Significant find for home-schoolers

Archaeology taught online

Listen closely on a morning when Amy and Regan Barr open the windows of their home, and you can hear two archaeologists scratching out a living.

There are no brushes or trowels or dirt to be moved. The work here involves an unusual mix of laptop computers, the Internet, ancient history and a penchant for home schooling.

It's a combination that lets the pair teach Greek and Roman history lessons over the Web from their house in Holly Springs.

Not only are most of the students in this virtual classroom home-schooled, so are the Barrs' three children. It's not unusual to find the whole family in the second-floor office, the kids studying at pint-sized desks while Mom and Dad lead online lectures.

"Most archaeologists at this point in their career either teach at universities, work for a museum or earn a living outside of archaeology," Amy Barr said. "We saw an opportunity to fill a niche."

The niche exists partly because parents who home-school often run out of expertise by the time their children reach high school. If teaching your children calculus sounds like a struggle, ponder the thrill of teaching them Latin or lessons on ancient Greek culture.

That's why many parents send their teenagers to traditional schools. Those who stick with home schooling often look outside the house for help.

It has been about 10 years since the Barrs worked their last dig -- at the site of Homer's Troy, in Turkey. It was the end of a decade of digging that included excavations in Jordan and Greece.

"When our first child was born, we decided I should get a job that could support a family," Regan Barr said. "I ended up writing software for a company in Cincinnati. A lot of what an archaeologist does involves keeping track of tiny details in an organized way, so it wasn't that difficult to learn programming."

The two also continued to lecture and teach, much as they had when they were pursuing their master's and doctoral degrees at the University of Cincinnati.

The pair would love to return to the trenches, but there aren't many archaeology digs in Holly Springs these days -- and Holly Springs is where they found themselves when they moved last year from Cincinnati.

Then the company that hired Regan here had to lay him off seven months later. Something had to be done to pay the bills.

A solution is unearthed

Given their teaching experience and interest in home schooling, it wasn't long before they hit on the idea of reaching out to home-schoolers. Regan Barr hesitates to say it was born of desperation, but there was a "definite sense of urgency."

That meant plugging the idea at various home-school meetings and other gatherings. It also meant giving the idea a name, the Lukeion Project, and a Web site (www.lukeion.org). In a pitch that often appeals to home-school parents, they highlight how traditional schools typically don't have the time to seriously study the links between ancient civilizations and the underpinnings of American law and democracy.

"It's not that they don't mention it," Amy Barr said, "but I don't think you can say they really study it in the way we offer the classes."

About 130 people have enrolled since classes began in February, including 42 this semester. The Lukeion Project also offers four-week workshops or the option of simply auditing classes. Costs range from $50 to $250 a class.

Personal touches

The pair make a point to bring their own experiences to the lessons, including an archive of almost 5,000 personal photos.

Given the hours they have spent literally unearthing history, their approach to ancient teachings has a noticeably contemporary feel. As students followed at home on their computers, Amy Barr recently walked them through a lesson on gods of the Greek pantheon.

Ares, she told them "was not particularly smart, and he was not particularly brave. He was just particularly interested in war." She added that his parents, Zeus and Hera, "also don't happen to think he was all that."

While students could hear Amy, they couldn't talk back. Instead, their questions and comments appeared as messages on her computer screen. It wasn't exactly a discussion, but it was clearly interactive.

The classes are not accredited, which isn't required under North Carolina's home-school laws. As of now, they also haven't generated enough money to dependably pay those bills.

But the Barrs have spent a fair amount of time in the trenches. They know the drill. Dig in and stick with it. Even in Holly Springs, a good archaeologist should be able to hit pay dirt.