Co-op, tutorial, enrichment… What does it all mean? 

When you’re new to homeschooling, some of the terminology you read online can be a tad confusing. I’ve already covered what another occasionally cumbersome term – an Umbrella program – is in my post on the three legal ways to homeschool in Tennessee. So today, let’s focus a bit on what it means for an organization to be a co-op, tutorial, enrichment, or some combination thereof. 

You absolutely don’t need to use a co-op, tutorial, or an enrichment in order to homeschool effectively, but as I explained in my post, Finding Your People, it can help a lot to find something to show up to on a weekly basis that generally has the same people attending so that you can build deep and meaningful relationships with fellow homeschoolers. Maybe that thing is a casual play date that you choose to host at your own home or perhaps it’s a park get together that you heard about through word of mouth or a group with a social media presence. 

But inevitably, you may stumble upon people talking about their homeschool co-op, or the tutorial their child attends, or an enrichment program that they got a lot out of. So what does it all mean? 

It’s pretty simple, really, and all of these programs are ways that homeschoolers can find people to connect with who may share a common lifestyle choice in that they all educate their children primarily at home. But these options are also ways that homeschoolers have found to share the burden, so to speak, of educating their children. Hopefully, by parsing out what each item actually is, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions as you navigate building a community for you and your children. 

Co-op

A homeschool cooperative, or co-op, is a group that is built around the idea that the families participating are sharing the work load in educating their children. Generally speaking, a co-op involves families that agree to volunteer their time leading classes or other age appropriate educational endeavors, whether they be field trips or book clubs. Some of these co-ops can be more or less academically focused, depending on the desires of the families involved. 

Our family has participated in an enrichment co-op for nearly the entirety of our homeschooling journey. We meet with about 40 other families one day a week and focus on a particular unit of study as an entire group for 6 weeks before moving on to a new one. We call it an enrichment co-op – rather than an academic one – because we all know that the bulk of the education is still happening at home but that this time together is intended to be a way to form deep friendships and study things or tackle ideas through group projects that might be harder to do alone. We organize ourselves by splitting up into age-based groups and tackle the content in age appropriate ways so that, for instance, the teenagers are studying material that is engaging to them, while the preschoolers tackle the content in their own age-appropriate way. But entire families are able to attend, leaving no one out in the cold.

This unit study approach is just one way that a co-op could choose to organize itself. But the heart of the term, co-op, implies that it is a group of people choosing to cooperate together and share the load. Often times, co-ops carry a minimal fee associated with being involved to cover expenses related to supplies or renting a venue, since the teaching and running of the group is handled by volunteers. 

Tutorial

A tutorial, on the other hand, tends to be a more formal learning environment, where the classes are taught by hired professionals. Tutorials can be academically focused or they can be based more around extracurriculars or electives, but the heart of the difference between a tutorial and a co-op is generally in who is doing the teaching and how it is operated. In my experience, tutorials will want and need to be able to recruit and retain quality instructors, so they will need to be able to offer a fair compensation to their teachers. This means they will generally cost a bit more, but depending on what you’re looking for, that cost could be worth it.

Some tutorials operate as a hybrid school model of sorts, with classes occurring for a full day several days a week and work sent home for the families to complete when not in class. Other tutorials offer an a la carte model of enrollment, allowing families to choose however many classes they would like, whether that be just one class or a full course load. Our family began using the help of an a la carte style academic tutorial when I wanted some help and oversight on my older child’s writing. We agreed that he would enroll in a writing class, and my son insisted that he also be allowed to take a science class if he was going to have to be there for the writing class anyway. We weren’t ready to give up the flexibility of homeschooling, but we were ready for a bit of outside help. He ended up loving both so much that we have gradually added more classes each year, and as he enters his high school years as a homeschooler, this tutorial will continue to play a role in his education. 

My younger child wanted something similar a couple of years ago, but I struggled to find anything that would fit in with our family’s educational model and budget. We certainly do have several wonderful secular tutorial options in the Nashville area, but she didn’t need to be enrolled anywhere several days a week, and we both wanted to continue doing the heart of our academic learning together at home. We were incredibly grateful to find a new tutorial starting up last fall, where she eagerly signed up for an animal science class and a Spanish class. 

In both of these instances, my kids have been able to build community and friendship while learning something with their peers but have not had to walk away from homeschooling. I appreciate being able to balance the needs of the individuals with the needs of the family, and I also love that they are getting a quality education while maintaining some flexibility in our schedule by remaining homeschoolers. 

Enrichment

While a co-op and a tutorial are both certainly enriching opportunities, the term, “homeschool enrichment program” tends to imply something else. Certainly, homeschooler’s lives are richer for their co-ops and tutorials. But an enrichment could be anything from a casual class at the library to a formal program through a scouting organization or 4-H. It could be a dance program or ice skating clinic, or it could be a horseback riding lesson or a nature program. The sky really is the limit here, and we are lucky enough to have a wide variety of homeschool-specific enrichment programs here in the Nashville area, alongside plenty of traditional after school enrichments like music lessons or sports. 

There are homeschool classes at the zoo, History Club at the Belle Meade Plantation, engaging science classes at the Adventure Science Center, and countless other opportunities to get out and learn, play, and grow alongside others in lovely, meaningful ways. Our family has participated in several of these enrichment opportunities at various times over the years, and I can attest that some of them have been crucial in the healthy overall development of my children (I’m looking at you, Davidson County 4-H, which had a homeschool specific club when we were first involved, as well as the downtown library’s homeschool club), especially as they offered virtual meetings during the pandemic. Those little glimpses into the before helped to tether my children to “normal” when the world had turned upside down and gave them a way to maintain a connection with friends, even if there were times when that just meant a simple dance party on a screen. 

So what does it all mean?

Sometimes you’ll find a homeschool program that feels like a little bit of “all of the above.” Maybe it’s a formal, academic co-op that almost feels like a tutorial. Perhaps it could be a laid back, enrichment-based tutorial that feels a bit more like a co-op. Or it could be an enrichment program that builds an entire semester long course of study and feels like a formal tutorial class, as the classes at the Adventure Science Center felt for my eager and science obsessed child when he was younger (and thank goodness for those classes, as our kitchen could only handle so many experiments in a day). 

The point is, these terms are generally accepted among the homeschool community, but some of the time, as with everything in life, the rules can be bent a bit to accommodate what folks need. As we saw during the pandemic, a lot of new homeschool groups evolved to allow kids to study together. What may have traditionally been labeled a co-op was suddenly called a “homeschool pod” due to the nature of the world we were living in. Some of the more formal programs that we have in town now are the direct result of those pods growing into something bigger. This ability to adapt seems particularly well suited to the homeschool community as we continue to take what works for each of our families and leave the rest. 

If you’re looking for more ways to connect with fellow homeschoolers, be sure to peruse the listings on the Resources page! You’ll likely find a wide assortment of fantastic options for community building all around Middle Tennessee. 

Happy Homeschooling!

diverse. inclusive. community.

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