As much as I would love to see us methodically march to a schedule, it doesn't happen. I have learned to build in some flexibility. We aim for about a 38 week school year, but when I see 36 week based curriculum I tend to cringe and start looking at how to make it 26 weeks with time built in to catch up, go astray, extend...wander a bit. The goal is to learn key content and processes, the path might meander at times but we get there.

He was a colorful speaker with a gift for the story.

Found the following two bits striking: "There are 18 million undergraduates attending U.S. colleges and universities, but a surprisingly small portion of them fall into the category of “traditional†students: just 27 percent are fresh out of high school and studying full-time at a four-year school." Molly Corbett Broad and "The key question now is how quickly these MOOCs will offer not just a breakthrough mode of learning and attaining skills, but bona fide credentials that students seek because employers value them. Once a sufficient infrastructure of credible exams and assessments around MOOCs is in place—Colorado State University’s Global Campus has already started giving credit for Udacity’s introductory computer programming course if the student passes a proctored exam—we’ll enter a new era in which employers will be in a position to act like Colorado State is today. That is, they’ll have the confidence to give job candidates “credit†for work done and certifications given outside the officially “accredited†institutions of higher education."

Another way to consider it...does he see the programming as a means to an end he wishes to accomplish or an end itself. Often big picture thinkers will recognize the skills, processes and tools they must master to accomplish the desired ends. Would he enjoy programming for any purpose, or does he enjoy programming for the ability to get him where he wants to go?

http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/18/8-ideas-to-improve-higher-education/ A few neat tidbits.

I tend to think of the transcript as a snapshot of how my DD spent her academic time during the high school years. One snapshot in an overall portforlio of the picture of her experience. Noting pre-requisites were taken earlier (Ex: Alg. 1, Geometry, 1st year of Foreign Language) is one thing. IMHO, citing them as part of the 4 year experience skirts the line of implying a student tackled more work in a time period than he/she did. Many traditionally schooled teens are on block schedules. We homeschool and have the ability to integrate content, be flexible, respond to opportunities when they arise and view our course of study as a whole (not distinct/time segregated parts). It is a distinct benefit and challenge of homeschooling to be able to do so and the snapshot hopefully will reflect it.

#1 = Lovely color, just enough bling to be evening/holiday festive and a flattering cut.

Backyard Ballistics was just plain fun! (With all the pumpkins around....hmmm)

We know far too many teens in "school" (private or public) who feel lonely to attribute it to a homeschool phenomenon. The search for soulmates, building relationships and maintaining friendships takes time, flexibility, opportunity, dedication, tolerance, patience, courage, communication and maybe even a bit of pixie dust at times. Life is a busy enterprise these days. By the time many teens with a sense of dedication to school get home, eat and do homework, very little time is left for forging relationships. Add in the extracurriculars and it is even more of a challenge. This is why we try to set aside time and dedicate effort. There are many false starts and sometimes it really is hard to add one more thing to the agenda. I just keep reminding myself how valuable the friendships I had were in helping me come to know who I am and what I value. I know they helped greatly in deciding what I would want in a marriage and in life beyond occupation. We meet an awful lot of parents who really can't fathom letting go of the few hours they have with their children. We also meet many who fear time away from academics or anything to beef up that college ap is time wasted. It is not a homeschool thing, it is a the times we live in thing.

I just worry it will be harder for our children to be middle class (in any sense of the word).

:hurray:

:iagree:

We try to have 2-3 times a week she has unstructured face to face time with peers. She meets tons of folks in her various activities, but even with that I have found it really does help if I reach out to other teens parents. They are not at the age where they are driving yet and it really takes some sort of parent to parent communication/coordination.

We schedule time for "social", just as we do academics and the extracurriculars. Either Friday, Saturday or Sunday evening is her time with others to just hang out in one way or another. We also take part in a group with a once a week activity which is social (games, recreational sports, party, movie...). Twice a month this falls during our regular school hours, and Dd works a bit more on the weekend to catch up. Texting and email keeps them all in touch otherwise. DD does 16 to 22 hours a week in classes/rehearsals for dance, theatre, choir, voice, guitar and music theory. (16 if not in a play, 22 if in a play/perfomance). These require about 4 additonal hours of out of class practice/work. She also does 2 1/2 hours of volunteer time each week. How does she do it all and academics too? The answer really lies with a lot of culling/planning on my part. This is her first year of high school and we will see how it all goes. Her school day starts at 8:00 a.m. and goes until 2 with a break for lunch. Any days cut into by any of these other activities mean working on weekend days or evenings. We take 10 weeks during the summer for her to do intensives, special camps... That leaves 42 weeks. Of those 42, we block out the equivalent of 4 weeks of vacation/holiday time (which is often set by performance/class schedules). Thus we have 38 weeks for the academic year. A few things that help: Other than math, we don't do quizzes. (She does Saxon and I have come to appreciate it for a kid like her. If she is out for a week for a play, the high level of built in review assures she stays on track.) We do midterms (or a paper) and finals each semester. Waking as usual and starting at 8:00 on Saturdays gives her three hours before her theatre/dance classes in the afternoon to make up for her shorter days) We watch documentaries or lectures over lunch three days a week. It is not unusual for her to work on whichever weekend night she is not with friends or performing. Her dance/music/theatre classes often keep her tied up till 8:30/9:00 p.m. Once home, she showers and does 1/2 - 1 hour of reading for literature. She uses time in transit well - doing worksheets or flashcards. We do labs in clusters. We take 2 day stints every 5 weeks or so and really focus on labs, observations. Same with major topics in history, we may take two days and watch all of a long documentary (Roots, Ken Burns...) She really can't travel (for vacations) and do the performing arts she does. We do long weekends every once in a while, but are at the mercy of rehearsals/performances. She does lights out at 10:30 pm every weeknight. She found that if she stays up any later it makes her sluggish. Every 6 weeks I check our progress carefully and let her know where we are. If she needs more time, she chooses to take it from some social/downtime. Or chooses not to do a master class/try out for a play. She sometimes has to work a bit during the 10 weeks of summer we set aside (take a book for lit with her to camp). This is her first year of high school but we are willing to make high school a five year thing if needed to meet all of her goals (Math thru Calc/Stats, 4 History Credits, 5 Science Credits, 4 Years Spanish, 2 years Latin, two years of another language, a slew of electives). If we did, she would use part of the time to take a trip abroad. She did a trial year of this during 8th grade and we found she would need to cut back a bit on dance, and wound up with this schedule. The downsides: Other than keeping her room clean/picking up after herself, she doesn't do many extra household chores. She doesn't have time to babysit or do paying jobs. She misses a lot of the latest movies on first run and doesn't get to go shopping at the mall very often. She doesn't do as much self selected reading as I recall doing at her age. At this point if she picks up another interest, she will have to give up something she is very involved with already. Our family time without some other overlay activity is pretty limited. There are opportunities within her fields she just has to forego and accept she cannot do it all.

While we no longer see service station attendants, many more lawn care services exist. There are fewer secretaries but far more child care workers, personal trainers, personal chefs and massage therapists. Fewer factory jobs to enter out of school but with tv and air conditioning fairly common there are far more HVAC techs and cable/satellite installers. This is not to say that jobs lost to obsolete demand or outsourcing are being replaced in equal numbers, just to note that the products and services demanded change. Many forget that this economy absorbed the influx of a huge number of laborers over the past 50 years. Take a look at the number of women in the workforce in 1960 versus 2010. While it is easy to blame corporate greed, it is hard for me to ignore how much larger homes are now on average despite declines in family sizes. Think about what is in these homes: granite countertops, exotic hardwood floors, nickle finished fixtures, stainless steel appliances and so forth. Just a few thoughts I had not seen included in the discussions.

Makes me wonder if just doing the SAT 2 Math would be wise to serve our purpose. Thinking aloud ....

I am 100% with you on the retaking for better comprehension and frankly just to get the swing of how things will work in the collegiate setting. Your parenthetical reminds me of my college Calc, which wound up not being taken until I had been out of high school for almost 2 years. That gap, plus the TA I could barely translate made for a very miserable experience. By "gap times" I am thinking of all the college kids I know who wind up their first year at college with no math, thus a long gap between their last daily encounters and high school and their first college math course.

One concern I have is about gap times in maths. It just seems to make things harder than they must be. On the other hand, I am not a huge fan of a huge math challenge in one's 1st semester at college. Thus, the idea of Dd taking AP Calc and then being placed in a Calc 3 or 4 in her first semester at college just makes me wince. In a perfect world, the AP would serve to demonstrate rigor of our program for acceptance purposes but not to place her into a challenge that may be a struggle in a first year of college adjustment. Just how much say does the student have in not being placed based on AP?

On a more general note, did you find the College Board course info to be a solid guide to scope for the various AP's your kids took?

I am gathering a trend of many colleges requiring some sort of early writing course (seminar seems to be the popular title) of all students. Would your college search experience confirm that observation? I don't want to come down too hard on out of field instructors because I have experienced enough to see enthusiasm go a long way to opening doors. If I had to sport full credentials for each content area we will engage, I couldn't. It does bug me to see PhD's who might be willing to teach in their content areas be told they must spend a couple of years becoming certified when I simultaneously hear about shortages in qualified math or science teachers.

I have enjoyed following the Bio thread. An easy A or two for the early college experience would actually be a big motivator. The adjustments and changes associated with the transitions to college present challenge enough, an early positive academic experience would have to be a plus to paving the way.

The thing is that TA finished her Bachelor's in a content area relevant to the subject matter. Locally high schools would not hire a PhD in the content area, if he/she did not also have teacher's certification. However, they would allow a certified teacher without a content specific degree teach. That has always bugged me and I even took a look at the Praxis materials to see if I was being fair in my concern.

TY for the response, especially the detailed impressions re: Biology, Comp Sci, Physics and Calc. I had not thought about the major/non major distinctions, but that makes a great deal of sense. In our area it will be a grueling adventure to find a school that will allow Dd to sit for the exams. I will confess, I wince at any dealings with our local school system at this point, but am really dreading going hat in hand to seek a testing opportunity for Dd. We are not at all interested in gaining college credit for AP, it would really be about validating quality of what we do. Dd has zero chance of need based aid, thus it really is about admission thresholds. How many exams did your children take in a given year?

:lol: I had visions of Mr./Mrs. Potato Heads with mortar board caps and gown. Aren't the SAT subject test suppose to test high school level competency? I assumed they were designed for some sort of baseline to give some equivalency standard between what can be very diverse high school quality.

I don't know about a particular documentary off hand, but if you search the c-span website (especially the Book TV part) you will find oodles of great book discussions/panel discussions on constitutional topics.