BELLE CHASSE, Louisiana (AP) -- Tammy Galjour already has a job, working 12-hour shifts as an X-ray technician at a hospital in this normally tidy suburb just outside New Orleans.These days, when she gets home just after dawn, she's grateful to be exhausted, to fall into bed and sleep away the destruction that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita rained down on her town and her state.But Galjour -- like hundreds of other parents across Louisiana -- has been handed a second, unpaid job: She'll be home-schooling her 12-year-old son, at least until classes start again in Plaquemines Parish, where six of nine schools were washed away by the storms."I think it will be a challenge just to get him to sit down and listen to me," Galjour said, juggling four fat textbooks she had just picked up.Across Louisiana, families are turning to home-schooling as officials scramble to reopen shuttered schools. At least 800 families in Plaquemines Parish alone are affected, according to school officials.Nationally, about 1.1 million students are home-schooled, according to the U.S. Department of Education, a movement that's been growing steadily for decades. Usually, though, it's not a decision made under duress, since home-schooling demands patience and commitment from both parents and students."This is a beautiful short-term solution, especially given where we are now," said Stephanie Riegel, a New Orleans resident now relocated to Baton Rouge with twin 9-year-old girls.Louisiana has done its best to encourage parents not to leave the public school system, urging them instead to enroll in schools wherever they've landed, said Meg Casper, a spokeswoman for the state Education Department. The East Baton Rouge Parish district, for example, has taken in more than 2,000 new students since Katrina hit.But other parents have pulled back, some because they eventually hope to send their children back to their local schools. Others simply got fed up with seeing their children in new, unfamiliar and crowded classrooms."At her school in East Baton Rouge, there were four drug busts one day, and the next someone was selling pills," said Michelle Pellegal, gesturing at her 16-year-old daughter, April Kent. "She said, 'I can't go to that school any more."'Like Galjour, Pellegal works in the produce department of a grocery store. She will oversee her daughter's lessons in chemistry and algebra after work, she said, until Plaquemines Parish schools reopen.Some, like Pam Ricouard, followed the state's wishes and enrolled her five children in school in Erath, a rural town in coastal Louisiana, after Katrina only to flee before Rita put the small farming town underwater.Now, she said, she's home-schooling her fourth, sixth, eighth, ninth and 12th grade children until her local school district reopens."Math'll be hard," she said, sighing. "It's not just addition and subtraction -- it's everything."Even the students seem fed up with the seemingly endless vacation that Katrina and Rita bestowed upon them, stuck as they often are at home in the sticky Louisiana heat."I'm ready to go back and see all my friends," Kent said. "I don't like being at home, all bored."Home-schooling parents can be sent Louisiana's curriculum, which outlines what students need to know at each grade level, Casper said. And help is available from some districts -- in Plaquemines Parish, for example, volunteer teachers are staffing tutoring sessions at a local church five days a week.Learning how to become a home-school parent on the fly will not be easy, said Dianna Van Timmeren, a Baton Rouge mother who home-schools her children and is helping a family of evacuees make the transition."For parents who have never considered it before, there's always the feeling that maybe they can't do it, that they don't have the education," she said. "But it is possible. There's tons of curriculum out there to choose from, and all kinds of help for parents who might feel wobbly about educating their children."Avis Fitte and her sons -- 13-year-old Beau and 12-year-old Evan -- recently worked together on a unit on vocabulary. Fitte asked her sons to figure out the meaning of the word "burden" by looking at its context in a sentence."Not wanting to burden her mother further, Sally rode her bike to soccer practice," Fitte read out.There was a pause, then "to bother?" Beau ventured, earning a proud beam from his mother.Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.