Tennessee based software company Write About has announced multiple updates to its online platform, which include multiple new features for students and educators, as well as a whole new primary curriculum for parents of homeschooled students. The company is currently underway with plans to launch more services in this particular sector over the coming year.
In the US alone, there are 37 million homeschooled students as of 2022. Parents homeschool for many reasons, although one of the biggest reasons is academics, as homeschooled students routinely outperform institutional school students academically. Other parents homeschool for safety reasons, as the number of school shootings continues to rise (40 shootings just in 2022!). Another reason is religion; but the largest reason in recent years was forced homeschooling due to the pandemic.
When schools shut down during COVID, many parents were put in a position they never thought they’d be in. Families had to change and compromise to make the new norm work until schools reopened. But when that happened, many families liked their new way of doing things and have chosen to keep homeschooling. Before COVID, about 3% of US students were homeschooled, according to the US Census Bureau. In 18 states that shared data through the 2022 school year, the number of homeschoolers jumped up by 63% during the 2020-2021 school year – but only fell by about 17% in the 2021-2022 school year.
Thus, there is a greater need than pre-pandemic for a multitude of homeschool resources to exist. It’s definitely possible that, because so many families had no choice but to homeschool during the pandemic, that the idea is becoming significantly more mainstream. There are several factors that families have to consider, though, including the cost involved; it typically costs between $700-$1,800 to homeschool one child annually. These costs can be mitigated by open enrolling with local public schools and/or utilizing resources that offer more bang for the buck – resources like Write About. Parents can create teacher accounts and utilize the 14-day free trial prior to upgrading to a subscription for unlimited access.
The new Write About homeschool curriculum focuses on more independent learning, rather than curriculum that depends upon a classroom environment. Perhaps more important, Write About creates a digital community, which is extremely important to help homeschooled students socialize, meet new people, and bounce ideas off their peers. Feedback is a crucial tool when it comes to writing; in the past, homeschooled students were limited to feedback from their parents alone. With Write About’s online community, that feedback is now open to thousands of other students writing about the same things.
The team at Write About, headed by CEO Nate Ollie and Chief Product Officer (CPO) Jasmine Jackson, is excited about the company’s latest developments and the expansion into the realm of homeschooling. “Over the next five years,” says Nate Ollie, “our aim is to have positively impacted the educational experience of 1 million students worldwide by diversifying their vocabulary and increasing their versatility in writing as it pertains to language and conventions.”
This, he adds, includes homeschooled students. “Write About is taking a simplistic approach to address the learning needs that were revealed, and the pre-existing gaps that were magnified, during COVID,” he says.
The team is also pleased to be moving forward with the new platform features available to all students, whether they’re in public school, private school, or homeschool. “These new developments will allow Write About the opportunity to directly address student learning loss that resulted from COVID,” says Ollie. “The new features will allow an additional intervention teachers can use alongside established curriculums.”
For the many families who never homeschooled before the pandemic, but have chosen to continue doing so since schools have reopened, there is still a learning curve – but it doesn’t have to negatively impact students. “We’re here to support homeschool families,” says Ollie. “Our curriculum before the update was compatible with homeschool study, but the new updates are geared toward them directly.”
Write About is a web-based software platform that offers educator support in a variety of writing subjects. The website offers teaching resources, writing prompts, grammar practice activities, paragraph and essay writing lessons, and professional development services, among others. The company provides content for public and private school as well as homeschool.
Website: writeabout.com
Email: info@writeabout.com
