Colleen Hroncich
Conservative Christians probably aren’t generally seen as trailblazers, but they were at the forefront of homeschooling in the 1960s and 1970s. So it’s not surprising that curricula and resources for homeschoolers are often Christian in nature. When Blair Lee, a college professor with a background in chemistry and biology, began homeschooling her son in the early 2000s, she struggled to find quality secular science resources. What started as an effort to fill that gap eventually became Secular Eclectic Academic (SEA) Homeschoolers.
“Homeschooling wasn’t really on my radar,” Blair says. “My son was a very early reader. No Child Left Behind left all of those advanced kids behind. His teacher prompted me to make the decision to homeschool. She told me that with the current system, my child would get lots of test prep, and they would always want to test him because he would make the school look good.” But he wouldn’t be given work that would challenge him and help him grow. The teacher predicted he would eventually wonder why he bothered trying so hard. He’d still be “advanced,” but he’d be achieving well below his capabilities. Blair listened to the teacher and homeschooled her son from first grade through high school.
When she looked for science materials for her son, she said everything was either religious or just fun experiments that didn’t explain the science behind what was happening. Since she had a science background, she solved the problem for herself by writing a chemistry book for third grade that was picked up by Pandia Press. She continued writing and is the principal author of Pandia’s REAL Science Odyssey series.
As her homeschooling and writing journey continued, Blair began attending conferences and joining online groups. “I came to feel that there needed to be more people talking about homeschooling as what I called a handcrafted education. You either had people who were unschooling or people who were using classical. There wasn’t enough conversation about making it innovative, making an academically rich education that was learner-centered and innovative. And that became a passion of mine,” she explains.
She found that people who aligned with her vision of homeschooling tended to join unschooling groups, so she posted her thoughts in an unschooling Facebook group. “I really expected that the radical unschoolers would come at me with pitchforks, and that did not happen. I’m friends with several of them, and they were glad someone else was having that conversation,” she recalls. “What was happening was that people who wanted academics but wanted it to be innovative would go into these unschooling groups, and it would devolve into these major arguments. So they said, ‘I hope you start a group, and everybody can join your group and get out of our groups.’”
Once again, Blair listened. What started from a question in a Facebook group when she didn’t have her own has become a very active 150,000+ member SEA Homeschoolers Facebook group, which is probably the heart of the organization. “If you haven’t been in our Facebook group, it functions different than any Facebook group anywhere that you have seen—especially one that is owned by a person who writes their own curriculum. It is a teachers’ lounge. That is what I consider it. It is a parent-teachers’ meet-up lounge,” Blair says. “There are times when you’re working with your kids and you’re like, ‘I’m not exactly sure what to do.’ So where do you go? If you’re a member of SEA, you go into SEA and say, ‘I don’t even know what to do, everyone. Can you help me?’ You will get hundreds of responses. We have 95,000 people in our largest group. And 90 percent engagement.”
Around 15 percent of the SEA community are not homeschoolers. They’re parents looking for ways to enrich their children’s academics or teachers looking for innovative strategies to use in their classrooms. “We’re a great fit because the topical presentation of stuff in our group is what you’ll find in schools,” Blair explains. Because the content is aligned, a child can use SEA resources to help stay on a path that is similar to public schools. This was particularly helpful during COVID-19 when families joined SEA but weren’t sure homeschooling was going to be a long-term fit. Blair says that school boards would recommend SEA to families who began homeschooling during the pandemic. “We literally would wake up one morning and have 400 join requests from people from a school district because their school district had recommended us. It was really nuts,” she adds.
SEA Homeschoolers even has an international reach. “We just had a conference in November, and we had people from 19 countries. Canada is our second largest population of families. Most of our families are in the United States, but once you get into the after-school community, you open yourself up to countries where people want to supplement their kids’ education,” Blair says.
In addition to the lively Facebook community, SEA Homeschoolers offers a variety of resources on its website. Homeschooling 101 includes links to state homeschooling regulations and links to resources specifically aimed at new homeschoolers. There are four live online conferences a year that feature presentations for secular homeschoolers and live Q&A sessions with speakers and vendors. There is also a quarterly magazine and an online store that includes books, curricula, and other resources.
Blair emphasizes that she defines secular as evidence-based, not anti-religious. Nonetheless, as with all educational resources, parents—especially more traditional homeschoolers—will probably want to evaluate the content before jumping in. “At the end of the day,” Blair says, “every homeschooler I have ever met has shared one thing—we really want our children to be turned on by learning and to be excited about it.”