Switching to public school for h.s.

[TwoEdgedSword]

If you exclusively homeschooled up through middle school and then switched to have your kids enroll in public school for high school, can you share why you did so and how that experience went or how it is going?

 

Thank you

[TwoEdgedSword]

If you'd rather message me, that's fine too!

[Butter]

Ani went to public high school for her freshman year.  She opted to come home again after the year was over.  We have excellent schools here and she was able to go to a magnet for creative writing.  Over the years since she came back home slowly she has revealed just how horrid that year was.  It was a very toxic environment, very much like what is portrayed on 13 Reasons Why.  She hid it a long time, but it killed her previously excellent self-esteem.  She's back to herself now.  So you could say it didn't go very well.

[JanetC]

Not sure if this counts, but my kids switched to DE in 11th. One part time, one full time. Both really outgrew the local homeschool resources and got to take better classes than what they'd have been able to do at home.

 

There have been hiccups, but more a chance to practice problem solving than anything completely toxic.

 

Finding social outlets for homeschooled teens is tricky where I live: too many go back to school or to almost-free DE, so the population of kids goes down right when developmentally the need to be social and run in packs goes up.

[Mike in SA]

We tried the switch, but the school system was not equipped to handle AL kids. We will be doing a mix of homeschool and DE for 10th and beyond.

 

Otherwise, the switch was fine. I would be supportive of it as long as the child is adequately prepared.

[TwoEdgedSword]

Butter so sorry that Ani had that experience. I'm glad things are better now for her.

JanetC we have the same situation here. There are just not a lot of teen homeschoolers around here and our kids are very athletic and into their sports, where the homeschooling teens that do exist are very much into the drama productions.

[Pen]

My ds started in public kindy, switched him to private because the our public school was not meeting his needs.  Then switched to homeschool 2nd to 7th because private was not meeting learning challenge and academic and health issue needs. In 3rd he did some iep work at the public school which had seemed to improve since he'd been in kindy there.  He was offered to switch back over to public, but wanted to continue to homeschool. 

 

In 8th, My ds switched to public mainly for social and sports, but that was this past year, so I don't yet know how the high school years will go (though it is the same school for middle and high school) as he continues on.  So far both the social and sports aspects have been very positive. In his case it has raised his self confidence. He did not win but did run for class president and other such things.  He loves the school dances and other such social activities as well as sports.

 

Academics would be fine if he chose to be interested and motivated by that (that is, the opportunities are there and if kids go too high for what the school has they can utilize DE), but my ds has not been especially "into" academics. For him social and sports were more important and more a source of happiness and accomplishment and needs missing from his homeschool life (esp since a neighborhood best friend moved away) that he needed to fulfill.

 

It has been hard to meet someone else's schedule and to maintain extracurriculars that he could more easily do with flexible homeschool schedule.  Nonetheless currently the balance weighs on the side of staying in public school.  

 

Both for school choice and curriculum I went with whatever seemed best at the time, and "do the next thing"--rather than philosophical commitment to public, or homeschool, or this or that curriculum or type of schooling.