I wasn’t exactly looking forward to my hours of online AP Statistics this year. But at every turn, I have been surprised and delighted by my teacher Jennette Driscoll—the quality of her mind, the humor of her anecdotes, and the depth of her dedication to her students. So yes, she is a teacher of AP Statistics and Honors History of Science through the online homeschooling cooperative Pennsylvania Homeschoolers (PAHS). She is also a geneticist, an early education professional, a linguist, a singer and a clarinetist, and a mother of two. I cannot take credit for the compelling story that follows—I just asked the questions. I know this article is a long one, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut a single line. Hers is a life lived with no rigid, unforgiving master plan; instead, she has gone all over the world by organically following her natural interests. The wide variety of new jobs she’s tried and had success in, her readiness for new adventures, and her genuine dedication to education make Mrs. Driscoll a model teacher. I also think the life she has created for herself as an online educator shows why teachers (and not just students!) can make great use of the exciting community that online learning provides.
Ruby LaRocca: Occasionally in my online AP Statistics class with you, you’ll give us a glimpse of your past experiences—an anecdote about working as a statistician for a factory to illustrate Simpson’s Paradox, or your time in a laboratory doing genetics research into the duplication of chromosome 15 to give us a sense of what the peer review process is like, or the time when you worked in a children’s hospital to explain Institutional Review Boards and statistical ethics. (And didn’t you also travel through Europe with an elite choir at some point?) Judging from what little I know about you personally, you clearly seem to have had a fascinating life so far and surely will in the future. Could you give me a quick thumbnail sketch of your life’s twists and turns? How did you come to your current job as a teacher of AP Statistics and the History of Science at Pennsylvania Homeschoolers?
Jennette Driscoll: Thanks, Ruby! I have taken a long and winding path to get to my current place! I did tour Europe with American Music Abroad, an audition-only concert band and choir group. I played my clarinet on a tour of thirteen countries in three weeks, with sometimes more than one concert per day. However, on the way over, the airline experienced major delays, and we found ourselves stranded in New York City for a full day. My group of friends and I made our way to Carnegie Hall, which was undergoing renovations at the time, and we took a tour. Our tour guide was intrigued to learn we were on our way to be “on tour” as a performance group and invited us to sing on stage! I had actually practiced all the choir’s music too, so I joined them on stage at Carnegie Hall for a couple of our numbers. Our only audience members were other people touring the building at the time, but I can still claim I once sang in Carnegie Hall! That same summer I also spent several weeks attending a high school in Germany as an exchange student.
I went on to attend Penn State University, where I majored in linguistics with early language acquisition and compsci emphasis, where we were exploring artificial intelligence and language recognition. After graduation, I got married and put my linguistics skills to work as a lead toddler teacher in a daycare center for a few years while my husband finished graduate school to get his Ph.D. in applied math at Cornell. While there, I also worked as a features editor and occasional columnist for a (now defunct) quilting magazine, the Quilt Peddler, and also ended up employed as a remote worker by America Online.
While at Cornell, we had the opportunity to live in Zurich, Switzerland for a summer, and did quite a good job of touring Europe while we were then—it was possible to just buy an open rail pass relatively cheaply and hop onto a train to other countries. I also began, using AOL and a dial-up connection, to help my sister back in PA (Pennsylvania) homeschool her three children, helping out with science, math, and history.
Following Cornell, we moved to Boulder, Colorado, for my husband’s post-doc, and as we only had one car, I walked to the nearest job I could find—at Wal-Mart. In less than a year, I was an assistant store manager and even took a year to lead the overnight shift in unloading trucks. We won’t mention that I first came to the attention of upper management, ultimately landing me that position, by repeatedly injuring myself on the job (hint, do not run over yourself with a pallet jack, nor slam your hand in the door of the trash compactor…there are easier and less destructive pathways to get into management when you have a college degree!). It was also in Boulder that I finally earned my black belt in Isshinryu Karate, the study of which I began while at Penn State. When we moved to Delaware, where my husband is now the Unidel Chair in Mathematics at the University of Delaware, I continued working for Wal-Mart for a short time, still as an assistant store manager, but after the arrival of my oldest child, I decided I really had goals that did not involve retail. I returned to school, this time enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, in biology, where I earned my undergrad degree in biology, and spent time while studying, also working as a lab assistant in physical therapy, and worked in the campus tutoring center, tutoring students in calculus prep courses, calculus, and statistics.
At this point, luck struck, and my resume landed on the desk of a doctor and researcher at the local children’s hospital, the AI DuPont Hospital for children. My future boss needed a research assistant and was embarking on a new project investigating speech delays in young children. A genetics expert, she had never learned much about linguistics, and the linguistics expert on the project had never done genetics. In I walked with degrees in both fields and was hired on the spot, for both the speech genetics project and a project researching autism in children with a duplication on chromosome 15, which we refer to as Idic15 (Isodicentric chromosome 15). In that position, I had the opportunity to conduct detailed chromosome studies, including southern blots, FISH, PCR, cell line immortalization, and of course, work with patients, doctors, and scientists. This work involved a lot of statistics as well; you need statistics in order to decide whether your findings are meaningful or not, and a good grounding in
statistics is necessary to ensure your procedures are going to be set up correctly to be statistically meaningful! Because we were working not only with humans, but with disabled young children, we also had a lot of involvement with the Institutional Review Board, a panel of ethicists, doctors, and researchers who work to protect the rights of anyone involved in a scientific study. It was truly a dream job!
However, after I was involved in a car accident that made working in the lab increasingly difficult, I decided to stay home with my children for a few years—they were 6 and 9 years old. They were enrolled in our local public school system, until my husband accepted a sabbatical position in St. Paul, Minnesota for half a year. We had a lovely six months in St. Paul, but when we returned, we realized our kids would be better off homeschooling rather than returning to public school, at least for a couple of years. That couple of years turned into homeschooling until high school graduation! Both are now university honors students. While learning how to create a rigorous homeschool program, I met my mentor, Carole Matheny, who was homeschooling her own two sons, older than mine. Carole also taught AP Statistics at Pennsylvania Homeschoolers. After her sons graduated, Carole and I had a talk, and she encouraged me to take over her position teaching statistics at PAHS. Like me, Carole had also been a scientist (she is the one who was a factory scientist) and she respected my background, knowledge, as well as my teaching skill in local co-op courses, and she was thinking about retirement and who should replace her. I began shadowing her as she taught AP Stats, particularly in her last year of teaching, when my youngest took her class, and became very excited about the prospect of teaching this course. During this time I also spent a year co-teaching AP Environmental Science at PAHS with Dr. Terrianne Lavine, who still teaches that class today. When Carole was ready to retire, we approached the Richman’s of PAHS to propose the idea that I step into her shoes, and the rest, as they say, is history. This is my second year teaching AP Statistics, and I truly love it.
RL: I’m interested to know what your personal relationship with homeschooling is. You have devoted the last few years to your online homeschooling students. Did you homeschool your own children, or were you homeschooled yourself? Do you think of homeschooling as a viable option for students who feel dissatisfied with or overwhelmed by a public school education? In my own experience, homeschooling is varied: some days are remarkable, but some are lonely. What do you find the opportunities and obstacles of learning at home to be?
JD: Great question! I homeschooled both of my sons from part way through elementary school all the way through high school graduation, from which they both went to college with scholarships and invitations to honors programs. I also taught several local co-op classes, including chemistry lab, the Bill of Rights, physics, and honors history of science to my son’s friends.
They both tell me their overall homeschool experience was very positive and prepared them well for college life.
I actually believe very strongly in our public school system and believe that it is a vital resource. Both of my parents, one of my grandparents, and several aunts and uncles in my family were public school teachers, and I attended public schools, as did my husband. I think public school teachers are a national treasure, even if their true capabilities are sometimes hampered by all of the requirements they are bound to. Most people really don’t realize all the time that goes into not only class prep and teaching and coaching and mentoring, but continuing education, classroom prep and maintenance, parent conferences, worries about safety, and differentiating education to meet the needs of a very diverse class of learners!
Some students and families, however, find their needs are just not being met, even after efforts to work it out with the school. If the parent is willing to do diligent research on educational methods, curriculum, and networking, as well as finding out how to support any special needs, then homeschooling can be a great option. I am networked with over two thousand homeschooling families in my state, as (until this year) co-admin of my state’s largest Facebook homeschool support groups (and previously, Yahoo discussion server). There are some families who I try to gently advise that their students would do better placed back in school because the parent is simply unable to provide enough educational support at home. But most families, once they are “all in” and have begun learning the ropes and forming mentorships with more experienced homeschoolers, do an excellent job of it! I treated homeschooling my sons as my own full-time (if unpaid) job. Supporting the social, emotional, and educational needs, while still being a parent first, is challenging and rewarding.
For some students, despite the protests of many homeschoolers, homeschooling can sometimes be lonely. Homeschoolers may live in rural areas without other close homeschooled students, and limited activities to get together to meet other students, although 4H, scouting, volunteering, church, homeschool dances and proms, and other organized groups can help a lot. The ability to form a close group of friends free of bullying is another major plus, as is the ability to flex around medical problems if needed. We found that things did get more lonely through the high school years, simply because homeschoolers tend to customize their educational plans to a very high degree, making for more conflicts when trying to get together with others. It is necessary to invest sufficient time in just getting together with other teens to hang out. However, that need to schedule a time to hang out may mean the homeschooled student is less experienced than a public school counterpart at arranging their own social life, a really important skill in college and the real world. Of course, my youngest experienced his last two years of homeschooling during the pandemic, which made things three times as difficult, socially! I actually ran an informal gym class at a local park, with kickball, bocce, frisbee, cornhole, and other outdoor activities, just to give my son and his friends a chance to gather outdoors where it was relatively safe, and continued teaching my local co-op classes online, so they could keep up their friendships. But it was definitely a different experience than my oldest had.
Some families do struggle a bit with maintaining rigorous academic standards; they either have no benchmark for what to realistically expect, didn’t keep up with ongoing research in supporting a homeschooled student, or both parents need to work, or they need help with specialized classes such as foreign languages, lab sciences, writing, or mathematics. Some families struggle because they attempt to recreate school-at-home instead of fully embracing homeschooling, and this causes problems because the school setting is designed to educate large classes of students altogether, who are moving through a set progression in a set period of time. It is important to realize that it’s okay to teach classes that cross-curricular boundaries, to sign up for (high quality) outside classes, that don’t fall neatly into a thirty-six-week pattern, or take place on holidays, summer, or weekends. It’s okay to be creative in implementing even routine requirements (there is a local homeschool theater group where the students read a work of Shakespeare, rewrite it as a condensed forty-five-minute play, design set,s and costumes, and then perform—this can easily be an English class! We live near the seashore, and some students complete a year of biology, covering the big ideas, but with a more intense focus on marine biology, and participate in horseshoe crab counts, red knot breeding area maintenance, and birding—and incorporate learning to sail or learn about water quality in seaboard communities). And some families realize, and should be supported in this transition, their student simply needs to go back to public school. That’s okay too!
RL: In our class, you are remarkably accessible through online chat or email; you provide timely and helpful feedback to every graded assignment; you post daily messages to guide us through our day’s work; you expect a lot from us but you are very understanding. I know we greatly benefit from all the time you dedicate to us—what do you get out of it?
JD: Thanks for that. I have more time to devote to individual attention than most public school teachers do. That isn’t better dedication on my part; many public school teachers are teaching 5 different class preps plus doing lunch duty and committees. I am teaching three classes (AP Stats and honors history of science through PAHS, and tutoring some kindergarteners in math at my home). And both of my sons are now away at college. This affords me more time to respond to my students, write letters of recommendation, and invest in more education, materials and planning, while still having time for my husband, cats, and hobbies. Also, I have students from all over the world working in different time zones. So I’ve been known, if I was awake, to respond to help requests that come in at 2am.
What do I get out of it? First, I have always had a creative side—I quilt, I paint, I do photography, I knit, I spin wool into yarn (badly), I sing, I have done theater, I play clarinet (I actually played clarinet, saxophone, violin, piano, and trombone in high school as well as singing). Teaching gives me a great creative outlet as I design a new activity or assignment or respond to how the class is grasping the material, or think up a new approach to getting the material across. I love being creative.
I think the subjects I teach are really important, and I’m grateful when families entrust me to mentor their teens through them. I love seeing those ‘lightbulb moments’ when a concept suddenly makes sense. I love seeing students who are not feeling confident emerge with a great deal of confidence in the material at the end of a year and helping students who are ready for more to find a spark of engagement. I have basically always taught throughout my career—as a karate instructor, a manager, a writer, an online community manager, as a research assistant working with new grad students or employees in the lab, as a daycare teacher—somehow I’ve always been teaching, no matter what my career! It’s also nice to actually get paid for it for once!
RL: Okay, last question! Speaking to many peers who attend our local high school, I’ve found that they work very hard to get their work done, participate in sports, and lead clubs and activities, often staying up late into the night to do so. Some students I’ve spoken to, however, feel unfulfilled by the required classes they take and have found new and powerful interest in subjects they have studied through supplemental courses during the summer or in addition to their schoolwork. What online courses would you recommend—through Pennsylvania Homeschoolers or another platform—for interested students at the high school level?
JD: Naturally, I recommend my honors history of science class through PAHS! It works well as history, non-lab science, or a free elective. We spend time reading primary source material and literature along with a textbook, and the students take turns leading the class by preparing discussion questions. Instead of exams, each unit has a short paper or project, and students need to interact on the discussion boards. It’s one thing to learn about Hippocrates or Galileo or Mendel or Darwin; it’s another thing entirely to read “Origin of Species” and dive into what it really does—or doesn’t—claim! Learning how and why the scientific method developed and how modern scientists operate when researching a new idea is eye-opening for many, and learning how history, science, technology, current events, warfare, and geography influence one another in the space of one course is a wonderful experience.
I highly recommend the rhetoric I-III series at The Well-Trained Mind Academy. Both of my sons took this sequence. It is highly rigorous! My English major college student actually decided not to take AP English, as these three years prepared him very well for college and simply for clear communication. Rhetoric students learn formal argument and persuasion, and examine how language and perception interact, and work with a lot of peer review to edit their work.
AP English with PAHS is an extremely well-run class. My oldest took this class and found he was exceptionally well-prepared for college-level writing, and subsequently the class prepared him well to get a 5 on the exam.
AP Computer Science at PAHS is phenomenally well-done! I believe the instructor has a nearly one hundred percent pass rate, and exactly one hundred percent in many years, despite not “gate-keeping” who can take the course or the exam.
AP Psychology at PAHS is taught by an incredibly knowledgeable and enthusiastic expert in the field. Students work on research projects and have a very engaging time of it.
AP Environmental Science with PAHS is taught by Dr. Terrianne Lavine, a professor at the University of Kansas. Dr. Lavine truly cares about her students as whole people and is enthusiastic about the subject matter. I spent a year co-teaching this course with Dr. Lavine while we were homeschooling our youngest teens together.
I’m not sure there is a bad class at PAHS—every teacher is there because it’s what they genuinely want to be doing. Just be sure to read student reviews and what is required in terms of time and commitment, and how the class is presented, to make sure you are a good match for the class.
What A Plant Knows is a course on the Coursera platform, taught by Dr. Daniel Chamovitz from the University of Negreb. This is an engaging course exploring the many ways we never imagined plants communicate with us, each other, and the environment! Did you know trees can warn one another of a bug invasion, and how a plant’s tendency to grow upward even when sticking out of a steep embankment works remarkably similar to the way we humans know which way is up. If a student wants to dive a little deeper into biology but thought botany was boring, this class is a must!
Byline, by Clearwater Press. Through a reporter’s notebook, videos, and a workbook, the student spends a year as a cub reporter, reporting on events through history (there is a USA history focus). Students work through research techniques and crafting a newspaper (though using historical events) while honing the art of the expository essay, with effective word choice, paragraph transitions, citing sources, crafting a logical train of thought, and backing up claims with evidence. My youngest used this as a freshman before embarking on the rhetoric sequence at WTMA and loved it.
Derek Owens Tabletclass—for the math student who wants to work ahead, needs to review material, or who is in a school where a teacher has been pressed into service outside their area of expertise, Derek Owens will fill the gap well. My sons did not take this class, as we taught everything through calculus at home, but I hear consistently good things about it.