Educational Resource Center (ERC) Model

Situation:

• No appropriate school program is available.

• Families want to have more educational resources available than they can provide on their own.

Commitment:

• Families commit to developing and maintaining a resource center.

• Each family is responsible to choose their own curriculum and supervise their own children’s education.

Program:

• An ERC is set up with reading and reference books, textbooks, and other educational equipment and supplies for use by all participating families.

• If teachers are available, they can consult with families to improve individual programs, help supervise programs while families are at the ERC or itinerant to tutor or consult.

Advantages:

• Greatest freedom of any of the options – each family makes all its own decisions regarding curriculum and scheduling to fit their priorities. (Typically, each family purchases correspondence courses.)

• ERCs usually contain more resources than a family can afford on its own. The program can be run by parents, without other teaching staff.

• If the ERC has teachers, they can be available for consultation, village visits, and assistance in planning individual children’s program. They can also plan group interaction when all families are at the Center at once. (Interaction tends to be more social than academic because each child has his own program of study which he must continue.)

• The ERC is available as a classroom for individual families when they are at that same location.

Disadvantages:

• Academic interaction is very limited since children get little if any experience at presenting what they learn or in hearing what others are doing. They miss out on the motivation and stimulation those opportunities provide.

• Children get little social interaction with cultural peers. They don’t learn classroom behavior (with classmates and teachers, or classroom routine and expectations.)

• Teachers tend not to stay long in this type of program if their main responsibilities are traveling from family to family and monitoring correspondence courses. Most teachers prefer more creative input (academically and through providing classroom interaction) in order to reap the rewards that make teaching a joy.

• It is difficult for teachers to get a good understanding of each child’s program and to enhance individual growth if every family has a different course of study.

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