The son who turns fourteen in July of this year, he and I, we have been recently daring to make some homeschool plans one would call high school.
In many ways, this feels more radical than the homeschooling we’ve done the past nine years. Homeschooling a kindergartener is so common that support groups are flooded with families who have no intention of ever filing school-refusal paperwork with the state but just don’t want to send their babies before they have to. The socialization question has long been settled and no one ever worried that I wouldn’t be able to teach long division to my eight-year-olds. Now that I have a teen, though, folks raise an eyebrow. The confusing, high-pressure world of college admissions casts a shadow over any lone little parent, and the grumpy individuation process of normal adolescence can seem to indicate a need for a place outside the family home. Plus, do I even remember calculus? (I in fact never took it.)
I can feel myself tensing up in anticipate of having to explain why these concerns aren’t stopping us. The simple truth is, the magic of adolescence is so amazing that muddling it would feel wrong, so I am motivated to find other ways to meet my son’s needs for a competent calculus teacher, a great start to a career, and independence from family life.
So we have begun to make plans for homeschooling high school.
In many ways, this feels more radical than the homeschooling we’ve done the past nine years. Homeschooling a kindergartener is so common that support groups are flooded with families who have no intention of ever filing school-refusal paperwork with the state but just don’t want to send their babies before they have to. The socialization question has long been settled and no one ever worried that I wouldn’t be able to teach long division to my eight-year-olds. Now that I have a teen, though, folks raise an eyebrow. The confusing, high-pressure world of college admissions casts a shadow over any lone little parent, and the grumpy individuation process of normal adolescence can seem to indicate a need for a place outside the family home. Plus, do I even remember calculus? (I in fact never took it.)
I can feel myself tensing up in anticipate of having to explain why these concerns aren’t stopping us. The simple truth is, the magic of adolescence is so amazing that muddling it would feel wrong, so I am motivated to find other ways to meet my son’s needs for a competent calculus teacher, a great start to a career, and independence from family life.
So we have begun to make plans for homeschooling high school.
On the one-page transcript we send to colleges, courses will be listed by subject, without grades, like above. I’ll put a note saying that the student had to do 180 hours of high school level work to earn a credit and that we used a mastery approach (meaning, if you did it wrong, do it again til it is right), making grades inappropriate.
But looking at the above chart, one would never ever imagine the crazy unschooly business we actually intend to do. Check this out.
But looking at the above chart, one would never ever imagine the crazy unschooly business we actually intend to do. Check this out.
The hours to the left of the courses are the number that we will aim to have completed during the years indicated... although we might end up catching some hours in other grades. For example, I’ll record accounting hours in ninth and tenth as I go over with him how to keep a checkbook and make a budget, and when we get to 11th grade, I’ll subtract whatever number of hours we’ve done in order to figure out how many more have to be completed in order to get ninety done by the end of 11th grade. We’ll pick up a course syllabus from the internet that 11th grade year and plot out what else we should cover and how. (In translating this for the transcript, I chose to use a Carnegie credit system where 180 hours equals 1 credit.)
To keep track of it as we go, I'll set up a tally page for hours. I’ve also set up for each course a folder in a filing cabinet in which to slip bits and pieces of evidence that I’m not making these hours up - a ticket stub, a photo, a letter from a mentor, etc.
As you can see, rather than doing a little each day like one would in a high school, we’ll schedule in the opposite way. Opposite in both directions, even! What do I mean? For some subjects, we’ll set aside a month to slam through the coursework like a full-time job. After thirteen years of helping this child learn things, I know that’s how he finds it most motivating to learn, and that his retention is really amazing even for things he only studied for a month. One can do 180 hours of a subject in five weeks, working from 9am - 4pm with an hour for lunch. For other subjects, we’ll do it in a drizzle, taking all four years to gather up a 180 hour credit, spending a happy hour a half each week with those topics and skills.
To keep track of it as we go, I'll set up a tally page for hours. I’ve also set up for each course a folder in a filing cabinet in which to slip bits and pieces of evidence that I’m not making these hours up - a ticket stub, a photo, a letter from a mentor, etc.
As you can see, rather than doing a little each day like one would in a high school, we’ll schedule in the opposite way. Opposite in both directions, even! What do I mean? For some subjects, we’ll set aside a month to slam through the coursework like a full-time job. After thirteen years of helping this child learn things, I know that’s how he finds it most motivating to learn, and that his retention is really amazing even for things he only studied for a month. One can do 180 hours of a subject in five weeks, working from 9am - 4pm with an hour for lunch. For other subjects, we’ll do it in a drizzle, taking all four years to gather up a 180 hour credit, spending a happy hour a half each week with those topics and skills.
how did you decide what courses?
Yes, I realize that his interests will change, and I expect we’ll rework the four-year plan at the start of each new school year to reflect some of those changes. But I think very often, “teens don’t know who they’ll be in four years!” is used as an excuse for not taking teens seriously and not letting them plot their own education. I was in an alternative school for high school that worked much the same way as I have here, giving kids vague requirements like, “any four English classes- design them yourself,” and I can say that not only did a history and methodology of calendar invention sound like a fun course four years after I picked it, but that because it was something that reflected my interests, I still find myself drawn towards projects that let me utilize that classes’stuff -- these twenty years later. Teens, especially teens like my sons, who have had an above-average level of exposure to both who they are in their own free time and to what various types of work are really like, those teens can and do make wise, knowing decisions about what they will want in a few years.
To come up with these courses, the boy and I brainstormed up a list of ways he spends his time already, with some additions that were purely ways he or I hope to spend his time, and a few that are there because of the influence of family, government or college admissions folks.
For an example, he decided independently a few months ago that it’d be fun to try to teach himself parkour and now he spends about two hours a week bouncing off city benches or watching videos by experts. To supplement that practice, we’re going to put him in a local gymnastics class for teen boy beginners, and go to see a few performances, as well as take a day trip to a parkour gym outside of our county.
As an example of a more mom-directed course listing, I have started a practice of reading “the great books” aloud to the whole family, slowly, in chronological order. We make a little tea party out of it and discuss it together too, kind of our own in-house book club. I wanted to know these classics, and wanted my kids to, but I mostly decided to do that as a way of staying connected to my kids as they got older and philosophical, drawing our literature-loving new stepfather into the conversations, and giving us a tradition we could keep up when the kids are adults living possibly far away.
An interesting thing about having a teen is that friends and family can influence academic choices as much as the homeschool regs can! When his closest friends and siblings each picked up an instrument to start a folk band, my son was pressured into choosing something acoustic and portable, too. (Previously he’d done piano.) Drumming is up there because he figured that would be the “least miserable way to get to hang out and do that with them.”I’m getting him an Alfred book; we’ll see if he needs any more help than that and go from there.
A good example of a government-directed choice is the health credit up there. Neither my son nor I would think to call our learning about how to live heathfully a formal course or even a hobby or a pursuit. We just try to feel good and make good choices and like most folks, we click on our friends’ links about it on Facebook or see an occasional blurb that gets us reading more or trying a new thing. Our state homeschool regulations require a half credit in health, though, so we had to figure out what we would be doing when we were noting down health hours. My son has always been a vegetarian because of being grossed out by factory farming, so when he recently saw a book on that topic, he decided to pick it up. He liked it enough to want to read more for his health credit, so that’s our plan.
All the foreign language and writing and some of the math and science courses are there to satisfy the requirements of the college this child wants to get into. We’ll buy traditional textbooks for those, but also use helpful blogs on home science, camps at local museums, and interesting apps for memory work.
By doing these few simple things -- keeping a tally and a more mindful schedule to make sure he does each thing a certain amount of time; storing some documentation (like blog essays, photos, book lists, festival programs, etc.) in a portfolio with a thorough “course description” for each subject; writing it all up in an official-looking transcript format -- I hope to take a low-pressure, project-filled adolescence of exploring one’s interests (and exploring the world’s expectations in a highly personalized way), and turn that into a high school curriculum no educator could snub. I’m so grateful we can honor the magic instead of diverting it into the college admissions game or hopeless diversion game foisted on middle class teens by parents or underprivileged teens by corporations. Plotting this out with my boy, even though I am trying to remain the wary and skeptic devil’s advocate about practical matters, I can feel some of the magic of adolescence rubbing off onto me. Magic indeed.
To come up with these courses, the boy and I brainstormed up a list of ways he spends his time already, with some additions that were purely ways he or I hope to spend his time, and a few that are there because of the influence of family, government or college admissions folks.
For an example, he decided independently a few months ago that it’d be fun to try to teach himself parkour and now he spends about two hours a week bouncing off city benches or watching videos by experts. To supplement that practice, we’re going to put him in a local gymnastics class for teen boy beginners, and go to see a few performances, as well as take a day trip to a parkour gym outside of our county.
As an example of a more mom-directed course listing, I have started a practice of reading “the great books” aloud to the whole family, slowly, in chronological order. We make a little tea party out of it and discuss it together too, kind of our own in-house book club. I wanted to know these classics, and wanted my kids to, but I mostly decided to do that as a way of staying connected to my kids as they got older and philosophical, drawing our literature-loving new stepfather into the conversations, and giving us a tradition we could keep up when the kids are adults living possibly far away.
An interesting thing about having a teen is that friends and family can influence academic choices as much as the homeschool regs can! When his closest friends and siblings each picked up an instrument to start a folk band, my son was pressured into choosing something acoustic and portable, too. (Previously he’d done piano.) Drumming is up there because he figured that would be the “least miserable way to get to hang out and do that with them.”I’m getting him an Alfred book; we’ll see if he needs any more help than that and go from there.
A good example of a government-directed choice is the health credit up there. Neither my son nor I would think to call our learning about how to live heathfully a formal course or even a hobby or a pursuit. We just try to feel good and make good choices and like most folks, we click on our friends’ links about it on Facebook or see an occasional blurb that gets us reading more or trying a new thing. Our state homeschool regulations require a half credit in health, though, so we had to figure out what we would be doing when we were noting down health hours. My son has always been a vegetarian because of being grossed out by factory farming, so when he recently saw a book on that topic, he decided to pick it up. He liked it enough to want to read more for his health credit, so that’s our plan.
All the foreign language and writing and some of the math and science courses are there to satisfy the requirements of the college this child wants to get into. We’ll buy traditional textbooks for those, but also use helpful blogs on home science, camps at local museums, and interesting apps for memory work.
By doing these few simple things -- keeping a tally and a more mindful schedule to make sure he does each thing a certain amount of time; storing some documentation (like blog essays, photos, book lists, festival programs, etc.) in a portfolio with a thorough “course description” for each subject; writing it all up in an official-looking transcript format -- I hope to take a low-pressure, project-filled adolescence of exploring one’s interests (and exploring the world’s expectations in a highly personalized way), and turn that into a high school curriculum no educator could snub. I’m so grateful we can honor the magic instead of diverting it into the college admissions game or hopeless diversion game foisted on middle class teens by parents or underprivileged teens by corporations. Plotting this out with my boy, even though I am trying to remain the wary and skeptic devil’s advocate about practical matters, I can feel some of the magic of adolescence rubbing off onto me. Magic indeed.