Home is where the school is

When he was 15 years old, Peter Heuer and a friend he met at astronomy camp started building a cyclotron, an experimental physics device that smashes atomic particles together.

Three years later, he has gained grant funding and assistance from a team of scientists at the Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va. But Peter and his family say he might never have had time for the project if he had attended a regular school.

"Usually this is like a graduate thesis thing," said Peter, who has been home-schooled since first grade and used his flexible schedule to chase his interest in physics.

"We had elementary-school physics when we started, and now in some areas we're at the professional level," he said.

About 1,700 students in Anne Arundel County and 1.5 million nationwide - that's 2.9 percent of school-age children - are home-schooled. Yet the ins and outs of home schooling often remain a mystery to families who send their children to public or private schools.

One reason may be that the families who home school vary tremendously. Many have religious reasons for teaching their children at home, while for families like the Heuers, it's all academic.

"The thing about home schooling is you can work with the kids' needs as you see fit," said Peter's mother, Karen Heuer.

Home schooling isn't the right choice for everyone, she said, but for her family, it fits.

Not at home

The Heuers' three children live in Annapolis, where their father, Bill, teaches chemistry at the Naval Academy. They say children who attend school often think they sit home playing or watching television all day, and have few friends.

That assumption is far from true. The Heuers' days are filled with reading, research projects, sports practices, music lessons and classes taught by their mother, who holds multiple degrees in education. Ellen, 14, goes to Ellicott City once a month for a book discussion group, and Peter has taken community college courses in three counties.

For a while they joined a co-op group of home-schoolers who went on trips together, and through all those activities made just as many friends as children who attend "regular" school.

"If we're here, we're doing schoolwork, and if we're out, we're at class," Ellen said.

Karen Heuer decided to try home schooling when Peter started kindergarten and she discovered he had trouble sitting still. Schooling him at home allowed for greater flexibility, away from the confines of a structured classroom, she said.

Later, her other children found that, like Peter and physics, home schooling allowed them to learn reading, math, history and science through their own interests - and that made what they learned stick.

For example, at 11 years old, Steven is fascinated by Napoleon Bonaparte, so Heuer has structured his history lessons around the famous French conqueror. Steven soaks it up.

"It helps your mind-set," he said. "It definitely helps you remember, if I'm interested in it anyway."

Passing the law

Advocates say they have always had a constitutional right to teach their children at home, but not so long ago, home schooling was illegal.

Some steadfast families skirted the rules by teaching their children at home behind closed doors. Then, in the late 1980s, a group of parents lobbying the legislature had success, and Maryland passed its home-school law.

Now the state has one of the best and most moderate home schooling systems in the country, said Wendy J. Bush, one of the parents who fought for the law. It strikes a good balance between regulation and freedom, unlike some states that require either too much oversight or not enough.

Home-school families in Maryland have to work with the local school system or an oversight organization to ensure they are providing "complete and thorough instruction," Heuer said. Her family uses Bush's Excelsior Academy, partly because Bush also gives curriculum advice and college guidance.

Families have to document that their children are learning core subjects like math and English, but they don't have to report their grades or take state exams, and they don't have to follow any particular classroom philosophy.

The result is a broad range of approaches to home schooling that run from structured schedules like the Heuers' to so-called "unschooling," where children pace themselves and direct their own learning. Families also can subscribe to correspondence schools that provide them with full curricula, said Don Sholl, home-school program coordinator for the county school system.

"Parents have choices," he said.

One of the greatest challenges for home-school families is finding materials like textbooks, Heuer said. But in recent years the dearth of options has been replaced by a flood of DVDs, books, workbooks and guides all marketed to home-school families.

And the Internet, with its vast possibilities for research and distance learning, has changed everything.

"I used to say all you need is your public library card and you can home school," Bush said. "Now with the Internet, the world is in your home."

Class in the kitchen

In the middle of the Heuers' sunny kitchen stands a big wooden table surrounded by Windsor chairs. This is where much of the children's learning takes place, including the geography class Heuer teaches for Steven and two other middle-school boys.

Last Monday the table was a mess of atlases, maps labeled by the boys and textbooks selected by Heuer.

The class cycled through a quiz, discussion and plans to construct a model of a city or landmark. Steven voted for Waterloo, where Napoleon fought a famous battle. For homework, Heuer coached them on how to pick a current event and research its location.

For Heuer, who once taught in the public schools, the class' small size is key. And home schooling offers her another benefit: freedom from the public schools' focus on test scores.

"The pressure on kids is immense, and it gets worse every year," Heuer said. "It's do this and do this, but we don't give them the time to do it. We're stretching these kids like rubber bands."

But just because her children learn at home, that doesn't mean their lessons are easy. All three say their parents are strict about making sure they learn.

They also say they're looking forward to college. Ellen wants to study human behavior, and Peter is eying the physics and philosophy programs at the University of Rochester.

Friends sometimes ask whether he's prepared for college, but Peter said he isn't worried. After years of teaching himself with textbooks and other materials, it will be almost a relief to learn from a professor, he said.

His brother and sister agreed they're glad they were home-schooled, but Ellen admitted one major problem: no snow days.

"My brother and I have debated going on strike, putting snow in the hallway," she said.