The First and Only Representative of Home Schooling System in Turkey: Home Schooling Association

We’ve talked to the Association Head Senior Psychologist Mehmet Hilmi Eren who states that they started to implement the “100-Hour Online Training To Make Turkey Smile” project immediately at the time of suspending of schools after Coronavirus epidemic and General Manager Buse Fidan about the Home School Association and the Parent-Child activities that can be done at home during this period. Founded in 2017, Home School Association continues its activities as the first and only representative of the homeschooling system in Turkey that had been used in many other countries before.

By what motivation has the Home Schooling Association founded? We would like to hear the founding story from you.

Home Schooling Association is the first and the only representative of the homeschooling system in Turkey, which is led by America and has been widely applied in other developed countries. Since we aimed to make this system one of the alternatives in Turkey, Home Schooling Association was founded in 2017 by Senior Psychological Counselor Mehmet Hilmi Eren. For now, the Home Schooling Association is a non-governmental organization that leads the education field and that works with experts in many areas. We made many organizations and conducted many Works that fot a lot of attention.

We have organized many activities so far with the slogans “Every House is a School”, “Home is the Center of Education” and “Education Starts at Home”.

Parents can also follow all the activities of our association on our website (websitemizden) and @evokuluderneği social media account. We have launched our online services for the coming days.

The activities of Home Schooling Association to support the educational processes outside the school and in the family environment are as follows:

• Conducting researches to activate and develop out-of-school activities where families will spend time with their children,
• To organize educational activities such as courses, seminars, conferences that support the entrepreneurial spirits of the parents, provide strategic thinking, problem solving, extraordinary thinking skills, develop their imagination, and to open courses with the cooperation of public institutions,
• To publish publications such as newspapers, magazines, books, bulletins that will facilitate the access of parents to information,
• Supporting computer and internet technologies where parents will obtain the necessary information to continue their kids’ education processes at home in the modern age where information is spreading rapidly,
• To work on the use of social media, tablets and mobile phones for educational purposes,
• Organizing social events to establish a network of communication between parents,
• To mediate the meeting of parents and volunteer university students who will contribute to continuation of the education processes outside the school.

How do you determine the content? 

Our content is shaped by skills development. In fact, families support the academic part in their children’s development, they make their kids take private lessons, but skills development always comes short. We support these skills by providing psychological counseling at home with the home guidance system we have established and by working with guidance students and graduates. We are doing activity studies. We organize workshops in which families participate together. We organize activities such as “Online Consultancy – Online Home Guidance – Online Trainings” to support family development.

What benefits have you received since its establishment? I would like to know the positive or negative feedbacks. Let’s talk a little bit about what you’ve changed or transformed.

We have achieved a very rapid development since our establishment. As a team, we observed that we touched many families and received feedbacks at of gratitude. To date, we have tested 1750 children free of charge on development and ability tests. Approximately 6 thousand families attended the training summits (eğitim zirvelerine) we held.

“Over 300 Families Benefited From Home Guidance System”

After the corona virus, many parents started or had to spend more time at home with their children, so would home schooling somehow respond to needs? What do you recommend to children and parents?

Turkey and the world is having a really difficult time. In fact, this process has exactly caused the need which has to be expressed now. We’ve activated the “100-Hours Online Training To Make Turkey Smile” program as soon as the process started (devreye soktuk).

In this study, we make live broadcasts every day from our social media accounts of Home Schooling Association with our 41 expert teachers and home guides. We aim to support our parents and children while staying at homes.

In this context, we supported our families with 100 hours of online education that will bring together families and children with what they can do for home education, with home guidance, home activities and with valuable experts. Actually, we see the house as the center of education. It is known that home schooling systems are common in the world, especially in developed countries. We see this process as a period in which the home schooling system will begin to be discussed in our country.

We see it important for our students to learn active working processes in this process. It is important that they divide their time during the day into segments. Chatting, activity time, subject study, problem solving, book reading, daily writing, using the tablets for educational purposes, foreign language studies, mind games and regular games are among the activities that should be made during the day. We recommend that children do not make aggressive changes in their sleep patterns within the scope of preparation for the school period. Getting up early, afternoon naps, and switching to sleep as school nights are among the behaviors that need attention. We wish this process to end in the best way for families and our country, and as the Home Schooling Association, we express that we will do our best to support families in this process.

You established the home schooling system long ago. The issue of staying home just came up and it was realized that there had been a gap in this matter. What should be done in this process? How can we turn the house into a school? How can we use the house most effectively?

When families follow the activities of our association, they will realize that there are thousands of different activities they can do with children at home. Especially in this process, academic studies can become boring after a certain time. At this point, we want parents to direct their children to activities on talent, skills development and especially to attention and intelligence development. They can play mind games, and they read books together. They can develop games about producing new useful objects from waste materials and using them outside of their primary purposes. They can take advantage of the videos that have already been uploaded on the YouTube page of the Home Schooling Association. They can watch TED videos, watch success story themed movies.

You have also founded a paternity school as among your previous activities. In this sense, you have organized paternity trainings an association that attaches importance to gender equality. How do you contribute to gender equality?

We observed that mothers attended the seminars held in schools and in different settings more frequently and fathers participated in a low rate. In this regard, Mehmet Hilmi Eren contacted the provincial mufti individually and carried out “family and paternity trainings” at the mosques on Friday when there were fathers. Over 500 thousand fathers were reached within the scope of the project. Mothers were the most satisfied ones with this project of course. Many women sent their husbands to participate in the trainings. The fact that many of the fathers went there with the requests of their wives was the best sign for us that the project contributed not only to fathers but also to family development.