As senior lecturer and director of undergraduate education, teaching and learning at Vanderbilt University, Catherine McTamaney has devoted her career to education. As of this fall, she also has devoted her home to education.

After much debate and research, she and her husband made the decision to pull their children from a traditional Nashville private school and do something many of their friends were not doing – teaching them at home. And they might not have considered it if their children hadn’t been asking for them to do so.

“My older son had a sense from his peers that it was a really different pace of life than we were living,” she says. “It really started as a courtesy to our kids because they asked us to look into it, and so we did.”

So they joined the ranks of home-schoolers, a growing presence in Middle Tennessee. Figures compiled by Metro Nashville Public Schools, as of Sept. 30, show there are 246 independent home-school students registered. But those only include students who choose to register with the state.

Parents can instead choose to register with a church-related or private umbrella schools, which offers services above and beyond the state, including keeping an attendance chart and taking care of transcripts, for the cost of the school’s tuition. Some require testing and some don’t. The latter is the route McTamaney took.

“It is hard to track, but my estimate is that by the time you count the students who sign up with the superintendent and those who sign up in church-related schools that offer an umbrella program, you are probably getting into the neighborhood of about 60,000-70,000 students statewide,” says Claiborne Thornton, president of the Tennessee Home Education Association. The THEA first organized in 1984 to help families get started home schooling and offer access to a range of resources. The state is divided into seven geographic areas with coordinators for each region.

“We have seen a lot of growth in home schooling,” he says. “When things started out in home schooling, we were growing about 30 percent each year net. The percentage of growth is much smaller now but the numbers are growing faster because the total number of people home schooling has increased.”

Ginny Schutz is the president of the East Nashville Homeschool Association, which includes more than 82 families. Her children are registered with the state, which means they are required to participate in state tests such as TCAPs, which her 10-year-old twin daughters will take for the first time this year.

A certified teacher, Schutz was educated in public schools, studied English literature in college and then taught high school English before she had children. She wasn’t exposed to home schooling until she began tutoring on the side.

“It just opened my eyes a little bit to the possibility,” she says. “I had these preconceived notions and really didn’t think it was anything I would ever consider. I was a teacher in the school system, after all. But watching the process and being involved in an actual family and seeing it in action really got me to rethink a lot of my presumptions about what education had to be and what it could be.”

Not that she thinks it is for everyone.

“As my children get older, I really enjoy it and I think it is something that fits us well,” she says. “I don’t think it is for everyone or is the right way for everyone to go. But it does have its advantages, and I certainly enjoy it.”

Thornton says many parents may not realize how much work it takes to teach their kids at home, underestimating the time and emotional commitment it takes, at least four hours a day, 180 days a year.

“It is hard work,” McTamaney says. “It is hands-down the hardest teaching I have ever done in my 20-year career as a teacher. I have taught infants, preschoolers and, now, graduate students. Home-schooling my two children is far more difficult than any of those. But I have more at stake too.”

No home schoolhouse is the same, which is one of the most appealing things to the families who choose that route. They can custom design their lesson plans or choose from a wide variety of curricula and tools. A bill passed by Gov. Bill Haslam in June makes it even easier to home-school, eliminating late registration fees and more that seemed punitive. And this fall marked the first time home-schooled children were allowed to try out for Metro high school athletic teams.

“Academically, it has been a great strength for both of them because I have two very, very different kids,” McTamaney says. “Each of them gets to be taught and to learn in the way that is appropriate to them individually, and I feel like the resources are available for us to do it in a way that is informed.”