The History of a Homeschooling Magazine – continued

Continued from July 15:

We have a big red spiral-bound notebook, one of those 200 page, college ruled notebooks divided into five subject areas. Written across the cover in black marker are these words: Home Education Magazine, Issue 1, Volume 1 (putting it together). This notebook was literally the blueprint for the first issue of the magazine.

Inside are notes such as this listing from the first page: bulk mail rates, liscenses? permits? advertising – where and how – costs? printing – available options, need a title – cover? advertisers – how to obtain, what to charge, subscriptions – 12 issues, $20.00/year or $2.00/issue, welcome contributions – no pay yet. The date was 12-26-83.

The next page is a listing of potential content: Editorial, Articles, Interviews, Resources and Reviews, Kids Korner, Homeschooling Hints, Directory, Legislative News, Letters, Questions and Answers, Local Support Group News. Interestingly, most of those can still be found in today’s Home Education Magazine.

On page after page the first content of the magazine is written out in longhand, in blue ink – in some places items are scribbled over and corrections or additions made, either in my sloppy scribble or in Mark’s distinctive hand. Editing was done later, in red ink – but there’s little of that. At this top of each page the word Finis is circled in red. At that point the entry was typed into that old Kaypro II computer and undoubtedly fine-tuned for printing.

The first issue of Home Education Magazine was twenty pages long; ten double-sided sheets of paper stapled along the left-hand side. It featured an editorial, a couple of articles, an interview with a homeschooling family, reviews of several educational items, a book review, a report from the Washington Legislative Action Committee, a few good quotes and a short listing of helpful homeschooling resources.

That first issue sported a sharp graphic header designed by my artistic brother, Bill, and our son John provided a bit of artwork. I sketched a couple of small images to run with the quotes which related to learning, but that was it as far as graphical content. We weren’t aware of clip art or copyright-free images yet, and we didn’t think photos would reproduce well on a print shop’s printers.

There was a meeting scheduled in Spokane the first week of January, 1984, to go over the homeschooling bill, and I thought that would be a good place to introduce our new publication. I drove over to Spokane and a couple of hours before the meeting began, I took our laid-out pages to a quick print shop and had them run off one thousand copies of each page. I stopped at a McDonald’s restaurant and collated up about fifty copies over a burger and fries, and when I got to the meeting I passed them around the room. To be honest, I don’t remember much about the response. Our little publication just seemed like another way to promote the legislative effort, and while I’m sure it was well received within the group, I don’t remember any specifics from that evening.

When I got home with the remaining copies we collated and stapled them, then sent that first issue to everyone we thought would be even remotely interested. We sent copies to John Holt and Dr. and Mrs. Moore, to friends we’d made around the state while working on the homeschooling bill, to legislators who had shown support, and to anyone with any connection to homeschooling who we could find a mailing address for.

There was one particular item of great interest in that first issue of Home Education Magazine: A note from a new support group which had invited John Holt to Spokane.

To be continued…

Continued from July 15:

For the first few months we mostly played games with our new computer. It came with classic standards like Ladder, Aliens, and a version of Pac-Man, and the whole family enjoyed these newfangled electronic diversions. I did some bookkeeping and letter writing on it, and the boys explored the drawing program. Then in the fall of 1983 I saw a short newspaper item about a homeschool conference in Spokane, Washington, 200 miles from where we lived. It advertised homeschool advocates and authors Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore as the featured speakers, and conference attendees would receive a free copy of their book, Home Grown Kids.

The conference was being sponsored by the newly-formed Family Learning Association, a service organization created by local homeschooling pioneer Kathleen McCurdy. Not having any idea what I was getting into, but excited about the prospect of meeting others interested in the concept of homeschooling, I drove the 200 miles and took my seat on a hard metal folding chair in the large and impressive Spokane Convention Center.

I don’t recall much about the conference other than liking what the Moores had to say and how they said it. They seemed very knowledgeable about the potential of parents teaching their own children, but they were also warm, friendly, sincere and encouraging. They spent a long time answering individual questions afterwards, and they were kind and patient with everyone. Little did I know that a few short years later these remarkable pioneering leaders would become good friends – and trusted allies in the fight for homeschooling freedoms.

What I primarily remember from the conference was meeting and joining a small group of people who were drafting a bill to make homeschooling legal in Washington state. I drove back to Spokane two or three times a month for the next few weeks, attending meetings and drafting sessions and coffee klatches for local legislators, often with Mark in tow. We organized the first statewide gathering of homeschool leaders in Washington and presented our bill draft, then we gained a good sponsor and set about garnering more support. Kathleen McCurdy, who had organized the conference, became the bill’s lobbyist, and when she headed for the state capitol in Olympia to begin work in earnest I went along, as much out of curiosity as anything else.

That winter I started a little one-page newsletter to keep local homeschoolers and alternative schoolers informed about our progress with the bill. At some point that December I decided that what the homeschooling movement really needed was not just another newsletter, but a full-fledged magazine with articles, columns, photos, artwork and all the rest. John Holt was publishing GWS and the Moores were publishing The Family Report, but they were both just newsletters. I wanted a real magazine.

To be continued…