Free World U provides a unique opportunity for students to attain a comprehensive education in core content areas while participating more fully in their communities than is possible with traditional schooling. The flexibility afforded to families easily accommodates a variety of schedules. Families with working parents, chronically ill children, and those facing the challenges of disabilities can succeed as well as any others.

The teachers at Free World U are caring, inspired professionals, skilled at encouraging critical thinking and self-expression within the context of core curriculum instruction. Students are assisted at home by a facilitator, a parent, or other adult in the child’s life, who completes the school-student-facilitator triad that makes Free World U so successful.

The following story will take you through the week of a fictional Free World student called Susie Student. As demonstrated through the narrative of Susie’s week, the learning of students at Free World U is enhanced through cooperation of the students’ teachers and facilitators, Susie’s aunt in this example. Susie will show you the possibilities for students attending Free World U. While her experiences are fictional, they are all within the realm of possibility for our students. Though each student’s experience with Free World U will be different and depend on interests and abilities, an emphasis on individualized instruction, self-reflection, and community involvement will be included in the curriculum for each student.

The mother of one of Susie’s classmates is a physicist and leads the science co-op that Susie so enthusiastically participates in. Extension activities may also be completed within the family. Susie and her mother find time to take walks when Susie’s mother returns home from work each evening.

While Susie Student is registered as a 7th grade student, she is, like most students at Free World U, working at a variety of levels. Susie is very interested in science, and has taken the initiative to learn about electromagnets, which is a 12th grade physics topic, and is designing related experiments with her science co-op. Math is very challenging for Susie, and she has many skill gaps to fill. Susie’s mother helps her find ways to apply her new math skills to daily living activities.

Susie Student begins her Monday morning with a virtual forum meeting moderated by Susie’s teacher and attended by the classmates in her area who also selected a civics focus for the semester. The previous Friday, Susie’s teacher posted a list of projects as examples and Susie has chosen hers. Susie wants to interview the mayor of the city where she lives. She has just completed a flashcard subtopic covering federal, state, and city government, and is eager to talk to the mayor about how the government really works in her city.

The local home school group has also chosen to interview the mayor. Susie’s aunt had signed up as a volunteer at the seminar that Susie’s family attended before starting the school year, so Susie offers to ask her aunt to be the driver for the project. The teacher suggests that the students each think of a few questions that they would like to ask the mayor and then work cooperatively to compile a list of the ten questions that the group most wants answered and to assign questions for each student to ask.

After Susie finishes her flashcard assignments, she decides to put her study skills and time management instruction to good use. Susie elects to combine her daily requirement for physical activity with working on a paper she is writing for her language arts class. Students at Free World U are encouraged to write something each day about a project or experience and send it to their teacher by e-mail. She is writing about the flora and fauna of her area, so she has borrowed a library book that includes pictures of all the birds, animals, and plants that are common to her area.

Susie’s mother has agreed to accompany Susie on a nature walk, making drawings of plants, birds, and animals. Susie plans to use the drawings to illustrate her language arts assignment. Susie and her mother decide on their destination and walk briskly; Susie recently learned about the importance of consistent exercise from a flashcard subtopic and now knows that brisk walking is an effective way to get a good cardiovascular workout. On the way home Susie and her mother walk more slowly so that Susie can make sketches. She makes drawings of all the trees and plants that she sees, and is even able to make drawings of several different birds. Susie is thrilled to find a lizard sunning on a rock. When she gets home, she looks through the library book to identify the things she has drawn.

On Tuesday morning Susie reports to her teacher that her aunt has agreed to be the driver for the trip to city hall. Susie’s teacher shares that she has called city hall and scheduled a meeting with the mayor on Friday afternoon. Susie’s group is instructed to have their questions ready by Thursday. Their teacher will review the questions and will help to prepare the students for their meeting with the mayor.

On Tuesday evening Susie is slated to host a reader’s group meeting for several of her classmates. The group participates in a weekly online chat and meets in person on the second Tuesday of every month. The book group sessions are entirely planned and led by the students, though their teachers sometimes suggest discussion questions for the book of the month, chosen from the California Department of Education’s comprehensive suggested reading list. The students have been reading Zlateh the Goat by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Susie cannot wait to discuss the story with her friends. She has carefully read the story and successfully completed the flashcard questions pertaining to it, so Susie is confident that she understands the story well enough to discuss it. In keeping with Free World U’s emphasis upon practical application of skills, Susie found a way to incorporate her recent mastery of fractions into preparations for her reader’s group meeting. Susie’s mother had agreed to allow Susie to bake cookies and make punch for her friends to enjoy after their book discussion. Susie loves cooking and is excited to have used her new mastery of fractions to double the recipes, resulting in lots of delicious chocolate chip cookies for her meeting. Tonight’s meeting is even more interesting than usual because the reader’s group is planning a camping trip for the next month. They are going to be reading Children of the Gold Rush by Claire Rudolf Murphy for their next book discussion. Susie suggested the camping trip as a way for her group to experience firsthand the way the children in the book lived.

The students in the book group have a lively discussion about Zlateh the Goat, and make definite plans for their upcoming overnight trip. Susie is very excited to learn that the father of one her classmates, who has agreed to chaperone the trip, owns several gold pans and will teach the students how to pan for gold.

On Wednesday, after Susie checks her e-mail for comments from her teacher on her writing, Susie’s aunt drives Susie to a local nursing home. As a project for her Character Development class, Susie volunteers at the nursing home one morning each week. Susie has not been able to spend significant time with her own grandparents because they live in distant states and Susie has discovered that she really enjoys visiting with the people at the nursing home. Susie reads several newspaper articles to Mr. Callahan. She is pleased that she has learned effective skills for reading aloud as part of her language arts instruction at Free World U. Her improved oral reading skills allow her to read to Mr. Callahan with confidence, making for an enjoyable morning for them both. Susie next plays checkers with Mr. Shore, and then goes to visit with Miss Shallot, who just likes to have somebody listen to her stories about being a young girl growing up in Russia.

Susie loves Wednesday mornings and is so glad that she became a volunteer. She had never considered volunteering in the community before she was a Free World U student; even if she had, it would have been very difficult for her to find the time. Studying character development has made a real difference in Susie’s life. Susie’s coursework has helped her to recognize the needs of other people and has brought out her natural desire to help people and to make a positive impact in the world around her.

Later on Wednesday, Susie gathers the materials she needs to construct an electromagnet. Susie’s teacher asked each student to design a culminating activity and display to post to the class forum at the end of the semester. Susie is so excited by what she is learning in her science co-op that she has decided to try this advanced project. Susie experiments by varying the number of times she wraps a wire around the core, and records the number of staples the electromagnet will pick up each time relative to the number of coils. Susie has learned the steps to the scientific method and uses them in her experiment. Her careful records, along with a picture of her electromagnet, will be used for her virtual presentation. She will also do a demonstration for her co-op. When she gets into high school, she plans on volunteering in a local research laboratory where she will see and experience how real world science is practiced.

On Thursday, the group planning to interview the mayor turns in their mutually considered list of questions to their teacher. The teacher later uses email to make a few suggestions. The students and their teacher have corresponded via phone and email, and the students are feeling confident in their plan of action for the interview. The students recognize that it is important to present their questions in a logical way and not take up too much of the busy city official’s time.

After completing her flashcard assignments for the day, Susie is ready to spend 20 minutes working on a physical activity to meet her daily requirement. On Thursdays Susie does Tai Chi at the local Community Center. She chose Tai Chi from a list of suggested activities in her area because she likes the controlled movements and discipline involved in holding the postures. As she tries to be as graceful as possible, she increases the flexibility of her body through the age-old movements.

Feeling relaxed and motivated, Susie decides to finish her language arts paper on the flora and fauna of her local area. Susie has already identified and written a caption for each of the photographs that she took on her nature walk. She now creates a document that includes both the pictures and the text of her paper and emails it to her teacher. Just a few short months ago, Susie thought her computer was only good for My Space, emailing, and instant messaging with her friends. Since becoming a student of Free World U, she has learned many ways to use her computer as a tool to make her school work more effective, stimulating, and engaging.

Friday morning’s virtual classroom meeting begins with the teacher giving Susie’s group a few last minute pointers about their scheduled interview. She also advises them on field trip safety, pointing out that they should all wear their seatbelts, be quiet and respectful passengers, and stick together at all times when in public places.

The interview goes well, and the mayor is impressed with the thought that the students have put into their questions and the organized manner in which the students present their questions. Each student keeps a careful record of the mayor’s answers for the summary reports that they will each write and submit to their teacher and their local newspaper. Susie has brought her camera and requests a group photo with the mayor, who smilingly agrees. Susie will later send copies of the pictures to her classmates so that they may each add the photo to their reports and scrapbooks. Susie spends some time Thursday evening reviewing her fractions subtopic in preparation for the Short Term Learning Test that she is about to take.

Susie decided to focus on the Long Term Retention Tests currently in her queue on Friday morning. She feels a little nervous about the tests that she will take since she does not know in advance what content will be included. A peek at her Dashboard calms Susie, as she sees how much she has learned since becoming a student at Free World U. And Susie knows that if she does poorly on part of a retention test, she can review the relevant flashcards right away to find out what she did wrong. Before entering Free World U, Susie would have to schedule an after-school appointment if she wanted her teacher to help her with a concept that she didn’t grasp. Now the ability to review and practice is readily available at any time of any day.

On Friday afternoon Susie makes her required forum posting, a reflection on what she has learned throughout the week. Susie enjoys writing about her successes in integrating her learning into various areas of her life, such as using her success with fractions in her cooking and working her physical fitness goals into the time she allotted for collecting pictures to include in her language arts essay, and she considers making her posting visible to her classmates; she has been shy about sharing her weekly journals, though she does enjoy reading those that some of her classmates have made public. Susie is continually surprised by how much she is able to accomplish in a week now that her curriculum is truly individualized and she is able to schedule her learning to best fit her schedule. When she attended a brick and mortar school, Susie struggled to complete her assignments and had a difficult time finding time for the extra-curricular activities that she now participates in with regularity. She is even considering trying out for the Boys and Girls Club softball team next season. Before bed, Susie checks the contents of her compost bucket and compares what she sees to the description in her composting flashcards. Even though it’s only been a few days since Susie added some fallen leaves collected on her walk to the compost bin, she believes that the leaves have been nibbled on by the worms. Susie is still amazed that she is willing to have live worms in her house, and even enjoys checking on them. Now that she understands the worms’ value in the ecosystem, they don’t seem to be the slimy pests that Susie used to think they were.

Susie Student had always been an average to below-average student. After years of barely scraping by, despite her best efforts, she lacked motivation. However, since becoming a Free World U student, Susie has rediscovered that learning can be fun. She now understands that learning isn’t only about reading facts in a book and being able to remember them for a test. She recognizes that knowing the facts will help her in many different ways as she puts them to work in experiments, projects, and activities in her daily life.

Susie is emerging as a leader among her classmates. Before attending Free World U, Susie spent a lot of time worrying about having clothes with the “cool” brands and wearing her hair the “right” way. Susie had often been teased because her shoes weren’t the expensive sneakers that all of the popular kids seemed to be wearing. At Free World U, students are taught how to evaluate what things are truly important and how to apply this knowledge in a practical way. Individualized instruction and small group activities provide ample opportunity for all students to experience success. In the Free World U environment, Susie is able to focus on things that really interest her. Susie naturally begins to take charge and has found that she enjoys organizing and planning.

Susie is young, not yet old enough to have settled on her career goals, but every day she is discovering new things that she enjoys. This exploration will play a significant role in her eventual career decisions and will influence the personal goals that Susie sets for herself. Most importantly, Susie is discovering that she is capable of doing many things well and is gaining confidence in her abilities. Each accomplishment at Free World U adds to this discovery and Susie’s future looks brighter every day.