High School Advice for BUSY kids please

[Lynnatbeach]

Hi,
I am new to this board. It was recommended to me on a few other boards I visit, so here goes...help.
I am getting a little overwhelmed with preparing for high school.
I am homeschooling one child. She is currently in 8th grade, and although we are not new home schoolers, it feels like we need a new game plan for High School. We have been an eclectic,Konos Unit study-type during the elementary years, and went a little more traditional for middle school. We enjoy big involved projects and good classical literature, alongside structured Grammar, Writing and Math.
My daughter is in a serious ballet school. The training/rehearsal/performance/ schedule will become more intense, so this will definitely have an effect on the way we home school. It may mean saying good - bye to fun fabulous unit studies
We want a solid college prep course for high school, that also allows time for a heavy training schedule. The challenge is that we do not know how to condense anything-due to our unit study experience.
How do those of you with serious athletes and artists do it?
On-line high school? In the box all in one curriculum? Any suggestions and advice will be appreciated!

[Jan P.]

My oldest dd is also in training for ballet. I'm also struggling to do a "classical education" with her. On top of that my dd has dyslexia, so there are some issues there to. I would be interested to hear how others are doing it. If dd didn't have dyslexia, then I would consider something like Keystone.

FWIW,
Jan

[Linda in NM]

we're planning to continue with Trisms through highschool, following our CM-inspired day (takes about 5-6 hours) and allowing for skating. We also use Clonlara, which has all kinds of interesting options for highschool, is accredited, and provides NCAA-ready transcripts.

[Nan in Mass]

I'm dashing out, now, but I have a gymnast/traveller/slow worker who is a junior. I'll post later about what we do. Meanwhile, you can read my post from a little way back for upcoming 8th graders.

[Lynnatbeach]

we're planning to continue with Trisms through highschool, following our CM-inspired day (takes about 5-6 hours) and allowing for skating. We also use Clonlara, which has all kinds of interesting options for highschool, is accredited, and provides NCAA-ready transcripts.

Hi Linda in NM,
About Clonlara... it seems very flexible.
I just visited the web site and I have a question. Do you use your own curriculum choices and then submit transcripts, or does Clonlara have it's own curriculum?
Can you tell me a little more about how you use it?
Thanks!

[Susan M in WA]

My dd (15) has a really busy schedule. We have substituted audio versions of some materials to help us use travel time wisely.

We use Teaching Company courses in the audio version.

For some classic literature, we use the audio version and she listens either while traveling, while settling down to sleep at night or while editing photos on the computer.

Lots of free classics are available in mp3 format at http://www.librivox.org

[tmkclscroggins]

My daughter is in 9th grade this year and is seriously studying dance. It's been a tough year so far. She's behind in math and history. I'd like to hear the replies to your post as well!


melissa

[JennW in SoCal]

There have been a couple of recent threads you might want to read, including "What not to miss in high school" and the "settle an argument: poll on how much work your kids actually do". Those aren't the actual titles, but it should help you find them. I thought it might give you an idea of the broad range of approaches represented here on this board.

I don't see why you'd have to give up on unit studies or large projects, even with the dance schedule of a serious student. My oldest ds is very involved with theater and voice, and this is the approach we use. Think of your homeschool as being a kind of creative and perfoming arts school -- those schools always have a block of time each day for academics so that the afternoons and evenings are free for rehearsals and practice. Decide on the essentials, come up with a list of topics for projects, and make it a point to set aside the morning or early afternoon hours as school time.

I would think this approach makes more sense than an on-line program, as you will need flexibile scheduling around performances and dress rehearsal schedules. School-in-a-box might take some of the guess work out of it all, giving your dd a clear cut schedule and list of expectations.

I heartily agree with the suggestions of audio books. An iPod is a marvelous thing -- she can listen to a book while sewing ribbons onto pointe shoes, or washing out tights!

You sound like a homeschooling pro, and I'm sure you'll be fine. To me, high school really hasn't been all that different from all the other years, I just have a more mature person with whom to discuss everything.

[Lynnatbeach]

Hi Jennifer,
Books on iPod- what a good idea! (No one would ever know what she is really listening to!;))
I like with your suggestion of modeling home school after a performing arts school.
Thanks so much for response.
Lynn

[Sharon in MD]

This is such a nice group of ladies, I do hope you'll stick around. I have a busy high school jr and I have to say Jenn W's suggestions were really great.

Now, my ds is not headed toward a performing arts career, but that is the area where his alter ego passions lie. He is into the Main Stage Play at our high school (homeschool-hybrid) , the improv class, classical piano lessons and competition and recitals, and Irish Step dancing lessons as well as the performing co. We also squeeze in his youth group activities at church, usually a couple times a week outside of Sundays. So, I really do identify with the crazy schedule.

We don't use a unit approach, so I can't address that, but what we do is try to find ways to do some of the school work while in transit. One thing that has been invaluable for us is a laptop for him. He can watch DVD type lectures on it, do foreign language/Rosetta Stone, write essays, you name it while we are on the road to rehearsals. He has an Ipod and I never thought about getting some of his reading materials on there....I will be looking into that one myself. We do not have the expensive anywhere internet kind of thing for it, so he can't do web search things while on the road like those Verizon commercials...but, it is a huge help in getting school done on the road. Where we live, suburban MD, everything is at least 30 min away, so, rather than lose an hour in the car we try to make it work.

One other thing, and this is a bit harder to take, is we have just had to buckle down and do school some on the weekends. If the work isn't done, then he has to spend weekend time catching up. I think that for many of us busy homeschoolers this is just an unhappy reality. I'm sure there are plenty of folks who don't have that problem, but we've never been able to overcome it in our school.

But, in sum...video, audio, computer things can help tremendously. And a laptop is a godsend around here. Frankly I use it while he is in classes/rehearsals to keep up on my side of things too.

HTH and welcome again!

[Nan in Mass]

What I do might not work for you, but it might give you a starting place. If I were you, I'd go through and decide on priorities, something like: must be able to type and use a word processor, must be able to write an essay, must know how to study, must know how to do research, must have a basic grasp of history, must do bio, chem, and physics, must do math through pre-calc, must understand nutrition and money (or somehting like that - I rather randomly made up this list). Then just make sure you cover them. Is your child planning on going to college? If so, then you need to make sure you meet those requirements. If not, then you need to decide if you want to do the absolute minimum and concentrate on the ballet, or whether you want to do extra and make up for the fact that she won't be doing further education in college. The college kids have extra time to do their education. If you decide on just the minumum, and then an injury or something changes your plans, then remember that community college makes a good bridge between regular college and high school.

My son does gymnastics, and is gone travelling a few weeks or sometimes a few months of each year. While he is travelling, he absolutely cannot do any school work. Even managing to keep a very minimal journal is difficult. And during summertime, we like to have summer, so year round school isn't a good option for us. We've compromised with the summertime school, now that he is in high school, and he finishes whatever math book he is doing for the year, and reads for an hour or two. This adds a few extra books each year to the reading list. These are often audio books.

The rest of the year, we do school from 7 to 2, finishing math and Latin after gymnastics, and doing some reading and/or writing on the weekend. Our schedule (before we added in CC classes this year) was supposed to go something like this:
7 - math
8 - Latin
9 - writing
10 - 12 great books, art, and music
12:30 - 1:30 - science
1:30 - 2 history reading
In reality, it goes more like this (this year):
7-8:30 math
8:30 - 9:15 Latin
break
9:30 - 10:30 Conceptual Physics
10:30 - 12 great books and music
12:30 - 1:30 writing
1:30 - 2:00 history reading
2:00 - 2:30 piano
Then Tues. and Thurs. we hop in the car at 10:00, having hopefully done math, physics, and Latin, and read aloud great books on the way to CC for composition and computers (or in the fall it was speech and drawing).

My son works very slowly, so things like math take about 2 1/2 hours a day, and everything else takes longer, too. Our basic pattern for most subjects is to correct any written excersizes, I read aloud the textbook and we talk about it, and then we work on the next excersize, very often orally. I tend to put any independent things (varies from year to year) in the afternoon. We do great books a la TWEM, picking and choosing our books carefully and reading them aloud together. I decided to do applied science (for the most part) in the form of natural history, ham radio, anatomy, and Conceptual Physics, and go very lightly on the history, just taking 4 years to read Spielvogel's Western Civ to himself. He's filled out the history/government/geography with travel and Teaching Company tapes in the car on the way back and forth to gymnastics. I decided not to do grammar because that gets covered (at least as much as we are interested in covering it) by Latin. We spend extra time on the writing because that is slow. We're doing geometry instead of logic. This cuts down on the number of subjects and lets us fit in music and art, important to our family.

If you want to do classical, then great books is a very nice unit study version of literature/writing/history/philosophy/government/economics, math/geometry encompasses logic, "natural history" is a great label for unit study science or you do your classes by quarter or semester or trimester and call each unit a course, and Latin is a pretty efficient way of covering grammar, some history, and a foreign language.

If you want to be even more streamlined, then skip the Latin. If you removed that and the music and art from our schedule, you were a bit quicker with the math and writing, and you didn't vanish for months at a time and did some reading in the summer, our schedule would reduce to about 7:30 to 12:00, with a 15 min. break, or possibly even shorter. That still leaves writing as a seperate subject, a necessary thing if you are dealing with learning differences, as I suspect we are, at least mild ones.

You could deal with government/econ by reading some of the Uncle Eric books aloud together during great books, or a For Dummies book, and logic by doing Fallacy Detective, again aloud. FD took us a fall doing it orally 15 minutes a day.

I found we have to have a schedule, so everyone knows what to expect from day to day. Life feels too chaotic and on edge unless everyone knows when they can just relax and when they are expected to work. This seems to be a function of being super scheduled. I try to make sure that everyone eats and sleeps well because otherwise emotions get out of hand, or my sons get sick during practice. I put that first, before school work. I pack supper and everyone eats in the car on the way to gym while listening to a TC tape. That helps with the time. The reading in the summer eases the schedule, too. Having the books on tape makes it not seem too bad. I save the funnest ones for then.

Hope something in all this muddle is helpful. I have found that TWTM version of classical is great for my busy children because it picks out which things need to be specifically taught, and which things can be learned more loosely. I wrote a post about how TWTM is part way between unschooling and school a little while ago. You can search for it, if you are interested.
-Nan

[Jan P.]

we're planning to continue with Trisms through highschool, following our CM-inspired day (takes about 5-6 hours) and allowing for skating. We also use Clonlara, which has all kinds of interesting options for highschool, is accredited, and provides NCAA-ready transcripts.


I'm curious as to what your CM-inspired day is. I'm a big CM fan.:)

Thanks,
Jan

[Annie G]

Our teens do musical theater and some of the kids bring their work to rehearsals and shows and work when they're not on stage. After watching the environment...constant interruptions, noisy room, etc., I have discouraged my kids from taking work to rehearsals. My reasoning is that when they are there, they should be focused on theater, and when they do schoolwork, they should be focused on school.
Most weeks this is ok since they're usually doing theater related stuff 10-20 hours a week. This being show week, they are there for more like 50 hours.
Our main solution is to pare back the courses to the minimum. Our 10th grader takes algebra 2, anatomy, US History, Keystone Honors English, and Japanese. I will give credit for the theater experience (the program conveniently keeps a transcript for me).
Am I missing the boat by not having them take work to rehearsals/shows?

[JennW in SoCal]

I'm with you, Annie, on not taking serious work to the shows. The greenrooms & dressing rooms are always chaos! However, I do know kids who can easily slip away into a book, and it is a good escape for them from the chaos. An iPod works really well for this too, though they are expensive and easily lost or stolen.

Good reading can get done with constant interruptions. I'm a pit orchestra musician and have read quite a bit during dialog breaks in musicals. The reading material can't be too dense, though, it has to be something easy to pick up and put back down on cue. And the show has to provide those breaks!! Secret Garden, Seussical and Beauty and the Beast are almost non-stop music, but Sound of Music and Annie both allowed for nice chuncks of uninterrupted reading!

[Lady Lorna]

Thank you Lynnatbeach for starting this thread. This is something I struggle with every day. My daughter, now a junior, is a competitive ice dancer training on average six hours a day. She also travels several times a year during which time little school work is done.

While my husband and I have agreed that we're not willing to compromise her education for her skating career, we have found that we've had to streamline her workload, school year round, and use every possible moment for study. My daughter jokes that she isn't actually homeschooled, but carschooled. (She also calls herself an autodidact.) The problem with this approach is that burnout is a risk. She has very little down time for herself.

Even doing all the above, we are behind where we'd like to be. Given that, we are considering taking a fifth year for high school to to cover everything we want to cover while taking the pressure off. I would be interested in knowing if other posters have done this and how it might affect the college application process.

The upshot is that our daughter is a true scholar athlete--healthy, happy, and well-educated, with a passion for her chosen sport. But we may not be able to do it all in four years, at least not the way we want to.

[Laura K (NC)]

My son tends to overschedule himself so he isn't committing to -- and finishing -- things that are important, and he has let people down.

We've worked harder this year to fight against overcommitment. Before he takes on any project, sport, or class, I go over his current commitments and hobbies. What is he willing to give up to take on something new? This is an important a lesson to learn as Latin, or algebra, or even history.

If our kids aren't able to learn this in high school, they won't have a chance in college. Kids who are budding professional athletes/dancers are in a different category, but those kids with driven personalities and more academic hobbies that will probably turn into careers have to learn to budget their time. They will eventually have to balance those careers with their future families, which will take no less time than schoolwork takes now.

[Nan in Mass]

This allows their athletes to take more AP classes, since they don't have time to do several of those per semester AND put the necessary time into their sport. Somebody here said it (and hopefully they will chime in now). I found this very encouraging. The 5th year certainly does make it easier to "do it all". It might be worth some research to find out what the prep schools are calling this year, so you can call it the same thing. It is probably a term that colleges are familiar with.
HTH
-Nan

[Lynnatbeach]

Wow ladies!,
Thanks so much for your warm welcome and your heartfelt (and detailed )responses.
I feel like I am obsessing over this issue and can't wait to settle on a plan.
Thank you very much for all your suggestions!
The 5th year plan sounds like a practical option. I know it is done for college athletes- remember U of Florida's 2006-07 champion basketball team ! Several players were on the 5 year plan. Why not for high school athletes too?

[Antonia]

My dd, 14, is also a serious ballet dancer, taking 35 hours of class per week. She also takes one cc class per semester (this year it is english and US history), and she is working on algebra I and biology at home. To be truthful, she often does only two or three hours of schoolwork a day such as on Tuesdays when she starts her ballet classes at 10am, or on Monday and Wednesday when she has cc class and then goes directly to ballet. I am being very flexible with her as far as stretching out and fitting in what she needs to. For instance, she will almost certainly take biology into next year, she often works on schoolwork on the weekends, and she will be completing the Latin we started but had to put aside over the summer. (There are no summer vacations in this house!) I think you have to be very flexible with children who have such serious pursuits, and realize that high school classes can be scheduled around them. As long as all the requirements are met *eventually*, that's all that matters, not that they were done in a specific year or timetable. I try to always keep in mind that the main reason I homeschool is for this very purpose - so that my children can find their path, not one preordained by some arbitrary schoolboard. Whatever the passion, whether ballet or baseball, I believe a child should have the latitude to explore it and see where it leads them. hth.

[Lynnatbeach]

I think you have to be very flexible with children who have such serious pursuits, and realize that high school classes can be scheduled around them. As long as all the requirements are met *eventually*, that's all that matters, not that they were done in a specific year or timetable. I try to always keep in mind that the main reason I homeschool is for this very purpose - so that my children can find their path, not one preordained by some arbitrary schoolboard. Whatever the passion, whether ballet or baseball, I believe a child should have the latitude to explore it and see where it leads them. hth.[/quote]

This is such good advice. Thank you for sharing what works for your family.
In my area, you have to be 16 to enroll in community college.
Something to considerwhen we get there!

[Ruth in Canada]

It's a "super senior" year here, at least informally. High school used to be 5 years in Ontario, and both parents and schools are encouraging kids to take an extra year now if it would help to get the courses they need in. Things are a little different in that we don't have the same cc system. (CCs are for technical degrees, not for college prep. You go to the adult high school if you need a course before university.)