07.17.06

HIGH SCHOOL

Posted in COLLEGE, The nuts and bolts of it at 1:43 am by Meg

I had a friend just email me with a question about a canned curriculum. Her daughter is a year ahead of Girl and she is starting to think about high school and all that. There was more to it than that, but it got me thinking about high school.

Now, for the record. I am totally against canned curriculum. While it must be nice that they’ve laid it all out for you, the ones that I’ve looked at (and I admit it hasn’t been many) go as far as to layout a daily plan of what and how each course should go. As I’ve said before, I’m all for a syllabus, but I want the ability to be flexible. Flexible both in my ability to make what we are doing be the best for my child and in what we are doing on any given day be responsive to what else is going on in our lives. IMO, canned curriculums can’t give you that.

You can be going along, watching your children grow. Everything is hunky-dory until they hit middle-school. Most often it hits as you plan for 8th grade. All of a sudden you start to second-guess yourself as you realize that NEXT YEAR - is HIGH SCHOOL! And now every decision goes through the microscope.

And when you really come down it. It’s not that school is much that harder, it’s that college is now that much closer and it’s suddenly hit you that your time is coming to an end and the college is going to expect so much from your child. (And won’t you have egg on your face if you haven’t gotten them there?)

So, as part of planning for 8th grade, you start to scramble. Not only do you have to figure out your plans for the coming year, you need to layout plans for the 4 years after that.

That’s a whole lot to take on. And don’t those canned programs look like they will make it easy? Then there’s the distance learning programs run by different colleges and universities, pricy but they have the implied acceptance of your child into their undergraduate program. And there’s the programs like Clonlara and NARS, who will give you more freedom but will take your money in return for a promise to hold your hand and build you a transcript.

As always will homeschooling, there are so many different things to spend your money on.

Do these programs work, are they a good idea? Yeah, for many people and for many reasons they might be the best fit for your child. But they aren’t the only way to approach high school. (Though remember, if your child wants to go to a service academy, say West Point, you may be required to work within an outside program.)

So, let’s get to the point. Why do we panic about high school? I’m working on the assumption that we all see our kids continuing on into higher education. If that’s not where they are going, then high school becomes a trade school, and unless your state puts requirements on homeschool graduates, the whole high school pressure situation is off.

But how do you deal with the high school pressure on your own? Well, the idea is to supply the child with the background that the colleges want. And to find that out, you go to the colleges themselves.

The best time to do so is before your kid is in high school. Now, most kids won’t have any idea of where they want to go to college at this point (or what they want to study,) but go ahead and check with a few colleges and see what their general incoming freshman requirements are. Most colleges will post it on the web and while there might be additional requirements for homeschoolers, you’re not ready yet to even worry about them.

As a quick survey, here’s some listings:

Since my friend is back in New Mexico, I started with UNM. The local state college/university should be the first place to check. Between costs and location it may be your child’s back up plan if they can’t get in where they finally decide they want to go. UNM is looking for this preparation - High school GPA of 2.25 (C+) or better overall on a 4.0 scale and 2.25 or better in the following required course areas:

• 4 English courses, including at least one 11th or 12th grade composition
• 3 math courses, including algebra 1 or 2, geometry, trigonometry, calculus or higher
• 2 social science courses, including U.S. history
• 2 natural science courses, including at least one lab science in biology, chemistry or physics
• 2 foreign language courses in the same language or proof of proficiency in a second language

Then there are the private colleges. Costs usually become the factor on whether your child will be going to them, but many offer scholarships, so don’t ignore their requirements.

As examples, here’s Syracuse University’s - Be taking, or have taken, a college preparatory curriculum, including four years each of English, science, social studies, and mathematics (through geometry and intermediate algebra) and a minimum of three years of a foreign language.

Cornell’s (an ivy league school) -16 units, including 4 of English, 3 of mathematics, 3 of science, and 3 of one foreign language (there are extras for different degree programs)

And Harvard’s (another ivy league) - An ideal four-year preparatory program includes four years of English, with extensive practice in writing; four years of math; four years of science: biology, chemistry, physics, and an advanced course in one of these subjects; three years of history, including American and European history; and four years of one foreign language.

Once you’ve looked at a few, you can see what they have in common. Your goal for high school is to be able to create a transcript, or portfolio, that will (as a minimum) show that your child has met these requirements. There are many different ways to do. Nearly any style of homeschooling can produce a transcript/portfolio that will satisfy the colleges.

So now you have the framework to plan out high school. In a couple of years (hopefully) your child will have some idea of what they want to study (and where) and you can go looking again. This time you want to pay closer attention to those niggly details and the extra hurdles they put up for us.

Is high school a big undertaking? Yes, there’s no way around it in our society.

As a homeschooler, can you do it on your own? Yes again, it just takes that old dedication to find or design a program that fits your needs.

I did go through the ‘pre-8th grade’ panic with Boy. In the ‘Interesting Links’ part of the sidebar is the Indiana Foundation of Home Schooling. They are a state-wide (Indiana) organization that was founded just to help people home school through high school. While they are focused on Indiana, they do have a lot of good information for anyone. For anyone who is close enough to make it to one of their programs, I highly recommend it.

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