Posts Tagged homeschooling
Multi-Age Home Schooling – Legal Requirements
Multi-age home schooling is a very popular type of education these days. Whatever the age, the pupil can be educated in his own home after a schedule that is convenient for the family.
Knowing the legal terms is the first step you need to make if you wish to home school.
In the United States of America, homeschooling is legal in all the states, with every state having its own rules and guidelines. A good way to find out the rules that apply to your state is to check with a local public school for trustworthy information.
In the majority of states, the parents or tutors are required to write a letter of intent to their local public school and even take part in several preparation lessons which help them get started on the right track. Also, some states require you to send a copy of the lesson plans for their approval, before you can begin to home school.
Your child/pupil may be required to take several tests supervised by qualified teachers on an annual basis, but this only applies in some states and it’s not mandatory, only recommended.
It is better to be safe and take these tests as they will give you better general understanding of your child’s/pupil’s level of preparation.
Another thing that differs with each state is the graduate guidelines, as some have graduation requirements while others don’t.
A good idea would be to find a local homeschooling community in your area and seek guidance, as there can be no better help than that of experienced multi-age home schooling families.
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Alternative Education and the ADD – ADHD Child
A recent article in USA Today reports that home schooling has been on a steady rise for the last five years. There are now 1.5 million children being home schooled, up 74% since 1999. A desire for religious or moral instruction, formerly the number one reason to choose homeschooling, is now the second most popular reason. The first reason is safety and avoidance of peer pressure and exposure to drugs. Third is the dissatisfaction with academic instruction and fourth is interest in nontraditional approaches.
Current statistics indicate that the number of alternative educational/school choices, not including religious based schools or military schools, is somewhere around twelve thousand. That is the largest number of choices ever to exist outside the traditional public school system and the number keeps growing.
Obviously, the selection of public versus private includes many factors, among them the practical aspects of cost, location, transportation and does the alternative represent a basic ideology that the parent feels would be detrimental to the child. What follows is a look at some of the factors in choosing an educational format.
Determining the educational goal, as a parent, is an easy way to eliminate whole groupings of alternative educational choices. However, a parent might be wise to avoid automatically eliminating, for example, religiously based schools because they are simply not of the family’s religion. A school might be quite passive about religious “recruitment” of the child, as are many Catholic private schools, or they may be very active, even aggressive, in the “recruitment” of a child, as are many more fundamentally based religious schools. In one case, a parent chose such a school because of its educational quality but did not fully understand the aggressiveness of the school in converting her child to its belief system. At least not until her child started coming home every day, in tears, begging her mother to convert because she would go to hell if she didn’t. Upon further questioning, it was clear that the school had made the child responsible for the task of converting the mother. The child was nine. The mother moved the child the following week.
Next, we want to look at the child. It is imperative to look at the child from multiple perspectives, not just does he/she have ADD/ADHD. Because ADD plays out differently based on learning style, processing style and communication style, the parent should find the school that either actively teaches in a variety of styles or specializes in the styles that best enable his/her child to learn. The parent should also consider aspects such as the child’s emotional age and if the child has already found his/her passion(s) in life. If the child is brilliant in computer programming and development and could possibly be the next Bill Gates, the parent would be wise to enroll that child in a school program that specializes in dealing with technically gifted children, as long as all the other bases are covered. Personality and gender also play a role in the whole child. Finally, it is important to gravitate to schools that interweave the development of critical thinking with the development of personal responsibility.
Other things to consider:
- Does the child need structure or is he/she self-structuring?
- How well does the child function independently?
- Does the child have difficulty dealing with change?
- Does the child relate better to a male or a female teacher — or does it matter?
- What is the child’s social skill level with peers and, if this is a challenge, how does the school deal with those kinds of issues?
- What kind of participation is required of the parent, and is this level of participation possible within the framework of the entire family?
If the parents are investigating home schooling, there are some pros and cons to consider.
On the positive side, there are many educational support programs for home schooling currently available and more coming on line all the time. They vary in participation level needed by the parent. Just like shopping for a school, the parent needs to look for an education support program that will best work with the specific child and with the family. Home schooling can allow a child to learn at his/her own pace and can be creatively modified as the child goes on.
On the negative side of home schooling is the stress on the parents. Does the home schooling parent have a flexible teaching style and can that parent switch between the teaching and the parenting roles easily? The teaching parent should currently communicate well with the child and have been successful in helping the child learn new things and to develop new skill sets. As a simple measure, how has the parent done on helping the child with his/her homework to date? There may be resentment between parents caused by the time, energy, and effort required for teaching, on one hand, and by the resulting relationship with the child on the other. More effort will be required of the parents to ensure that the child gets both sufficient social interaction and is exposed to the diversity that the world has to offer, including opinions other than the parent’s own. Finally, can the parents help the child to develop the skill sets to manage well in the world when the home schooling ends?
Home schooling is a viable option. If the parents live in a big enough area, they are even likely to find local home schooling groups that do things together. The home schooled child may also attend a class here or there in order to fill out the educational experience. The parents need to make an extra effort in the area of social skills, to be wary of creating an unhealthy attachment or dependency on themselves and to guard against becoming insular in a way that limits the child in dealing with the ever-growing diversity of the world.
The key to finding a successful educational format for the child is for the parents to do their own homework! They need to determine what their educational priorities are and to diligently investigate their options in light of the whole child regardless of ADD/ADHD
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Homeschooling High School
The last four years of school could prove to be the most challenging for both student and parent alike especially if you are planning on homeschooling high school. The course subjects will be getting much more difficult, teenagers are entering puberty, dating will commence and interpersonal relationships with other young adults will become more important to your student.
First, the curriculum. If you’ve been homeschooling prior to this time, algebra has probably already been introduced to your student. It will now get more technical and you will move onto geometry and perhaps calculus. Many people loathe these subjects or will not feel comfortable teaching them. Some homeschoolers hire tutors for these courses, send their kids to local colleges to take these courses there or use correspondence schools.
Tutors can be local college kids who are vouched for by their professors. Expect to pay $10-20 an hour for their help. And to protect both parties from any trouble, make the student and tutor work where you can see them just to be safe.
Correspondence courses are not inexpensive. Both the University of Nebraska and the University of Oklahoma have distance learning courses for high school students. They cost between $300-400 for each semester’s course by topic. A full year’s tuition cost for an average curriculum load would run from $3,000-$4,000.
Another correspondence school is called the Keystone High School. Their annual tuition is approximately $2000 for the online version and about $1500 for the written.
All three schools offer study materials, standardized tests and grading, transcripts and graduation diplomas. All are said to be accredited by the college rating agencies and allow easy access to institutions of higher learning according to their websites. These are almost set-and-forget high school learning systems. If you choose the whole course correspondence method you will have little involvement but to see that the work is carried out and sent in. Otherwise you can pick and choose the subjects you want your student to learn and teach the other topics yourself or with tutorial help.
Puberty, as you know, brings on a whole new set of problems. Moodiness, rebellious behavior, attraction to the opposite sex, dating and a whole host of other things are there to deal with. It may be difficult to keep your student attending to their work or your teaching. They may begin to argue with you over the curriculum or just about anything else. They are going to begin speaking their minds about everything and often. It can be very difficult at times to deal with. But perhaps if you’ve homeschooled for years up to that point, you may have a very strong bond between you. Perhaps you can reason better and talk things out. Good luck with that
Dating, driving and staying away from home are all coming up too. You’ll be worried for several reasons. Their safety will likely be your biggest concern, especially after they and their friends start driving. Drinking and drug use are right up there too especially combined with driving. Teen sex is another worry around this time. They’re really too young to have a caring, meaningful relationship, but they’re not to young to do the act. Teen pregnancy is of big concern.
But you know, there is one other solution to this whole dilemma. Consider enrolling your student in public high school. Unless it’s just too dangerous or has a bad curriculum, it would solve a lot of problems. It would also let your student socialize easier with other kids his age at a time when there’s a lot they want to talk about, but not with their parents. It would also be a cheaper solution if you thought you were going to have to use tutors or correspondence schools.
If you’ve done a good job homeschooling your kids up to this point, they’re probably more self-confident and well-grounded that any other kid in that public high school. They will probably be better prepared to face the challenges the last four years of school present. They will probably make the right choices too.
Unless you have a specific educational curriculum goal in mind for high school, maybe it’s time to let your student spread his wings and fly on his own. Maybe it’s time to sit back and see how all your hard work the last eight years will pay off. Maybe it’s time to realize that homeschooling high school isn’t such a great idea after all.
A J Adams has had a keen interest in home schooling for a number of years. With several public school teachers in his family, he has had many discussions regarding current school problems. He’s heard many suggestions, one of which was the growing number of children being home schooled.
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