About us
South County Homeschool Resource Center supports eight homeschool and unschool families in South County, Rhode Island through a home based timeshare program, community gatherings, and seasonal festivals. SCHRC also supports the larger Rhode Island homeschool/unschool community, as well as those interested in alternatives to conventional school, with opportunities for connection and learning via public events, including meet and greets, guest speakers, and a mobile alternative to school resource library.
Origins
SCHRC formed in response to the needs of the community and will continue to develop responsively. At our first meeting, four of our families expressed a need for our children to have more child-led social time. Thus was born our home timeshare program. Our other four families expressed a need for a larger sense of community, and so developed our community days and seasonal festivals. The current structure has evolved from frequent communication among the caregivers and children to discuss and organize a structure and rhythm that works. Now, feeling strong together, we feel the need to enrich and expand.
Foundations
SCHRC differs from conventional learning opportunities in that we fit our people instead of our people fitting the center. Instead of working out of one industrial space, we work out of our lively, comfortable and diverse home spaces and balance this time with excursions to other environments, to cities and natural settings, artist studios and boat building workshops. Our center is not hierarchical. The adults treat children as people and we honor the wisdom of elders. Unlike in conventional learning environments, where a focus on academics comes before or in place of a focus on emotions, SCHRC prioritizes emotional openness.