A few years ago, Leigh Sloan was busily homeschooling her three children, but like many homeschool moms she wanted to provide her kiddos more interaction with others their ages, and she wanted them to have more exposure to other adult teachers.
Her solution was to create an alternative educational structure (a micro-school, if you will) that she calls “The Green Room.”
The Green Room allows other families in similar circumstances to take turns providing instruction to each other’s children in their particular areas of expertise, all while supplying a positive and wholesome learning environment in the basement space they acquired in an Anchorage church.
Leigh and her fellow Green Room compatriots strongly believe that parents are in the best positions to decide their children’s educational paths. This doesn’t necessitate leaving the public schools, but may result in combinations that include some or all of the various schooling options: public, private, charter, trade, and home.
The Green Room venture piqued Leigh’s interest in and commitment to school choice, and it led to her taking the reins in leading Alaska’s participation in National School Choice Week, with the major event being an annual School Choice convention. This year’s convention (which, to be accurate, was actually termed a “celebration”), took place Monday night at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.