learners4life
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Posts posted by learners4life
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7 hours ago, EmilyGF said:
Yes, that's all I wrote about our homeschool homeschool. I had been part of a coop and am attaching what I wrote below. I also had been volunteering (albeit only for a few months) as a teacher with a community organization and included that.
The Co-op lines:
CITY Co-Op, CITY, STATE — Teacher, Coordinator
SEPTEMBER 2017- JUNE 2020
Worked with a team to coordinate homeschool classes for multiple families. Designed and taught classes in conceptual physics, classic history, and literature to high schoolers.
Right now, I put my volunteer positions separately under "Board Membership" and "Long Term Volunteer Positions." The Long Term Positions included teaching Religious Education classes and leading a Homeschool Speech and Presentation group. Now I'm wondering whether I should weave these into the body of my resume and leave only the "Board Membership" positions under a separate heading.
A friends husband has offered to help me, but he wants me to organize my resume with a Summary first, where I list personal strengths along with associated accomplishments in bullets, followed by jobs I've held. He wants to eliminate the homeschool section and include mentoring, curriculum building, etc in the summary, and including something on mentoring later but says he needs to see how it looks. He is a project manager and sees a lot of resumes, but obviously he hasn't ever worked with a homeschooler and I worry about eliminating the huge period of time. However, it seems you did a version of what he is suggesting and you have an awesome job now.
Do you happen to have a teaching credential? I don't want to get my hopes up about working in the education area if the lack of teaching credential is always going to hold me back...
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4 hours ago, Sebastian (a lady) said:
I find it interesting that LinkedIn recently added a "career gap" heading so people could indicate where they stepped away from paid work to do something else.
I didn't know this. I love hearing this as it normalizes career gaps (albeit mine's a bit long).
My gap is around 20 years long.
I relate to the large gap!
I didn't try to put my info into a formal resume format, since I started a college admissions consulting business instead of applying for jobs with other companies. But this is what I have under Home Educator on LinkedIn.
Did you use a functional resume format, or did you list this as bullets under the experience section?
So, am I correct in assuming you are still working as a college admissions consultant? Therefore, your Linkedin profile is more for your prospective clients?
Almost twenty years as a home educator
Experience building foundations in reading and math
Hands on teacher in algebra and essay writing
Educational Coordinator for high school students coordinating independent academic schedules
Experience coaching students through the college and scholarship application process
Approved Advanced Placement teacher (English Literature, history, and government)
Tutor for writing, literature and US government in small group settingsI did three AP courses too 😁 (she did the rest through PA Homeschoolers, which we were really happy with.) However, I didn't note that my courses were approved courses, so I will add that. Thank you! It was a lot of work designing those courses!
I also have a couple volunteer positions described for Science Olympiad and Model UN teams I coached. At one point I had my scout leader experience listed too. I was a board member for at least one homeschool support group. I considered including that, because it required a lot of coordination with base legal, rewriting bylaws, and coordinating many different personalities.
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5 hours ago, EmilyGF said:
Hi Emily, What an awesome job you have! Thank you for your example. Was that the entirety of what you wrote about homeschool? I'm wondering whether you had a lot of other employment history or even a teaching credential?
5 hours ago, EmilyGF said: -
5 hours ago, Clemsondana said:
Hi Clemsondana,
THIS is exactly the kind of company I would love to work for; unfortunately, I realize they are rare. Your father's point that it reflects well on a prospective employee that they had taken time off because they had chosen to focus on one thing was super encouraging. And it was encouraging because I can see the truth in his analysis. With that thought, I've already rewritten the very non-substantial, one sentence section on my entry of Religious Education Teacher. I have taught religious education for over 20 years, and while it's not an important enough entry to warrant too many words, in keeping with the "focus" theme, I added that I had "obtained a Catechetical Certification to ensure further advancement of subject matter knowledge." I did the credential because RE teaching was something I was focused on/wanted to do with excellence! I will keep this in mind now as a edit my resume. Thanks!
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5 hours ago, Quill said:
Hi Quill - Was just going to go search for your posts. The homeschool section on my resume is the weakest section, partly because I was wary of it sounding like mom bragging. Thank you for reminding me not to sell myself short. In agreement with you, my daughter told me today that I really need to be kinda shameless about it, lol.
Omg, your extreme examples are hilarious!
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9 hours ago, Lori D. said:
Hi Lori D.! I remember you and you have always given such thoughtful and helpful responses. Thank you for the resources you listed in this reply. Your idea of having a "Master Resume" is an excellent one! I initially created one for a particular job, then used that for another job and cut and added to it. That worked for two resumes, but I could see it was going to be frustrating to dig through an ever-increasing number of resumes every time I rewrote a new one. I'll search the Chat for the two people you referenced. Thank you!!
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I used to read and post here when my daughter was in middle school and high school. She has since earned her undergraduate degree and is currently in her second year of vet school at UC Davis. Since her high school graduation, I have continued doing volunteer work, but most of it is no longer satisfying and I have developed a huge desire to be PAID for the work that I do.
Unfortunately, I am struggling with how to professionally include my homeschool years in my resume, and am hoping the collective hive mind has some experience and guidance in this area. I have a BS in MIS, am currently on the board of directors for three different small non-profits, participate in Toastmasters, but haven't had full-time paid employment for the last 25 years.
Sure would appreciate any advice!
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She took APUSH from PA Homeschoolers. We did a mixture of AP Euro at home and with tutoring from Meredith Noah in the month before the exam. I think AP Euro is really doable at home as long as you know how to write the essays, especially the synthesis essay. You have to understand what is being looked for in the essays - that is really important.
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Hi, My daughter also took it as a sophomore, but agree with what Lisa said about doing it as a Freshman.
My daughter didn't do any other biology in high school after AP Bio. She did AP Chemistry and APES. However, she IS doing a lot of biology now since she's a sophomore pre-vet student. 🙂
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My daughter only ended up taking two exams of the four AP courses she took her senior year. The ones she didn't take, AP Chemistry and AP Calculus, were courses that she knew she would want to take again at the university level since she is a science major. So, it largely depends on whether the courses are required for their intended major.
Of course, you don't have to take the credit for them, so if your child loves taking the AP exams - go for it! 😁
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The Richard Ladd book has sample questions by section and was very helpful!
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If you are going to move to Europe for part of the school year, do AP Euro! What a wonderful opportunity! If you are worried about which order to take them, my daughter did AP Euro first, then APUSH and got 5s in both, so obviously didn't make any difference.
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You could try using Campbell's Biology along with Mastering Biology. Then download the AP Biology Lab manual from AP Central and do all of the labs. Another excellent resource is Bozeman Science podcasts.
My daughter took the course four years ago from Terri Kanner at PA Homeschoolers and got a 5 on the exam.
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18 hours ago, 8FillTheHeart said:
But it does beg the question as to whether or not the grade issued by the homeschool teacher actually required the verification.
I think for most of the schools we were applying to, the UCs, it did. In a pre-applications meeting with two UC admissions reps, their standard thought for homeschoolers was to go to community college and then transfer. It wasn't until they heard that she had taken AP courses and exams, scoring 5s, that they changed their advice. The exact quote from one of them was "You are not like the usual homeschoolers..."
I think a LOT depends upon where you are applying. That's why i said, it was the nature of the game for US. It doesn't apply to everyone, but I should think it doesn't hurt.
Also want to add to the part in which I said the reason we didn't drop AP Lit was for the transcript. That is only partially true. It was also because UC Davis gave her AP credit for both AP Lang and AP Lit, which meant she only had to take one of the three required English courses.
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Although I would add that I don't think effort and attitude should have any part of an official grade. Institutional high schools don't do it, and neither will university professors. (Yes, I know there is always the exception, but, by and large, it won't and shouldn't happen.)
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My daughter took both AP Lang and AP Lit from a highly regarded online teacher. She was a good writer going into AP Lang and the teacher did, in fact, help her take her essay writing further. AP Lit, my daughter would tell you, negatively affected her writing. Two years of that type of writing was overload. I think the problem is similar to what we didn't like about IEW. We tried IEW when she was around 4th grade because of all the wonderful things we heard, only to drop it quickly after a couple of lessons. IEW's strength, to me, is really about giving resistant or non-natural writers a formula and framework to churn out school essays. IEW will never make anyone a good writer! I think the AP English courses have a similar strength, but at an obviously higher level.
I am glad dd did AP Lang, and think the teacher did an excellent job. Truly. However, if we hadn't wanted the AP course and exam score credit for her transcript, we would have had her drop AP Lit halfway through. It was the nature of the game for us - AP scores verified the "mommy" grade, no doubt about it.
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My daughter took APES two years ago with Molly Olsson. The class was enjoyable, my daughter felt well prepared, and the exam was an easy 5. Molly Olsson seems to be a genuinely nice person, and her class is very organized. And, wow, is she ever on top of grading! Sometimes things were graded and back to my daughter the same day. There isn't really any interaction between the students, but that was okay with us. I think it'd be hard to find a better APES class. :)
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Only one person signed up for the class, that I know of. The funny thing is that I came up here today to check with her on how it was going!
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Also, I'm not saying don't do the course descriptions. I'm just saying that I wouldn't sweat over them so much, and that the UCs don't want them (for those applying there). I think almost anything else on the application is more valuable.
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There wasn't a specific place to upload them with the CA, either, but I've heard people say they load them as a second transcript document. I'm just mentioning that because a friend of mine wrote up beautiful course descriptions as well and then never submitted them because she didn't think there was any place she could do that on the CA. It didn't matter in the end, though, because her dd got into the school she wanted and is very happy there.
Yes, we uploaded them to the CA as well for the two private universities. However, the UCs do not want the course descriptions. There is no place to upload them unless one tried to upload them to the additional comments section, which isn't large enough to accept the entire course description and would also be in opposition to what the UCs say that section should be used for.
(We did use that additional comments section to give more information about her homeschool, but it was done within the context of the directions.)
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We looked at Schmoop, briefly, for AP European History supplementation. It was so dumbed down, as your kids have already figured out.
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There is nowhere to submit them in the UC application.
I spent waaay to much time on the course descriptions, never to be used. I do, however, now have a beautiful record of her high school coursework. :D
(Edited to say that I shouldn't have said "never to be used" because she did apply to two private universities and was accepted. However, since she wanted to attend a UC, they didn't end up being useful for that.)
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Ditto everything Quark has said. I think the UCs are going to give a huge amount of weight to those test scores - SAT, ACT, and AP. They are going to look at the coursework and I really feel it is a good idea to make sure it comes from a mix of sources, not just all taught at home. Others may disagree, but I know when we sat with the two admissions people at UCD in dd's junior year, that is what we saw.
The first counselor was really of the frame of mind that, as homeschoolers, we should go to community college (probably in her mind to gain credibility) then transfer to the UC system. As such, she spent very little time with us, but, at the last second, thought to pass us on to another admissions guy who had been a vet school aspirant and was working there after finishing his undergrad.
This young man talked to us some about undergrad prep for vet school. We also talked quite a bit about why he decided not to apply and what his goals were now (interesting). I think he was pretty much wrapping the conversation up, but I kept finding ways of slipping in info about her academic background, Hearing that she was taking a lot of AP courses, and that she had gotten 5s in all the ones she had thus far finished, he started paying more attention. I think he liked that we had skyped with a tutor for French for years, used my AP exam design, and that she got a 5 on the exam. I think he liked that she had taken some AP courses online and gotten 5s. I think he liked that she had taken her first SAT subject test, under my instruction, in 9th grade and got an 800. At this point, he told us "you are NOT like the average homeschoolers" that he had come across. I think he also liked hearing she had extracurricular activities that showed long-time interest.
I'm quite thankful to this young man. We were feeling dejected, and he turned that around. He gave us his card and said to contact him with any questions as time went on. He even gave us one hint about essays, which was to NOT write about loving the books by James Herriot (All Creatures Great and Small), as he reads that all the time from Animal Biology/Animal Science majors. :)
I think being able to do well from a mix of class types gives the admissions people a chance to see that the student can perform well in a venue other than one that is perfectly tailored to that individual student. When the student does well in other coursework outside of that taught at home, such as AP online courses, I think it shows shows admissions that the coursework taught at home is probably of a high standard in that it prepared them well for those courses.
Hope this helps. Good luck to all applying to UCs!
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We homeschooled via the PSA the whole way through. College applications/transcripts were as a homeschool.
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Resume for homeschool moms
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted