Home Schooling

The 2003 Homeschooling's Best Award recipients included:

Wanda Sloper -- Homeschooling's Best Advocate

Challais McDonald -- Homeschooling's Best Hero

Wanda Sloper -- Homeschooling’s Best Advocate

Founder of REACH (Responsibility for Educating All Children at Home), Orange, Va.

A home teacher to her two sons, Craig, 16, and Eric, 15, for the last six years, Wanda Sloper created REACH three years ago to provide her sons and other homeschooled children with opportunities similar to those of students attending traditional schools.

Her organization has grown to more than 600 members, who live as far away as Richmond, Fairfax, Charlottesville, or in closer proximity in Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Culpeper, Stafford, King George, Warrenton, Madison, Woodbridge, Dumfries and Caroline County.

Her all-inclusive group participates in plays, Putt Putt night, three bowling leagues involving up to 100 children, numerous field trips, Career Nights, used book sales, homeschooling seminars and other activities. A highlight in 2003 was the September trip to Colonial Williamsburg, attended by more than 800 people who paid a significantly reduced entry fee.

“There are a lot of businesses that welcome us, but someone has to be on the phone arranging these events and activities,” Sloper explains.

High-school age participants in REACH have experienced proms and homecomings, created yearbooks, acquired class rings, and enjoyed graduation ceremonies. In addition to the events and activities she arranges, Sloper moderates a Yahoo chat group, where members exchange information, support, and other valuable information to make homeschooling a better experience.

Challais McDonald -- Homeschooling’s Best Hero

Organizer of the Crest Elementary School-based wildfire relief effort in Crest, Calif.

Shortly after Southern California’s wildfires broke out on Oct. 25, 2003, Challais McDonald started assisting people in her small community of Crest to get back on their feet. In all, the firestorms claimed 23 lives, leveled 4,800 homes and other buildings, and charred more than 750,000 acres. In Crest, about 275 of the community’s 1,000 homes were damaged or lost in the wildfires, and 65 of the 250 students at her children’s elementary school, Crest Elementary School, lost their homes.

McDonald focused efforts in her community on helping to get shelter, clothes, food, cash, jobs, builders and other essentials in the hands of the people who needed it.

From the moment she opened the doors of the Crest Elementary School to fire victims (because she had chaired the school’s annual Halloween Carnival on Oct. 25 and had a key to the school) to the present, she has worked tirelessly to help others recover from the fires’ effects.

As a child who was homeschooled, McDonald knew that families who homeschool would be affected by the wildfires. She helped people get new curriculum, either from vendors or from donations, so that children would not fall behind in their studies.

McDonald’s efforts embody this new category for a Homeschooling’s Best award, which recognizes a person for a heroic deed done that influenced homeschooling. McDonald says she thought of her parents who still are homeschooling younger siblings when she saw the fire had taken their home. She knew that they would need help with curriculum materials to continue homeschooling, and she soon realized that other families in the area were in the same situation.

Ellen Sorokin -- Homeschooling’s Best Voice

Education Reporter at The Washington Times, Washington, D.C.

Between August 2002 and February 2003, Ellen Sorokin, a reporter at the Washington Times, wrote four important stories about homeschooling that called attention to the diverse range of people turning to homeschooling to educate their children.

During that six month period, Sorokin’s byline appeared on a front-page piece on Jan. 4, 2003, entitled “Home-schoolers start a new honor society,” that explained how a woman had started an honor society for homeschoolers; and on Feb. 9, 2003, entitled “More blacks turn to home-schooling,” the first piece that noted that African Americans then made up an estimated 5 percent of all homeschoolers. She also wrote stories about California education officials’ opposition to homeschooling in that state (Aug. 21, 2002, “California warns home-schoolers”) and Pennsylvania’s consideration of a plan to reduce paperwork required to homeschool (Aug. 6, 2002, “State eyes reducing home-school filings”). A fifth homeschooling story, which appeared on the front page on July 29, 2002 (“More Muslims teach children in the home”) and was the first to note an increase in Muslims choosing to homeschool, was written by a Washington Times intern, Amaris Elliott-Engel, under Sorokin’s guidance.

Sorokin joined the Washington Times in 1999 after three years working at the Fairfax Journal newspaper in Fairfax, Va. A resident of Falls Church, Va., Sorokin covered all aspects of education but found homeschooling especially interesting. In February 2003, Sorokin was named an assistant metro editor at the Washington Times.