When Anne Marie Semke was a school-aged child, she said she thrived in the public school system. She loved it enough that she decided to become a teacher and taught at both public and private high schools in Vancouver, B.C. As an adult, Semke still has fond memories of public school but is choosing to homeschool her two children.

“When I became a teacher (I) realized this is a system that works for certain children and certain families but not for all,” Semke said during a weekly gathering of the ACTS HomeSchool Group at Sunrise Baptist Church in Puyallup.

ACTS, which stands for Academic Character training Teacher support and Social, is a Christian-based group of 170 school-aged children who meet once a week to learn in conventional-style classrooms. The classes, which range from world history and Spanish to drama and student government, consist of 12 to 15 children in the same age group and are taught by parents, several of whom are former public school teachers. Like public school, the days is divided up into four periods, plus lunch, and the year is divided into two 12-week semesters.

“They’re able to get a lot of the things through our program that you’d get in a public school setting,” said ACTS Executive Director Holly Norquist, who also has three children in the program.

ACTS meets only once a week ­— during the other four school days, the children learn at home, with their parents acting as their teachers.

Semke put her eldest son in public school, but they soon realized he had a learning disability. Working in the school system, she had seen plenty of teachers get overwhelmed by tending to the needs of so many students and had seen many students struggle.

“I’d seen many students decide at a young age that they were ‘stupid’ and stop trying,” she said. “I thought if (my son) stayed there, he (was) going to fall through the cracks. I thought, ‘I can’t put my son through this.’”

So she began homeschooling both her children, who are now 11 and 7. She considers herself more of their tutor than a teacher and likes that they need to be self-motivated. She gives them a chunk of curriculum that they need to get through in a week’s time at lets them work at their own pace.

“If they’re good, they can get school done in three hours, if not it takes longer,” she said. “With homeschool, you can only progress after mastery.”

Each parent of a homeschooled child has a different reason for teaching at home. Fellow ACTS parent Jennifer Rosenbam took her now 14-year-old daughter Caitlin out of public school in fifth grade, when she received several notes from Caitlin’s teacher that she hadn’t mastered her multiplication tables yet.

“I thought, maybe something isn’t working,” said Rosenbam, who also has fond memories of her public school upbringing.

Now, Caitlin Rosenbam takes her classes online. When she’s stuck, she turns to her mother for help; if Rosenbam can’t help, she calls her online teacher.

“I like homeschool a lot better,” said Caitlin Rosenbam, taking a break from mingling with her peers during an ACTS costume party.

She’s dressed up as a bumblebee and her mother says she now projects poise and confidence. It comes from the lack of pressure to be popular, Caitlin Rosenbam said.

“You don’t have to deal with cliques or popularity,” she said. “Nobody’s enemies (here) because everyone’s friends. Nobody fights.”

Caitlin Rosenbam, who hopes to study physical therapy in college and join the Air Force, said she still keeps in touch with some of her public school friends but also socializes with her ACTS peers. She spends four days a week at home with her parents and her brother, so she enjoys learning with children her own age on Fridays.

“It’s good to take a break and come see everyone,” she said.

Both Rosenbam and Semke agree that attending the homeschool group is a benefit for both children and parents. Each week, a group of parents who aren’t teaching or helping during any given period gather in a space by the church’s front door and mingle with each other. Semke compares it to a teacher’s lounge in a public school.

“There’s nothing competitive about it,” she said of the group. “If we get competitive, nobody succeeds. We just share ideas and thoughts.”

Semke and Bonney Lake mother Cami Culp, who attends PATH, a similar homeschool co-op in Edgewood, all insist that each family has their own homeschool style. Culp, has homeschooled her 17-year-old son Travis and 15-year-old son Mason since they were kindergartners and she’s now beginning to homeschool her 5-year-old daughter Hannah. She prefers to lead a very structured day, beginning at 7 a.m. and teaches in a lecture format. She reads the curriculum she has purchased for her children ahead of time and uses it as a guide to teach.

“You just have to stay one day ahead of them,” Culp said.

Both Travis and Mason Culp are heavily involved in public school sports and Travis Culp was recently elected team captain of his high school swimming team in Enumclaw. For Culp, that’s a great comfort.

“In all honestly, they’re doing fabulously socially,” she said. “They go to our church youth group and they’ve always been involved in sports.”

For now, Semke is happy with her homeschool situation but she knows it’s not for everyone.

“I would tell anyone who had questions about homeschooling, this isn’t for everybody, it depends on the family,” she said. “I think public schools are great for some families. But this is right for us.”