Do you plan to Homeschool through High School?

[ma23peas]

In our 11th year, have always taken it one year at a time and relied heavily on God's direction and provision. My son starts 11th grade, he is enrolled in a dual enrollment program through a state university and takes two classes outside home (human anatomy and my writing class at a coop)...it has worked well for our family and allows us to have time for sports/dance and while I did worry about the social aspect, should not have...just this past week alone, our children participated in four youth events with over 50 different wonderful kids...they find a way to make events happen and are service oriented...love that!

[Angel]

Yep. :001_smile:

 

It is very rewarding watching my teens discover who they are and how they are pursuing their passions.

 

 

:iagree::iagree:

 

My older dd just graduated May 26th. It has been a joy to share her journey. We didn't feel the need for any outside classes or community college. In fact, sticking to "just" high school at home really opened up time for her to pursue her passions and really find out what she was interested in for a career.

 

I will homeschool my younger dd through high school. Knowing how different the two of them are, I don't know what that will look like at this point.

[mytwomonkeys]

Yes. I would like to continue our education at home but i'm open to other ideas. We live in FL and they can take classes at the public school. We also have a few options for virtual schools. I am definitely open to those ideas. We will figure it out when that time gets closer :)

[Tarreymere]

We will home educate all the way through, but the means will likely change. I can see adding in more online classes or even a cyber charter school enrollment in order to have the accountability to others that some teens need (already raised four of 'em) and access to STEM experiences.

 

The one thing we will NOT consider is full time public school enrollment and the reason for that is that our local public school has very low academic standards and thriving drug/alcohol/sex culture. I do know of perfectly nice young people who have graduated from that school, but I don't want to take the chance of putting another child with an undiagnosed personality disorder in a maladaptive social environment.

 

While we self-identify as Christian, we are not Young Earth and we are more scornful of pop culture for its shallowness than any potential religious reasons. Our dislike of public schools has nothing to do with religion or politics.

[AngelaNYC]

No. We don't plan on homeschooling for high school. NYC has incredible high schools and my kids can pick one based on their interests. Out of 500 high schools in NYC, about 30 are excellent and worth considering. My oldest dd loves to write so she chose a high school for journalism My youngest dd is a dancer and she chose to go to the high school from the movie "Fame". Their high school experiences have been wonderful. Ds has many interests right now, but he may choose a school for film, science, performing arts, architecture, engineering, or math.

 

But then again, if ds chooses to keep homeschooling through high school, I'm prepared for that too!

[Parrothead]

Yes, dd will do some form of homeschooling through 12th grade.

[Mom0012]

The way things are looking, I'll be homeschooling all the way through. My kids have no desire to head off to school and my son has learning disabilities, so I feel like it would be disaster to send him off to public school. I used to love the idea of homeschooling high school, but now that my son is older, I'm getting a glimpse of the reality of it.

 

I wish I was wealthy and that there was a small private school that would be a perfect fit for both of them because the idea of homeschooling high school is starting to really stress me out both from a social and an academic angle. I want the time with my kids, but I'm not sure how I'm going to make it a positive, fulfilling experience for them or me.

 

Lisa

[Hoggirl]

I had planned to homeschool all the way through high school.

 

In about October of 8th grade, ds announced that he did not want to homeschool through high school. My dh had always been of the "one-year-at-a-time" mindset, although we knew we pretty much needed to make a firm decision about the four years of high school. I knew dh would back up ds's decision, and I would be overruled. At the time, it was devastating to me. I truly went though almost a mourning period. It was a much more significant change for me than for anyone else. And, he was my only one, so my entire lifestyle was going to change. I truly felt like I had been "fired," and it wasn't as though I had been doing a bad job.

 

Ds entered his charter school (total enrollment of 320 over grades 8 - 12) in January of 8th grade. Because of his 7th grade Duke TIP ACT scores, and the fact the he was doing Precalculus at the time, he was bumped up to grade 9 (see? I told you I had been doing a good job! :D). He won the award for the highest grade in his class for his Trig/Precalculus class at the end of the school year. His attending high school has been both an academic AND social success for him. I do miss homeschooling him at times, but I have adjusted. I think there is something about boys at the age of 13 or 14 that requires some separation from mama. While I know this can be accommodated in a home school situation quite successfully, for my ds the physical independence/separation was necessary.

 

I will add that I feel this has only been a success because of the type of school we were able to find for him. Had he enrolled in the extremely large (3,600+ and growly by 500 students per year) local public school, I think it might have been a dismal failure. This charter school is used to working with homeschoolers (approx. 40% of the enrolled students come from homeschooling) and had no problems accepting the high school level work he had already done in math. That NEVER would have happened at our local public school, where he would have had to repeat Geometry and Algebra II.

 

I think one has to look at the individual child, the family situation, and what sort of opportunies are available outside of homeschooling in order to assess what is "best."

 

I am so thankful (now) that ds is where he is. He has had many opportunities to participate in extracurriculars that I simply could not have duplicated at home.

 

Just my $0.02.

[ocelotmom]

This is something we'll decide when we get there. We don't know right now how they're going to feel, what options will be available in terms of online schools or dual enrollment, or what the college admissions attitude will be towards homeschoolers at that point.

[Murphy101]

I did, I do and I am!:D

[MamaT]

Yes, and have graduated three. Three more to go.

[kalanamak]

I see a few options, and most of them depend on kiddo's maturity and motivation.

 

1) hs the whole way through, continue our 4 year cycle

2) hs to 11th or 12th grade, and kiddo does a year or two of Running Start. We have a very good community college just north of us.

3) Kiddo decides to go to PS. After 14 I'm not going to refuse him. We'll afterschool.

4) Kiddo decides to to to PS and doesn't want to afterschool. He gets a job, too.

5)Kiddo decides to do nothing with school and/or leaves home early (this runs in my family). I will encourage the minimum of online or homeschooling (no point in going to ps to get Ds all over his record). He gets a job and I encourage self-schooling.

6) Some twist of fate I can't even imagine, good or bad.

 

We are already having little chats about the above, although only about 1 and 2, so far. ;:001_smile:

[kalanamak]

Probably not. DW doesn't enjoy homeschooling.

 

Things might change ... I think it is much more fun now kiddo is older.

[Karen in CO]

I take homeschooling one kid at a time and one year at time.

I have one homeschool graduate in college, one dd that is going to a classical charter school next year, and one dd that will homeschool next year. I'm not really sure what we're doing the year after that. I know I can successfuly home school high school, but it is too far away for me to decide for these two kids.

[kalanamak]

.... and we are more scornful of pop culture for its shallowness than any potential religious reasons. Our dislike of public schools has nothing to do with religion or politics.

 

 

I've never thought of it that way, but this is how I feel.

[tabrizia]

Well, I certainly plan on homeschooling through high school. But my kids are only 5 & 3. :lol:

 

This, but add the 1 year old in there too. That being said we will probably do some community college courses as well. The community college allows students to start taking classes as early as 7th grade here. They also offer homeschool enrichment classes for younger ages, including some lab sciences.

 

I also plan to take it year by year, so if public or private school or some other option I have yet to think of fits better, then we will likely go for that option.

[FaithManor]

We have graduated one. She is a paramedic and chemistry major/pre-med though probably not choosing med school in the future.

 

We have a 10th grader and a 9th grader now and a 7th grader who is doing high school level math and science.

 

For us, the local high schools are not an option. Not only are math and science not promoted in any appreciable way, but they have almost no AP classes, honors classes, science fairs, debate teams, math teams, or anything else due to extreme budget cuts. There is no charter school in a three county radius of us. The nearest would be an hr. away and it does not have a good reputation at all. So, I'm in it for the long haul.

 

I do enjoy teaching high school level material. Dh's degree is in mathematics with computer programming/database architecture and he filled his electives with multiple chemistry and physics courses. This is a huge help to me. I majored in piano performance and philosophy, minored in French (the philosophy degree has come in handy when teaching logic, literature, and the WHY of history) and I filled my electives with multiple college biology and physics classes. So, when people tell me they are apprehensive about teaching high school, I don't make light of that. I know that we have a background in the two toughest areas for homeschoolers to teach and the French would have come in really handy if I could have convinced any of my children to embrace the subject. :glare: Spanish for DD - which as a medic in an area with a migrant agricultural population, I have to admit this has been handy - Ancient languages for ds #1 (Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Summarian Cueniform, plus Latin and Greek), Icelandic (oh yah...that's been a real "treat" trying to find help with that!!!!!) and Danish for ds #2, and egads the granddaddy problem language of them all for me...HEBREW for ds #3.

 

If something happened to me, dh would do as much teaching as he could and then outsource a LOT of it. Our local public schools accept NO homeschool credits under NO circumstances. So, our 7th grader who will be in Calculus by the time he is 14, would be placed in algebra I despite his test scores. As a matter of fact, they punish homeschoolers for placing high schoolers into their schools...all homeschooled high school students are automatically labeled "remedial". I know of one young man that had started trig/pre-calc at home and was placed in remedial mathematics!:001_huh: His mom got cancer and could not continue homeschooling him and she is very, very ill. He will not be graduating on time and it's going to completely mess with his entrance to college. But, we do not have a good community college here so just dual enrolling him and letting him finish his high school education that way was not an option. The second car had to be reserved for her multiple per week medical appointments and the nearest CC of any repute that offers a math class beyond college algebra or science beyond basic biology...(our local CC's are mostly business schools) would be a 70 minute drive for them. Just not doable under the circumstances. They don't live close enough to me or I would have just volunteered to finish educating him as a tutor.

 

So, in our area, it's either commit to the whole four years, or place them in school in 8th grade to insure they can transition to the appropriate classes for high school. There isn't a middle ground option.

 

Faith

[SunnyDays]

DS is 9 and a rising 4th grader. I don't honestly know what we'll do yet. He is insistent that he wants to homeschool all the way through. I tell him he might change his mind by then. :)

 

I'm kind of with Cynthia in that part of me will be sad whenever he goes back to school, but I also understand that as a teen boy (and an only child, at that) he will need some separation from mom.

 

Probably, we'll either partially homeschool and dual enroll in public for sports and a couple classes... or, he will attend private Christian school. We have a few years to decide, but I don't want it to sneak up on me, either!

[Desert Strawberry]

We are going with plan 2, with the options of internship, vocational school, online college, direct entry job or whatever career / educational path appears to be best for the child at the time.