Panic!
4 years ago when my oldest entered the 9th grade I had a serious panic attack.
How am I going to give him a high school education?
After all he needs to be prepared for college or the work place in order to succeed in life. This is my responsibility.
I don’t want to fail after all this time & effort we have put in to school for the past 9 years.
Wow what a burden and responsibility!
Sort of makes you break out in a cold sweat doesn’t it?
One year at a time
Our motto when we started home schooling was to just take it one year at a time. We weren’t set on homeschooling at first. It was an experiment that we wanted to try and we would see how it goes. This high school thing would not be any different(hear me trying to convince myself?)
Basic plan
First stop was our states graduation requirements & the local universities application requirements. That was logical and pretty much laid out the basics for us. So at least there was a plan—I felt much better about that.
Since Michael LOVES science, math & history he chose to do more of those items than were required & they qualified as some of his electives.
Our problem came with English. We expected to be able to take a class taught by a local professor but the professor didn’t offer his class until Michael’s senior year.
So we seemed to always have a last minute decision that needed to be made each year when we found out that the class wasn’t being offered. I would highly recommend having a "plan B" for any class that is being offered by an individual.
Classes outside of the home
However, I do believe it is important for home school students to take a writing class outside the home their junior or senior year. We found that when it is just Mom or Dad reading the papers & essays it is hard for the student to really get a good idea of how they are doing. More people will be reading high school students papers as they head to college so this is a good time to start that transition process. It really gave confidence & showed Michael he COULD write even if he didn’t enjoy it.
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