School away from home: Learning center helps teach homeschoolers

ROCHESTER — For three days a week, home-schooled kids from seven school districts across the South Coast come together at one of just 24 Christian learning centers in Massachusetts.

Rochester resident Michael Costa opened the Rochester Christian Learning Center in September 2024 after he saw his son and daughter-in-law looking for alternative schooling options for his granddaughter.

“They really wanted to have some kind of a Christian option for her, so that inspired me and a few other people at the [First Congregational Church] to learn about Christian-based learning centers,” he said.

Costa noted that while homeschooling is becoming more popular across the country, it can become tricky for families when both parents work.

“Some parents want to have an option for homeschooling, but if they both work, it’s difficult to be able to carve out the amount of time,” Costa said.

This is where the Christian Learning Center and its three-days a week schedule steps in.

According to Costa, about half of the students at the center were homeschooled before joining the program and during this time, parents “had to really use a balancing act at home because their child was being homeschooled … but they still wanted to be employed.”

He added, “They needed that employment. They needed that second income, so they were interested in a homeschool learning center because we help them educate their children.”

“We thought that three days a week would give those parents who needed to have both incomes … the homeschool option if they wanted to do that,” Costa said.

According to Costa, parents are still in control of what their home-schooled kids learn. The Christian Learning Center is simply designed to aid parents and to “help families with their Christian education for their children.”

He noted that the center tries to “promote the children’s strengths and help them where they have some weaknesses.”

After getting in contact with the Herzog Foundation, whose mission it is to promote a Christian education in the United States, Costa selected the “My father’s world” curriculum plan.

Costa said the foundation offered slightly over 100 Christian-based curriculums to choose from, with the “My father’s world” curriculum outlining 34 weeks of activities with lesson plans laid out for each day.

He noted this is helpful because of the 21 teachers, which the center calls “coaches”, only six come from formal teaching backgrounds.

“We know that we’re supposed to cover these pages and these particular topics on that day,” he said.

In addition to the Herzog Foundation’s curriculum, coaches at the Christian Learning Center put some personal touches on the program.

The kids learn American Sign Language, for example, because a member of the First Congregational Church was interested in teaching it to them.

The Christian Learning Center’s coaches are all volunteers who chose to opt into the “completely voluntary program,” Costa said.

Paula Bettencourt chose to coach at the center as a way to work with children again now that her kids and grandchildren are grown.

She explained that she’s also a “firm believer” in homeschooling and decided to volunteer because the center being “Christ-centered was just absolutely a thing I wanted to be involved in.”

Jennifer Petty and her husband decided to enroll their now six-year-old son Hudson in the Christian Learning Center to give him a small classroom environment.

Petty said her son is a “super shy kid,” so she was nervous about sending him to public school and said that through the Christian Learning Center, she saw him “grow so much as far as his personality.”

“He’s the type of kid where he picks up emotions with other people [and] now that’s regulated and he’s just a very smart, very outgoing kid,” she said.

Petty noted that she finds the Christian program and learning about God and Bible stories are great for Hudson.

“In the beginning of the school year, he told me that his favorite thing about learning at school is learning about the Bible, which was really huge to me because I just love that he has that belief and he enjoys that,” she said.

During her time at the center, Bettencourt has seen Hudson and the other children grow as individuals and with each other.

“It’s amazing to see,” she said.