we're learning to cooperate
In an effort to find other homeschoolers interested for Harvey to play Pokemon with I joined a couple local homeschool mailing lists. No Pokemon players, but one of the first emails on the list after I joined was an invitation to take part in a co-op for the spring. It's a big departure for us—we're not really good joiners. Mostly, when I have an idea for something I try to organize it myself. But that takes a lot of work, and I'm not actually very good at it. So cooperating might be a good move.
Of course, I do have some trepidation. The Handbook has lots of text about what you must do as part of the group: attend the weekly gathering, plan events to invite other people to, communicate over the official channels... "Must do" isn't really my thing. But then, I want to do most of those things. The whole point of this exercise is to involve other people in our learning. So I reassure myself that all those requirements are just to keep the flaky homeschool types from ruining things for everyone else.
So then, having signed up, I want the thing to go well! And the way to make that happen is to have enough awesome people participating. The organizers have sent out a couple emails encouraging us to advertise on our social media feeds, but since that's not really a thing for me—though it was once—and, even more, since none of my facebook friends are homeschooling within the catchment area of the group. But! There is a small chance—infinitesimally small, but we have to try—that someone I don't know, who is a homeschooler in Bedford or surrounding towns and who found this blog due to it's awesome Bedford, Massachusetts homeschooling content, might be reading and might be interested in joining the Assabet River Coop for Spring 2018. So:
Join our family this spring for our latest homeschool adventure in the AHEM Coop! Details here: http://www.ahem.info/Events.html
I get ten dollars off the (already low low) price if you mention my name when you sign up, but that's not even what's motivating me. I just figure that anyone who has read enough words of mine to reach this point in the page has to be a pretty cool person, and I'd love to cooperate with you!
The co-op starts up the second half of March. I'll let you know how it goes!