The number of homeschoolers has grown seven times faster than the number of students attending public schools over the last couple of decades. What does this mean for public libraries? Homeschooling families have always turned to libraries to supplement their educational needs, so as homeschooling increases nationwide, the number of homeschooling patrons will increase as well. There are several steps your public library can take to become more homeschool-friendly.

It can be difficult for friends to understand the changes and challenges a homeschooling family faces. This mom shares her reasons for homeschooling and why her relationship with them is different now.

If you’re looking for a way to provide a service for homeschoolers in your community, consider becoming a liaison between your library and homeschoolers. Create activities and events for a homeschool audience. Help establish a homeschool resource center within the library. Coordinate with the library to have a Homeschool Day. Help the library find volunteers. Be an intermediary between the homeschool community and the library. And support your library's budget needs.

Matching, out-of-date sweatsuits. The ability to recite lines from the Iliad in response to your peers’ discussion of a television show. Parroting your parents’ values. If you’ve paid attention to mainstream depictions of homeschooled children, these images are likely familiar. Homeschooled kids get a bad rap and are too frequently associated with social awkwardness due to a perceived lack of socialization with their peer group. However, with the dawn of social media, more homeschooled students—both those who are being schooled by more “traditional” methods and those who are students are virtual cyber charter schools—are able to better connect with their peers and other members of the homeschooling community.

Advocacy is for everyone. Any concerned parent can become an advocate for homeschooling freedoms. And so can you. This series of five articles will walk you through the steps you can take to become an effective advocate for homeschooling in your community.

Homeschoolers are actually not the easiest marketing targets in general. You might think that we are such a specific subset of the population that we basically have a marketing bullseye on our foreheads, but the truth is that people homeschool their children for such a wide variety of reasons that figuring out where we are coming from can be a full-time job in itself. The one thing homeschoolers DO have in common is their belief that by homeschooling, they are providing a customized education for their child.

Homeschoolers have gotten their share of bad coverage in the media and in popular culture in the last few years. The publicity on homeschooling runs from atrocious mischaracterization to humorously stereotypical.

A transcript for an appearance by Celeste Land on the Kojo Nnamdi Show where she discussed the homeschooling movement. Celeste is VaHomeschoolers' Director of Government Affairs. The program touched on the many and varied reasons why families choose homeschooling, from concerns with the school environment to a desire for a tailored educational approach or a wish to keep the family at the center of a child’s upbringing. The show also addressed a common stereotype of homeschoolers by pointing out that while many families that choose home education consider their faith to be a very important part of their lives, homeschooling families come from diverse religious backgrounds, and religious homeschoolers do not necessarily choose homeschooling for religious reasons. A great example of how to interact with the media for a positive discussion about home education. Also available via podcast at Homeschooling Goes Mainstream.

A more complex understanding of homeschooling is emerging in the mainstream media these days. No longer is homeschooling either all good or all bad. Simultaneously, there is a growing appreciation that most homeschoolers do a fine job raising and teaching their children, but that there are a few parents homeschooling children in order to hide abuse.

This free e-book download contains Mary Griffith's work addressing issues concerning the image of homeschoolers as presented by individual homeschoolers and homeschool organizations. It is written for support group leaders and activists in the homeschooling movement who want solid information on dealing with the public. Topics include: Getting Started, Looking Professional, Announcing Yourself, Being Interviewed (with tips for talking with the media, print interviews, broadcast interviews, and talk radio), Putting Your Message Out, and Events & Community. This book was originally published in 1996.