Being an educator means dedicating your life to helping others grow and nurture, forever expanding their knowledge, and yours. For Kate Villafranca, teacher and stay-at-home mother of four, this was no different.
After teaching both fifth and sixth grade, as well as college, she was armed with vast knowledge of how to run a classroom. After having kids of her own, she was faced with the decision of the medium of education for her children.
“I wanted to spend my life dedicated to educating children. Once I had my daughter, I knew I wanted to homeschool my children and spend all of my time helping them learn. The greatest thing about homeschooling is that I can follow whatever my kids are interested in. For example, my son is a really good reader, so he spends a lot of time reading and doing literature-based stuff,” Villafranca said.
When she and her husband moved from Fort Wayne to Valparaiso, she didn’t know how to go about homeschooling her children. So, with the touch of her finger, she made a post on Facebook and responses started flooding in.
“I was like ‘Hey, is anyone interested in doing a preschool-aged co-op?’ I got about 10 people interested, and they were all kids between the ages of three and five. We just started to meet up at people’s houses once a month and now it’s grown massively,” Villafranca said.
Since the co-op began about five years ago, it has grown extensively, with about 32 families and 65 students. Yet, this growth was much in response to the beginning of COVID. The co-op was put on hold for a couple of months, but once members started to become more comfortable, more and more community members started participating.
“That year we went from 20 kids to 50 kids. That exploded everything, and we had to reassess how we were going to run things. We used to do age groups, three to five and six to eight Now, we offer different classes every class period and they can choose what they want to take,” Villafranca said. “We just have too many kids to run only two big groups.”
Some of the classes offered include Cooking Around the World, Stop-Motion Animation, Zookeeper Academy, and more. From an expanded course list to over double the amount of children, the pandemic pushed this co-op to flourish. However, the transition was not easy.
“It was hard. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I feel like it was very chaotic but led us to change the structure of the co-op. We used to do it at the library, but now are too big to do that, so we take up a community center. But, it led this co-op to how I always imagined it to be,” Villafranca said.
Although her Facebook post led to the creation of a prospering, blooming co-op, for Villafranca, the success is much more than that. It’s about the people she has come across along the way.
“The biggest achievement is the ability for us to form a community. These are people that we trust to help us with our children. It’s pretty much like a village. The co-op is not just me. It’s all of the people that have put so much effort and time to make it what it is,” Villafranca said. “I’m so grateful for the people who are by my side and on the team to make this a great thing for our children and community.”