Friday Feature: Dekalb Christian Home Educators and the Georgia Black Home Educators Network
Nicole Doyle, president of the Dekalb Christian Home Educators (DCHE), has a unique way of looking at parenting. “You are the architect,” she explains. “You can hire all the general contractors and subcontractors you want to. But you have to take ownership as the architect of your child’s physical, mental, spiritual, and academic growth. Because statisticts show us that parental involvement is really what’s pushing kids into being successful.”
Nicole started homeschooling after one of her children’s public school teachers suggested it around 10 years ago. “I started researching,” Nicole recalls. “I read Susan Wise Bauer on classical education. Then I read Paula Penn-Nabrit’s Morning by Morning: How We Home‐Schooled Our African‐American Sons to the Ivy League. I reached out to her on Facebook to ask her some questions. She friended me and answered them.”
Initially, Nicole decided they weren’t going to “do school” for a semester—they mostly read. “We spent so much time at the library that the staff thought we were crazy. I gave each kid a clothes basket from the Dollar Tree and told them to fill up their basket and we’d go home with their books,” she says. She and the kids would have reading time where all of their books were on the same subject. Then she’d try to match the subject they were reading about to local—and eventually not local—field trips. They started calling it Field Trip Fridays, and they continue it today.
Nicole first connected with Dekalb Christian Home Educators for their parent support group, which included little classes about issues like transcripts, how to help your children transition to homeschooling, how to find sports, and how to incorporate your worldview. Initially her husband wasn’t sold on homeschooling, but DCHE had a seminar for dads one Saturday featuring dads explaining why they homeschool. It made her husband a convert, and he took over math and science for the family.
Dekalb Christian Home Educators was started in 1989 by a group of parents who wanted a social outlet and a support system. The group has a variety of offerings, including academic classes, music lessons, Bible Quiz tournaments, science fairs, student recitals, field day, and more. The field days are open to the community, so they have hundreds of kids who participate. According to Nicole, “We invite dads and grandads of homeschoolers and say ‘this is daddy’s day in the classroom’ so the moms can sit and watch them run with the kids all day.”
Nicole thinks the reason DCHE has lasted so long is because they encourage parents to volunteer with the events their children are participating in anyway. “Parents are required to volunteer—this is not a drop‐off group,” she explains. “I tell parents to find their child’s passion, come back to the club, and tell us what they want to do. For example, one parent came to us and said her daughter likes to make doll clothes. So, I suggested she have a class for making doll clothes. They got fabric and all the little girls got together and made doll clothes. She said she’d never thought of that being a community activity. But we had a little grant money, so we were able to purchase fabric and offer the class.”
When parents are considering DCHE, Nicole sometimes has to explain that they might not be a good fit for the group’s structure. DCHE doesn’t want to be a huge group. It’s volunteer‐run and has no staff. When an outside teacher comes in to offer classes, parents pay them directly. But she recognized parents had a need for connections and homeschool support. This understanding was the genesis for the Georgia Black Home Educators Network (GBHEN).
“I said we need to do a conference and invite everybody who has a homeschool co‐op to come here and look at everybody else. I went around the community and asked people to come to the conference to show what they do. We had microschools, private schools, co‐ops, mommy meetups, karate, swim, chess—all these providers who live within this black community. A lot of people don’t know who’s in this community. I have access to our leaders back to 1989, so I asked them what they used to do,” says Nicole. Despite around 10 years as a homeschooler, Nicole herself learned about a lot of activities that she had no idea existed.
Nicole’s message to organizations that want to offer classes or other opportunities to the community is “come to the homeschoolers.” As she puts it, “We will show up at every event. Honey, before we walk out, we may empty the garbage and clean for you. We will support you and you will see us. We will donate, and we will be stakeholders in a way you probably can’t imagine.” The GBHEN is a way to let people know there is a larger homeschool community and there is a black homeschool community throughout Georgia.
One of Nicole’s objectives is to be more than a co-op—she wants to help build a homeschool community. And she wants to support families who are on this journey with their children. “Our real goal is to nourish whole children and create childhood joy. Because it’s easier to create childhood joy than it is to fix a broken adult. You can have a million programs to bring people back, but it’s a hard road when you’re an adult,” she says. By leading DCHE and starting GBHEN, she’s providing concrete help for parents in her community who share that goal.