The opportunities are endless.
She would know, as she’s been educating daughter Carla, 15, and son Johnny, 11, for two years, hardly an easy feat for a single mother who also runs a business.
As the owner of Molly’s Bookstore, 1010 Ninth St., she’s got a lot on her plate. Or at least she did.
In recent weeks, bookworms, passersby and those just browsing may have been hard-pressed to find the store open during its usual hours — usually 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday but Monday.
Come September, the store only will be open Fridays through Sundays and patrons will more likely be assisted by a high-schooler and not Russakoff, who opened the shop eight years ago.
For the last year, Russakoff has been developing a self-directed learning resource for home-schooled teens where they have a say in what’s learned and how it’s approached. Dubbed Project 360, it’s an a la carte program where participants can choose classes taught by professionals in fields like science, math and the arts. Field trips and internships will be encouraged, as will participation from community businesses and organizations.
"This is a program for kids who really want to learn and want to do well. They don’t need to be forced, if you just give them the time and the opportunity, they’ll thrive," Russakoff said.
The idea was sparked from years of frustration as a parent with children who weren’t performing their best in traditional learning environments.
Her son found it hard to sit still for an entire school day and pressure from teachers to be at a certain reading level caused anxiety, pushing Johnny back further. Her daughter didn’t experience any learning setbacks, but she wasn’t always interested in what was being taught.
"Her mind wandered," her mother said, adding she seemed to be more advanced than her classmates in subjects like reading.
"Both my kids are bright and creative and active, but they didn’t really fit in a public-school mode," she said.
Three years ago, Russakoff enrolled her son at Upattinas, an alternative school in Chester County, where a self-directed education got him on track, reading at the appropriate level and succeeding in school.
But the hour-and-a-half commute each way forced Russakoff to spend the two days a week she drove her son to school — when he wasn’t taken in a carpool — at a nearby library catching up on work and, ultimately, being away from her business.
When the negatives started to outweigh the positives — including a loss of financial aid last year for her son’s private programming — Russakoff decided to educate her daughter, then an eighth-grader at Girard Academic Music Program, 22 Ritner St., and her son at home.
Around the same time, a friend recommended she look into North Star, a Massachusetts-based self-directed learning center that happened to be having a weekend workshop. Russakoff made the trek to New England and learned about the programming based around the students, a method she favored and is bringing to Project 360.
At the core of the "curriculum" is a blend of teens’ aspirations, parents’ needs and a solid education. A full calendar of classes is offered, along with tutoring, volunteer and internship opportunities, field trips and frequent check-ins on the teens’ progress.
"I share the vision that someday these centers will be open everywhere, that home-schooling will become a good alternative to traditional schooling," she said. "When people think of home-schooling, it’s kind of a misnomer. It’s a legal term, but you don’t necessarily have to be at home, parents don’t have to be the teachers. It doesn’t have to look like school — there’s no curriculum, you choose your own learning plan, you can use any resources you want."
Russakoff plans to run Project 360 — whose name is a reflection of the compass North Star uses as its logo — with an enrollment cap of 50 students as a nonprofit. Currently, she’s working on fundraising and applying for grants, and this summer she’ll hold community meetings and membership drives across the city.
There are certain communities of teens she’s discovered during the development who could benefit from the format, she said.
"I’m finding out a lot of serious ballet dancers have very rigorous dance schedules, so a lot are home-schooling and could use the support outside of their dance network," she said.
Enrollment is open to any home-schooled teen and tuition is on a sliding scale of $4,000 to $7,000 a year, a rate she hopes to decrease by setting up scholarships and using profits from the bookstore to defer costs. Most of the tuition will go towards paying for materials and costs associated with the classes, including upkeep of the three-story building on Ninth she and her children plan to move out of to make more space for a computer lab and classrooms.
The schedule of classes is not set in stone, yet, Russakoff said, but she does know that at least four classes will be offered each day by volunteers — including herself — who have signed up to teach. Parents still are responsible for meeting state requirements for home-schooling, which includes submitting a written plan of what the student will learn in an academic year and providing a portfolio of work upon its completion to the School District. Upon the completion of a 12th-grade level education, the home-schooled students can take a test to receive their GED. What Project 360 provides, Russakoff said, is a lot of support.
"It’s a central place where you wouldn’t have to go all over for class … it’s a place where teens could come and be with each other," she said. "We’ll meet with the child or family as they need it, check in every two weeks, see how it’s going for them, if we need to change as time goes along. [The teens] can use [Project 360] however they see fit. It will be open four days a week and on the days it’s closed, we’ll offer field trips. They can come four days a week when it’s open from 10 to 5 or they can come and go as they need to. It’s really very individual, there’s no requirement to be here."
As for the bookstore, where Russakoff has sold gently used books and hosted events like poetry and literary readings for years, it will become "like a small business lab," she said.
"It will be open on the weekends, run by a collective of teens. They’ll learn about marketing, accounting, customer relations and be working with an adult facilitator. It will be team directed and I think it will have a whole different personality than it has now."
Contact Staff Writer Caitlin Meals at cmeals@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
