This week I’m giving a talk to my local homeschool group about homeschooling high school. It’s hard to believe but my sixth child is starting high school this fall. I’ve already had five kids leave our homeschool. All are gainfully employed or attending college fulltime. Their routes to life after homeschool have varied, from going directly into the workforce to getting a GED, to going right into college. So I have a lot of different experiences with preparing students for life after graduation.
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That’s what I’m going to share with my audience this week, and with my readers here on the blog. I’m going to cover:
- How is teaching high school different than elementary and middle school?
- What is a credit and how do I determine credits and grades?
- How do I make a transcript?
- Do I need course descriptions?
- What should I teach?
- What should I know about postsecondary credit?
- What subjects should I cover?
- How important are college entrance exams?
- Everything you wanted to know about the NCAA for homeschool athletes.
When I first started to teach high school at home, my main references were
and
I was also a member of the Silver Training Club for a few months until I felt more comfident in doing homeschool high school.
I’ll be referencing them throughout the series, but I also will share my experiences and tips I’ve picked up along the way. I hope this will encourage and help many of you on your homeschool journey.
So how is teaching high school different than what we’ve already been doing in high school?
Honestly, it’s not that much different. If you have a child who has been digging into his studies and in jr. high, that student will probably continue in high school and become an even more independent learner. If you had a student that needed more help in some areas in jr. high, you will probably need to keep assisting them as you have before in high school. You know your child best and how your child learns best. You can continue to do that in high school.
I heard a lecture once at a convention from a mom whose son absolutely loved working on their farm, doing repairs, and eventually started to work on houses that he purchased to flip. His mom let him continue to do the projects and work he loved, but started itemizing the skills that he was using to do those things, and then putting those skills into the academic categories of math, English, social studies etc. For my daughter the artist, we used a detailed artist’s anatomy book to give her credit in art and science. It’s okay to be creative with your homeschool courses.
That’s the biggest change for the homeschooling mom – you are now teacher, guidance counselor, and registrar! It’s up to you to take these learning experiences and keep track of them and then present them in a way that a college, trade school or future employer can understand. You have to take their learning and turn it into academic language. It’s not as complicated as it sounds and I’ll cover that later.
For now just know that if your homeschool has thrived with a Charlotte Mason method, or a Classical approach, or even unit studies and unschooling, you can continue to do that. the only difference is in the record keeping. We’ll simplify that tomorrow!