Preparing for Junior High and High School

I am sitting here in the family room on a Sunday, with Pippi Longstocking playing in the background, the Daytona 500 on the TV on mute for Andy, Gareth playing Toon Town on the computer, and an 18 month old who should be asleep running around wreaking havoc. So of course I thought it would be the perfect time to write a post about junior high and high school at home. 

Gareth turns 13 this fall and will enter the 7th grade. I'm thinking of this as "junior high", because New York's homeschooling laws change after 6th grade. As of 7th grade, the law requires that homeschoolers complete "units", not unlike those required of high schoolers for graduation.  (Actually, the same definition of "unit" is used for both 7th and 8th grades and high school: 6480 minutes. No, New York could not come right out and say 108 hours.  6480 minutes, and not a second more.) So in 7th grade, we will have to document 108 hours (6480 minutes) of English, 108 hours of history and geography, 108 hours of science, and 108 hours of math, and provide "regular instruction" in health, "practical arts", and library skills to equal 990 hours a year.  At some point in the next two years, Gareth will also have to complete 54 hours of art and 54 hours of music.

Now, this is not really a big deal; we do more than 990 hours a year anyway. But in the process of doing my mid-year tweaking, and in checking the laws for next year, it suddenly dawned on me... I am going to have a teenager. And it also dawned on me, he will be in high school in two years. And then I realized, he's almost done with Saxon 7/6. What next? He's not ready for algebra, is he?

Cue hyperventilation.

I'm trying to do something novel.  I'm trying to be prepared.  At this stage in the game, I know that Gareth learns best with materials he can use independently.  I know that he needs to follow his interests and exercise a certain level of choice in his studies, but I also know that he needs some structure imposed from above, as it were.  I know that he needs time to prepare for changes, and that he needs to know what to expect ahead of time.  And I also know that his particular mix of intellectual giftedness and learning disabilities (what the educational establishment now refers to as "twice exceptional") means that we often have to meet his needs in creative ways. We have to be willing to ditch grade levels, which are kind of irrelevant when your twelve year old is reading a technical book on prehistoric mammals written for adults AND struggling with a third grade spelling workbook at the same time.  But we also have to know how to work the system.  This is becoming important right now, since he might conceivably do high school level work in more than just Algebra I in the next year or two.   

So here I am, reading, reading, reading, googling, googling, googling, immersed in a strange world of "credits" and "transcripts" and "course descriptions". It seems like there are two common responses to high school in the homeschool.  The first is to go the traditional route -- sign up with a curriculum provider, focus on academics, add in a hefty dose of extracurricular activities.  The other response seems to be along the lines of, who needs college? Think apprenticeships, exploring interests.  But I have seen glimmers of a middle way, and I think that is the path we want to trod.  "Practical bookishness," as David and Micki Colfax named it. Should a teenager read Homer? Yes. Should he be able to build a chicken coop, fix a car, and/or make himself dinner? Yes. Should he be able to draw as many imaginary creatures as he wants, write novels instead of papers, and read stacks and stacks of science fiction novels to the exclusion of all else?  Well... yes and no. (And I say this AS an SFF writer who wrote novels and read stacks of SFF mainly during class as a teenager.) If a twelve year old says he wants to be an astrobiologist when he grows up (yes, an astrobiologist), or an archaeologist, or a paleontologist (as well as a dad), how does one prepare him for that?

So here's where the research comes in.   Right now I'm just becoming educated about the big picture.  How does a homeschooler apply to college? What do colleges want from homeschoolers? What's a credit, and how do you put together a transcript? Will it be better to sign up with a traditional curriculum provider starting in 7th grade or to go our own way?  Through all this, I'm thinking about our philosophy, our faith, and -- most importantly -- what will benefit Gareth. And if homeschooling Gareth has taught me nothing else, it's that nothing we do will fit into anybody else's holes. If there are square pegs and round holes -- we're trapezoids.    

(Since this post has gotten really long, and because it's now time to run downstairs to grab some green beans for dinner, I'll list some of the resources I've found so far in another post... hopefully before next weekend!)

 

Comments

[Melissa R]

I homeschool in another state so I am curious about that 108 hours law. What confuses me is that when homeschooling, typically, what you can learn in school in an hour is the same as what you can learn at home in 15 minutes. So how in the world do you take that into consideration? Should your child still have to sit and "do math" for an hour when he/she learned it in 15 minutes? Or do you keep learning more and more and more new stuff and thus end up doing college level math in 8th grade? If a child reads the "usual" high school English books all when he/she is 15 does that mean she's done? I just don't' really understand how the whole "time on task" laws can work in the reality of a homeschool setting. Any insight would be appreciated :)

[Jennifer]

Right there with you...considering, reading, mulling over, contemplating, documenting....with different challenges for my rhombus! :)

[Lisa]

Right there with you, too! And Jennifer...reading, mulling,stressing... My oldest starts 9th grade next year! YIKES!! I'll be following your discoveries.

[Angel]

Melissa -- I think I'll probably mull this over a bit in a post, too, but I thought I would say a little bit about the confusion in how to count hours, because it has left me scratching my head, too. NY state requires 108 clock hours, but in many of the books I've been reading about homeschool high school, the authors count 120 hours as one credit, citing it as "standard". But in other books, I find that people talk about how the schools actually use 180 "fifty minute hours", which works out to 150 clock hours. One book I have actually adds homework in on top of 180 clock hours to arrive at 222 clock hours! That seems a little excessive to me, considering that homeschooling IS more efficient than a classroom.

All of this leads me to believe that it's a parent's call. I think there are some subjects that ought to be more content-based than time-based: math, for instance. If you finish the Algebra I book, no matter when you do it, you have 1 Agelbra I credit. Nothing else really makes sense in that instance. But in other subjects, like history or English, going beyond the "required" or "usual" texts -- or perhaps going into them more deeply -- for 108 or 120 or 150 hours or whatever might make more sense because those subjects are much more open-ended. I think that what will happen with us is that we end up with a lot of non-standard courses, like: "Archaeology of New York State", "Mycology", "Classic Science Fiction", etc., in addition to more standard fare.

As far as hours go, my own personal view is that 108 hours is too low (although just fine for junior high), but 180 clock hours is probably a bit much. 120-150 hours sounds about right to me for high school... but ask me again in a couple of years!

[mamalion]

Take a deep breath, let it out, and continue on... Homeschooling high school isn't any different than any other grade, to be perfectly honest. It's just the next grade. Kind of like you approach going from 3rd to 4th, etc. Colleges want homeschoolers to look more traditional, but you can still hit the middle of that. My dd is a junior, well read, well mathed thanks to Math-U-See, and well scienced thanks to Apologia. There is a wealth of materials out there to make it easy. I struggle with the fact we have to look more traditional in high school, but that's life if they want to go to college. We pull in our trapezoid tendencies (love that expression!) in history, poetry/reading, and that sort of stuff. What I'd recommend is you go to a college's website and look at what they recommend for admission, and shoot for that. In NY, Houghton is a good place to start, since they're homeschooler friendly.

As for counting hours, Angel mentioned 120-150. That's correct. You want to count Carnegie units, and 120 hours is the magic number for non-academic subjects (electives), and 150 for the academic ones (Math, Science, Language Arts.)

The only drawback is that there is more weight put on the standardized tests (ACT, SAT) than for regular students, since that validates the transcript Mom put together.

As for Jr. High, in 7th, I wouldn't try to look too traditional yet. There's plenty of time for that. If you have one destined for hard science, and astrobiologist counts for that, you want him doing Physical Science and Algebra 1 by 8th grade. That leaves room senior year for ugliness like Calculus and advanced sciences. Oh, and be prepared for the books to get waaaaay more expensive! I budget up to $500 per school year for my junior alone. Sorry for the book and I hope this helps!

[Diane]

Good luck with the high school planning, it gets interesting! I'm in GA with a 15 y/o dd in 10th grade. We are lucky, we don't have to submit as much to the state as you seem to have to in NY. High school is great though, you really get to see them blossom...at least I have. :-)