I don’t know you or your children. My daughter and son went to public high school because I did not feel over ten years ago that I could support their learning in advanced science and math. However, both finished college, one is a social worker and one is a science teacher. I loved, when I wasn’t panicked, working with them.

I am a high school and college teacher who emphasizes learning. Learning is an art that I believe students must master to be successful in school and the world. Learning takes certain attitudes and skills. In addition to content, passing the attitudes and skills on to students that will lead to learning is of the greatest value.

Do you have those attitudes and skills so that you can pass them on to your children?

Bye-

OK, seriously, last Tuesday I hosted our area’s support group’s mother’s fellowship night at my house (and the house is still clean, who hoo!) getting ready derailed our kitchen table homeschool time, but I was hoping the experienced mothers would give me the golden key of how to pull of logic stage logistics: we are running all over creation, running out of time, and I do not feel like one of those ladies in a magazine.

Mostly other ladies with kids hitting the middle school grind showed up hoping the same thing – so we commiserated, vowed to be inspired and work harder, exchanged laughs, curricula ideas and recipes. But no high school homeschool veterans showed up with golden keys.

Is the golden key to logic stage logistics staying home from support meetings and grinding away at kitchen table homeschool?

Ugh I hope not. Christine

I am a 2nd year hs’er with a 4th and a 1st grader. Despite their youth and my relatively recent entry into homeschooling, I, too, find myself at a loss when it comes to finding information about the later grades. I concur with a previous poster ~ Deo gratias for the Well-Trained Mind and its Logic and Rhetoric Stage sections.

There are many wonderful (and not so wonderful) resources out there for the younger years but I tend to be a big-picture girl; I want to relate what I am doing now with what will come later. But, no— “get your child a mentor/tutor” or “enroll her in the local community college” isn’t enough for me. And I am already overwhelmed with the Great Books list (especially since I got through my 4 years of Catholic high school with my friend Cliff, who proved I needn’t even open the real books to pass the exams!).

Looking forward to your perspective as you pen here on this and various other hs’ing related topics. Your voice is valued.

PS JANICE: I second the notion that you should publish a blog. I’d read it!

While some parents do think long and hard before venturing into homeschooling, others dabble in homeschooling for a few years only to find after a while that homeschooling is indeed work, unpaid work, and requires an immense amount of dedication and self-education on the part of the parent who takes on the role as parent/teacher.

I have taken two kids through 7th & 8th grade and watched them flounder in public high school. The biggest mistake I made was finding what worked for them at home, retooling an assignment to their liking, and ensuring they learned. I failed to train them to buck up and just do the work without asking too many questions. I allowed them to question authority and seek the truth. I might have come close to teaching them how to learn, but I failed miserably when it came to teaching them how to “do” school. The four years they spent in high school never capitalized on what they learned at home. They both gave up; they both stopped reading and learning; they both developed contempt for authority. Ouch! Now I am looking at middle school again with the idea of continuing through high school, but the guides are few. I am looking at the mountain of high school knowing that I will need to redefine my educational agenda—what are we doing and why? What is the end game and how do we get there? Homeschooling is not for the faint-of-heart. I actively discourage it for those who ask and appear to just be window shopping the idea.

I look forward to future blogs!
Cheers,
Wildiris

Two at one time…ack!

Your brother had a wonderful idea – I really appreciate this blog. I live in Pasadena, CA and am a 36 yr old Biola/Talbot grad who used to read your occasional articles in Christianity Today. Years ago, I joined a group of women who used your Well-Educated Mind as a guide for novels. When I became interested in homeschooling, your W-T Mind was a natural fit, and I am now in my 4th year of educating my kids. I am thankful for you and find this forum especially helpful; although it is fun to read your other blog, I am more interested in your views as they relate specifically to homeschooling.

I have not finished reading your W-T Mind 3rd Ed., and perhaps you covered it there, but I would be interested in your take on homeschooling charter schools. In our co-op, there is much debate and discussion over it, and I assume it is an issue in states besides California.

Thank you for your time, and again, for this forum.

Perhaps this is a regional issue? I still usually get “Is it legal?” when I say we homeschool, followed by “What about friends?” and “Can they still go to college?”. I have short answers worked out: yes, gymnastics every afternoon, yes. Then they usually get defensive and say I must be really smart and patient. I have easy answers for that, too: community college and only as patient as the least patient ps teacher. Sometimes it seems like they don’t like their children enough to want to spend all day with them or they don’t want to give up their job because of the luxuries it brings and I think it is sad that they don’t want to homeschool. Sometimes they would like to but know their own limitations or have no time because of other more pressing obligations (like physical needs) and we can comiserate. I only occasionally run into someone knowledgable. I’m always wildly curious about how they are managing all the things I struggle with, but they never seem to be willing to offer any details whatsoever if they are past elementary school. Maybe you are right about the lack of honesty.

I agree that things change when your children get to middle and high school, and with the exception of TWTM, homeschooling books tend to hastily mention school-at-home options or unworkable-for-us ones like Apologia science and then abruptly end. It is most unsatisfactory. Thank goodness for TWTM boards. And thank goodness for our community college.

I agree that it is very hard to let go of the idea that children are little sponges who soak up everything they need to know from everyday life. In my experience, that works well for the first two years of their life and then you need help because they want to know why God invented death and exactly how big their wings would have to be if they wanted to fly and how much fuel it takes to get to the moon in a rocket. And from there it is an awfully short jump to the workings of particle accelerators. Unschooling is way too much work for the parent because they aren’t allowed to teach anything in a methodical or unfun way. I’ve always been grateful that mine had at least kindergarten at public school, so that when they came home, they had some idea of education being time spent sitting reading and writing. I set school hours from the beginning and we stuck to them. It was to keep me from feeling guilty at first, but in the end, it turned out to be a good way to keep us from having arguements over whether they really had to do school right now.

But still, even in high school, I want to take advantage of homeschooling. Part of the reason we are homeschooling is to spare our children the misery of sitting through school and learning everything school fashion. With my middle one, who just went to college, I managed to find a balance between textbook academics and a more unschooling way of learning. Or rather, he found a way himself, by going off peacewalking for part of the year. Now we are trying to find a similar balance for our youngest.

The guidance councilor part is horrible. It has taken so, so, so much time on my part. We have a good system worked out, one that we should be able to apply to our youngest as well, but it took tons of time for me to figure it all out. Community college classes are the key for us. We don’t do grades, I’m unwilling to put tons of time into testing, and the courses aren’t date-able, so colleges have precious little to judge us on, other than those CC classes. It is all pretty scary.

One thing that irks me is that homeschoolers keep saying that public school is inefficient and homeschooling takes less time. Everything takes us forever and I am dead sure the public school is more efficient and often more effective than I am. Academically, we may not be doing as well as our very excellent public school, but I think education-wise, we are. And just because the public school does a good job teaching something doesn’t mean my poor children manage to learn it. We figured that out the hard way.

Anyway, I’ll be waving from the car, a place in which I spend hours every day. If I notice you. Usually, I’m trying to visualize algebra problems to figure out where my son went wrong.

I was very enthusiastic about homeschooling high school last spring, as I wrapped up and summarized what my middle one had accomplished. Now I’m back to the beginning of 9th grade with my youngest and find I’m back to feeling panicky, lost, and ambivalent. I’d dig out one of my finishing-off posts for you, but another unspoken disadvantage of homeschooling high school is the terrible loss when the high schooler goes off to college. I’m not sure I can bear to look. Do a search for Nan in Mass and sea chanties on the WTM board and you might find it.

-Nan