You Find What Works and You Do It, Part III

Part I is here.
Part II is here.

 The next question:

"What do you think you might do differently for Ramona as she enters high school?"

Actually, we're already dealing with differences -- for Betsy, who's a junior this year. (Hey, I'm suddenly reminded of a great book series.)

The main difference is that we'll take greater advantage of early enrollment at the community college than we did with Anne. Now that we've got some experience with that whole thing, we're starting a bit earlier for Betsy.

Another difference is that because Betsy and Anne have always been the best of pals and do so much together, Betsy has been able to do certain things (such as writing and directing a play) earlier than Anne did. There are advantages to being a younger sister!

Other than that, it will be very similar: extensive reading, loads of discussion, writing (Betsy has written three novels, and perpetually has numerous short stories going, but she's decidedly not a fan of essay writing), math, living our faith.

Betsy will, as Anne did, do some prep for the ACT test. If your child knows for certain that she will attend community college before transferring to a four-year institution, the ACT test isn't really a necesssity* -- by the time she transfers, her transcript will do the talking.  We decided to go ahead and have Anne take the test, however, because we didn't want to close doors prematurely, just in case she did decide to apply and/or attend somewhere else. So, the ACT scores were helpful when she applied to Benedictine, and ended up being helpful with a scholarship (though, for community college, COMPASS test scores can also be used on scholarship applications.)

And I have to admit that I'm not yet even thinking about Ramona entering high school.

I'm gonna stay in denial about that one a little longer.

Part IV is here.


* 2018 Update: This varies from college to college. Always look into the requirements of the schools your child is considering. When Anne transferred to a nearby state college, they did not require an ACT score in addition to her community college transcript. By the time Betsy transferred to the same college, an ACT score was a requirement, even if one had an associate's degree from a community college. I don't understand the reasoning behind that requirement, but there you have it.

You Find What Works and You Do It, Part II

Part 1 is here.

Today I'm taking a look at this question:

"What did you think high school would look like for your oldest and how that has become a reality?"

I'm not sure I had any idea what high school would look like. (I apparently once told my daughters, "We'll deal with that when we get to it.") But that lines up neatly with not really knowing what my life will look like from one year to the next. I like to make plans, but I'm always open to the changes that I know life will throw our way.  And I know that living a deliberate life can certainly be compatible with flexibility and surprises.

What we did know was that we wanted to consider the following as Anne headed into high school:

• Anne's strengths and interests
• Her goals (personal, spiritual, educational, vocational) 
• Her gaps/areas of complete disinterest/weaker areas
• My strengths as a teacher 
• Atticus' strengths as a teacher 
• Outside resources (such as job shadowing or community college classes) 
• What an education means, what it is for: in high school, in college
• The reasons we started homeschooling in the first place 

Atticus adds: "As Robert Frost said, we must have 'the courage to start with insufficient knowledge.'"

And so, with insufficient knowledge, we started.

What we knew:

Reading and discussion have always been at the center of education in our house, so (as I always have) I made booklists:

• books I love
• books Atticus loves
• books Anne loves
• books Anne will love once she reads them
• books everyone should read
• books no one should have to read but everyone does
• books about history
• books about our faith
• books about science
• books about culture
• books about art
• biographies
• poetry
• Shakespeare
• books that defy categorization

I knew I wanted Anne to start keeping her own list -- she kept track of everything she read (which was very helpful down the road at transcript time.)

I knew that we would write (and we've had a weekly writing group with friends since Anne's sophomore year.)

I knew that we would probably use some stuff from The Teaching Company. (Budget note: you can often buy these on sale, or find used copies that are very inexpensive.)*

I knew that we would make use of a math curriculum (because I don't unschool Algebra well. I'm too busy hating advanced math to live it/learn it joyfully and my daughters inherited the anti-math gene from me).

I knew that I would continue making use of Living is Learning Guides -- for ideas, checklists, and resources.

I knew that we would use the community college* (via the early enrollment program), especially for foreign language classes.

I knew that I would be grateful for homeschoolers who blazed the trail and inspired me.

I knew that I would read books about homeschooling through high school. My list:  College Prep Homeschooling, Homeschooling the Teen Years, Homeschooling: A Family's Journey,  Homeschooling Through High School.  I can't say any single book is the book to get but I did take away helpful bits and pieces from each of these. (These days, I would add A Little Way of Homeschooling, but not my chapter -- I didn't have high schoolers when I wrote that, but other contributors did.)

I knew that I would take notes and keep records. I have always kept lots of notes on what we do, no matter how off-the-beaten-school-track it seems.

~~~~~

That's what we knew going in. And my half-formed vision did come into focus, did become the reality. I had a vague idea that high school would be a continuation of the ways in which we've always approached education at our house. For the most part it was, with various periods of panic, doubt, terror, or fatigue. Punctuated with happiness and delight, and saturated in gratitude that we kept going. 

I still have insufficient knowledge, and I'm still tweaking the process -- I'm guessing I won't have this whole high school thing perfected until sometime after Ramona's graduation. Too late for my own girls, but then I can pass my sufficient knowledge on to my daughters, in case they homeschool their offspring. Then they can say, "Mom, everything you did is old and out of date! This is insufficient knowledge!" 

And I'll say, "Yes! It is! Now go read some Robert Frost to your children."

* We ended up using Teaching Company courses for some American history, neurobiology, and math. Anne took courses at the community college and did a great job with Spanish I and II.

Part III is here.
Part IV is here. 

"You Find What Works and You Do It" (On Homeschooling, High Schooling, and Other Terrifying Things)

I was emailing a friend the other day about books on homeschooling, unschooling, and things in between. 

It is, after all, that time of year thou may'st in me behold, when curriculum catalogs, or none, or few, or many, do hang about the house.

On a related note, I recently heard from a blog friend (well, not that recently, and I'm sorry, BlogFriend, for taking so long to get this post started!) and she had the following questions:

• What did you think high school would look like for your oldest and how that has become a reality? 
• What do you think you might do differently for Ramona as she enters high school? 
• What would you do exactly the same? 
• Do you have set subjects that must be tackled by the laws of the state? 
• If not, what plan did you follow for coming up with his coursework or are you using a curriculum like Kolbe or Seton? 

Those are great questions begging for a series of blog posts. And of course, I'm hesitant to answer them because -- as my sidebar notes -- I'm not an expert on anything. But I can tell you what's worked for me. The other reason I'm hesitant to answer is that not only does every family have its own style and needs, but every child within a family is different. "An Edmisten Education" won't look exactly the same for Anne, Betsy and Ramona.

But, all those things add up to the same short answer that I offered in an email the other day: "You find what works for your family and then you do it."

But short doesn't always equal easy. Finding what works is challenging. But it's unavoidable. Sometimes you just don't know what works until you try it, tweak it, throw it out, and try something new. That's just part of the journey, dear Homeschooling Mom, not a failure on your part.

Tomorrow I'll tackle the first question (What did we think high school would look like, and how has that become a reality?) but for today, I'll just summarize a little bit about where we are right now:

Anne-with-an-e just graduated from Green Gables Homeschool.  She applied to and was accepted at a great Catholic college, and even got a lovely scholarship. It was encouraging to me that an Edmisten Education got her there. She ultimately decided, though, to spend at least her first year of college (possibly two, we'll see) at home, getting her Gen Eds out of the way. This feels like the right choice all around, and everyone is happy with it.

Betsy Ray just finished her sophomore year of high school, so I'll be talking about her in this series, too.

Ramona just finished 4th grade. (Wait, what? Isn't she three years old?!)

So, next year I will be homeschooling only two students (and I assume I may occasionally have to prod a college student to get her Psych homework off the kitchen table.) That's where we are at this moment.

Tomorrow I'll begin the nostalgic look back on our foray into Homeschool High School.

An actual photo of our homeschool: 

Or not. 

Find Part II here.
Find Part III here.
Find Part IV here.