Normally, we start our school year the last week or so of August; about the time that the public schools in our area begin their fall semester. This year, however, I was out of town the week we’d originally scheduled our annual ‘Not Back to School’ Party (which is the first official Triangle Homeschoolers event for the new school year), and we’d planned on having it the following week. Little did I know I would be returning home right into Hurricane Harvey’s path.
We have three main organizers who plan events for our group. Heather Thomas (that’s me) is the administrator and oversees most of the group’s day to day operations, including facilitating the discussion groups on Facebook, interacting with new and interested families, and (occasionally) updating this website; Kandi Champion plans and hosts events for bigs, and Heather Mullin plans and hosts events for the littles. All three of us lost our homes and virtually everything our families own in the flooding during Hurricane Harvey. For all intents and purposes, Triangle Homeschoolers was closed for the fall semester of the 2017-2018 school year.
After much discussion between the three of us and the other members of our meet-up group, we decided that a good target for possible back-to-normal(ish) operations would be January 2018, but that was honestly a shot in the dark. The recovery process is far from over; in addition to the losses to our three families, several other members of our group suffered damage up to and including losing their homes as well. Those who didn’t suffer any damage had their hands full with the cessation of city services in the weeks following the hurricane, and then helping friends and family with their recovery efforts.
It’s been a very long few months, but we are happy to report that our January target wasn’t too far off the mark. We’d originally planned for our big Meet-&-Greet Park Day to be last week, but the unexpected (second!!) snowfall, ice, and week of frozen temperatures pushed it to this week. We had a respectable showing from our regular members and are happy to welcome a handful of new families to our group as well.
We are still not quite back up to our normal weekly schedule, but we’re getting there. Our High School co-op started the second week of January, and orchestra class resumed the same week. We have a Teen Social and Mom’s Night Out planned, and are working on getting the weekly events on the calendar. With today’s discussion, we’ve also added the possibility of a Middle School co-op, and there was interest in planning another Elementary co-op session soon. Things are slowly getting back to normal, despite our late start!
If you are interested in joining our group, but weren’t able to make it to our event this afternoon, we’ll be hosting another Park Day that is open to the public in February. You can join our discussion group on Facebook to find out details.
Happy Homeschooling!
TH
Triangle Homeschoolers 
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