ELKO — Holland Wines, president, director and founder of Room2Grow Resource Center, has spent almost three years heading interactive homeschooling experiences for Elko youth.
“On Tuesdays, we offer a two-hour co-op for homeschool kids. That program currently has about 100 children in it,” he said.
While Room2Grow is a secular organization, it meets at First Presbyterian Church in Elko for educational programs.
“It’s not a drop-off, because we want moms and families to be involved,” Wines said. “Sometimes grandmas or aunts and uncles come.”
She said children spend the first hour in class. “In the second hour, we kind of just let them be, because when there’s no structure that’s kind of where they find their people, like their friends, the people who do things similarly to them.”
Room2Grow students enjoy a science lesson from Nevada Department of Wildlife.
“On Thursdays, we offer a reading program,” Wines said. “We have kids from ages 3 through 9 in that program.”
She said the program provides “foundations, so that we don’t run into the issues that our county as a whole is having, where only one-third of our kids are proficient.”
She said she tries to make reading fun, mixing in science and history.
“They go to class with a teacher in very small groups and learn phonics and fundamentals of reading. Then, for the next 45 minutes, we work as a group,” Wines said.
“I also started a tutoring program that’s open for every kid. Most of the kids who come to me on Saturdays are public school children and I spend my entire day on Saturdays tutoring kids who struggle with reading,” she said. “We don’t put them in in the group setting, because typically those kids have struggled for a long time.
“Their confidence is usually shot by the time that they get to me. And group settings are difficult the older that they get. They just need a one-on-one setting where they can get the information but don’t have the embarrassment and all the stuff that goes along with struggling to read,” Wines said.
“I have other tutors who volunteer for me, who do math and other subjects. I am certified in reading, so I stick to that,” she noted.
The co-op goes on monthly field trips, which have included visiting the California Trail Interpretive Center, the Northeastern Nevada Museum and the Elko Post Office, Wines said.
“We’ve been to both fire stations, in Spring Creek and Elko,” she said. “Every year we go to the airport, which is one of our biggest, most fun field trips. Reach Air Medical Services and air medics and the fire station and SkyWest, they all get together and they bring in the helicopters and the airplanes and the ambulances. The kids get to go inside and ask all the questions.”
She said there also have been classes with the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Also, First Presbyterian Church has a community garden which the group uses for educational purposes.
“We usually do a summer program and that’s open to all kids,” Wines noted. “We have a read-a-thon coming up in a couple of months that you can donate to, where the kids read. It’s our big fundraiser for the year.”
Wines said she and husband Casey Wines own 100 acres outside of town. “When we started this, the intention was to build a nonprofit and build something out here where there would be animals,” she said. “But funding obviously is always tricky. So, we’ve tried to give them a lot of those unique learning opportunities. We’ve had veterinarians come out to them. We’ve had Native American teachers come in and talk to them.”
Room2Grow students play a measuring game.
Lydia Snow
Lamoille-based artist Lynne Kistler put on a smoke art demonstration for the children, Holland Wines said.
“We’re always looking for new ways and new things to put in front of these kids, just anything unique and educational. We want to be able to give them as many experiences as we can,” she said.
“We have over 150 kids now in our programs, which is huge,” Wines said. “A good chunk of them have been with us from the beginning,” although a few children have left the program due to moving out of Elko or switching to regular school, she noted.
One family who moved away ended up rejoining the program after they returned to Elko, she said.
“We have a really amazing retention rate and I think it’s just because we’ve built a community — and the fact that we want families to be involved and included,” Wines said.
Like the children, adults also have found connection through Room2Grow, she noted.
“It’s good for families to be a part of peer connections. You don’t ever want your kids to have a group of friends that you don’t know or that you’re not connected to,” she said.
Room2Grow’s resources extend beyond homeschool curricula for young children, also including career readiness and tutoring for older kids, she said.
“I have seen kids all the way up to 18,” Wines said. “I even thought about opening it up for adults. But right now, the schools are contacting me nonstop with more kids, so my list is long and my days are short.”
For teenage students, Wines said she makes sure they are able to shadow mentors when they are interested in specific topics.
“We definitely try to take their interests and help them run with them so that they can find career paths — or see if it’s even right. Sometimes you think you want to be something and then you don’t,” she said.
“I have two children and one of them was in third grade when COVID-19 hit and I saw what a struggle it was. The teachers were not prepared to teach under those circumstances — and rightfully so. I told myself, I’m going to pull my kid out for one year only, until the dust settles, and then we’ll go back,” she said. “We absolutely loved it. It was such a great opportunity,” Wines said.
“I wanted to be able to give more kids, more unique opportunities and avenues where they could do group projects and work on things with friends,” she explained.
One of the downsides of homeschooling is students cannot work with a partner, she noted.
“I wanted these kids to still have those opportunities that they love so much, of being with their peers and learning but also having the benefits that come with homeschooling. So this was kind of just a way to give them a little bit of both.”