North Carolina hybrid school aims ‘to open the world up for our children’

After Tina Cowell finished homeschooling her own children, she found a different mission – using a hybrid model to support North Carolina families who want a little help along the…

After Tina Cowell finished homeschooling her own children, she found a different mission – using a hybrid model to support North Carolina families who want a little help along the way.

“Homeschooling is a lifestyle for a family,” Cowell told the New Bern Sun Journal. “To make a commitment to structure your life around educating your children and making sure that they come up in the way that you feel is best – integrating your culture, your belief system, just your family personality – is quite the commitment, and it’s a long-haul commitment, too. It’s a marathon.”

Now Cowell’s Christian school, Grace Fellowship Academy, meets twice a week in a partnership with Oriental First Baptist Church.

“I hope other counties build a hybrid school because there are many ways to approach education, and the more we expand and experiment, the better we’ll get,” Cowell said. “What can we do to help our children blossom and become who they were meant to be? 

“This isn’t about building institutions, buildings or large systems. This is about how we can open the world up for our children, and there’s a place in that mission for this kind of model.” 

‘Brings the joy back into homeschooling’ 

Cowell isn’t the only one with a mission-focused mindset for her students. 

The church has supported the fledgling school by giving it rent-free space for classrooms and chapel time. 

“We were really blown away,” Cowell said of the church’s generosity. “It’s allowed us to pour the funds that we have into our students and into the salaries of our teachers, which is important to me.” 

Teachers introduce concepts and conduct assessments on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then send lesson plans and worksheets for students to complete at home for Fridays and Mondays. 

“One of the things homeschoolers often spend a lot of time doing is taking this stack of curricula and turning it into a manageable lesson plan,” Cowell explained. “That’s all done for you. You don’t have to do that anymore, and you still have autonomy over everything you do.” 

Now families can use the additional time to focus on any concepts their children still need to master or pursue other opportunities such as a cultural study or extracurricular activity, according to Cowell. 

“It really brings the joy back into homeschooling, I think, and takes away some of the rigor that was so necessary before.” 

Brooke Morgan is one of the parents attending the school this year, volunteering as an art teacher. 

“(My daughter) loves being with her friends, she loves that her mi-mi is her teacher and just thinks this is wonderful,” she told WITN News. “So I honestly couldn’t be happier with it.” 

The school focuses on keeping student-to-teacher ratios low for “the best possible classroom experience,” according to its website. 

In addition, prospective and current families can check out a variety of scholarship options and in-house tuition assistance. 

One of these options, the NC Opportunity Scholarship, has an application deadline of Feb. 28.