Belhaven High Scholars

[Guest gwosborns]

I would love to hear from someone who has had a student in Belhaven's High Scholars program. Quality of videos, teachers, writing instruction, etc.

[Mary in VA]

I'll be able to let you know in a few months! My almost 17 yo dd will be doing High Scholars this year. She has done Potter's School classes for the last 5 years, so she is familiar with the format. (They administer High Scholars on their site) The brother of one of her best friends did High Scholars several years ago and his family was very pleased. My dd wants to attend Belhaven and we have visited the campus, so she is dual-enrolled.

 

Mary

[Abbeygirlsouth]

I look forward to hearing more about it also. :lurk5:

[FourOaks]

I asked this very same question several months back. I am very interested to hear how things go. We are fairly certain that we will have our dd starting the BUHS program next fall.

[DidoMachiatto]

How did it go with Belhaven?

[Mary in VA]

Belhaven High Scholars was fantastic for my 17 yo dd this year. She had class twice a week for 1 1/2 hours each. The class time was spent in discussion, not lecture. In fact 30% of each student's grade was based on discussion. Before each class the students had to complete the reading, homework and watch the lectures for the week so they were prepared to discuss in class. They covered from ancient times to just after the reformation this year. They had history, literature, and culture (which covered art, music and architecture). The instruction/lectures were very good and in depth. Everything was taught from a Christian world view, so if that is not your family's world view it would not be a good fit. The discussions involved a lot of critical thinking along with world view analysis. DD will be taking High Scholars Year 2 this year. She is doing this dual-enrolled at Belhaven so will have 24 credit hours when she is finished. She is 99.9999999% sure she wants to attend Belhaven so she'll have a jump start when she gets there.:001_smile: It was a lot of work but dd is someone who tends to drag her work out, she likes to get immersed in it. I think it has something to do with her artistic temperament.:001_smile:

 

Mary

 

P.S. I went back and looked at the first question and realize I didn't address all the questions. The lectures are on the Belhaven University site and the students watch them there. Some of them are from the High Scholars instructors and some from Belhaven faculty. The history teachers are not Belhaven professors, but they are hired by Belhaven and are great. The quality of the video feed is fine. The on-line real time classes are interesting. My dd likes them better than the regular Potter's School classes since they are all discussion. They didn't do much writing per se in history. There was one project that spanned all the subjects involving the history, literature and culture of India, analyizing it from the Hindu world view. A lot more short paragraphs addressing different topics for history homework each week. There were 2-3 paragraph reading responses each week for the literature that week and 2 longer literary analysis papers each semester. There were also midterm and final exams each semester for each subject and quizzes every week in culture. The text for history was Spielvogel's Western Civilization and the Bedford Anthology of World Literature was the literature text. I would not recommend High Scholars for learning composition. My dd had a solid writing background prior to High Scholars and was fine. In my opinion it would be a real struggle without a good writing foundation. My dd was a junior when she started.

Edited August 1, 2012 by Mary in VA