Advice Please! (long, sorry!)

Pre-College Issues Home Schooling and College
1

<p>I am looking for some advice. My older son, who has been home since 2nd grade, is a rising senior and has recently decided he wants to try the local high school. I am waiting for someone at the school to call me (guidance does not work summers) so I don’t even know if it is a possibility. I have heard of other’s entering in the middle of high school in this district, so I am assuming we could work it out on that end.</p>

<p>His reasons for wanting to go are pretty natural. He wants to feel part of the class of 2010. He feels he is missing the high school experience. He is convinced it would be a wonderful experience and it might very well be. He competes in his sport for this school, is on a year round club team, has a girlfriend, has friends, goes out, went to prom and homecoming, and goes to football games so is not stuck in the house. I’ve told him he has had the good parts of high school without the bad. He does not think I am the least bit funny. He has a brother a year behind him and they are very close and share some friends and also each have individual friendships. </p>

<p>I will admit that the past couple of years have not been the most fun at home. First, the material is just harder to make fun once you are in high school. No more M&M math, weekly field trips and all that other fun stuff from the younger years. Also, my brother became ill and died and my parents both had health problems so I know I was not at my best. Some days I wanted to get out of this house too!</p>

<p>While I am not opposed to his going to the school, I have multiple concerns and would appreciate any feedback. My irl friends are sick of hearing from me!</p>

<p>My main concern is academics, of course. He is a bright kid, has very good grades from me and on-line classes and an excellent ACT score. I know he could do whatever work they give him, but I worry about a transition period for subjects like foreign language and math. Can you take Spanish 3 in a different program and do well? I don’t think so. The way the school would do his transcript is give him an S for any homeschooled class and the only grades that would count towards his GPA would be classes there and from the on-line classes so one C could really ruin his GPA. </p>

<p>Another concern I have is time. He is an athlete being recruited by colleges so will likely be going on 5 recruiting trips in the fall. Also, his sport is a fall sport, and there will be competitions during the school day. Off the bat, I know he would miss 7 days of school the first semester. Even if the school was open to that, he would have to make up the busy work of those school days. This fall would also be when he would be doing all the college apps, essays and probably will take a couple more SAT2s. He would have to take an extra 1.5 credits of classes like “Life Management Skills” on top of his core curriculum as the school district requires them. He claims he can do it all and would not mind the extra busy work. He is not always self-motivated (being a typical 17 yo) and I can imagine the struggle to manage his time and get all these things done well. </p>

<p>Also, do you think admissions would be concerned about a change at the very end? Would having public school, homeschool and on-line transcripts send up some kind of red flag that we are maybe not so stable? Just trying to figure out what it would look like to an outsider.</p>

<p>My instinct tells me to keep him home. I don’t want him to mess up the opportunity that he has created because he wants to have fun. But I also recognize his feelings are real and he will be leaving home the following year and needs to learn how to make choices and live with them. Do I let him potentially mess things up or throw a stiff arm and make him stick it out at home? </p>

<p>I’ll admit a part of me is a little hurt that it might end this way. I had plans to work hard and finish the year early and spend the last couple of months he is home doing some fun things and building memories before he leaves for good. :sigh:</p>

<p>If you have read this far, thanks! Just typing it out has helped me see things more clearly but I would welcome anyone who has btdt (or not) and can offer some sage advice!</p>

2

<p>First off, does going to the high school HAVE to be the same thing as graduating from the high school? I mean, could he take some classes he’s interested in there, but not Life Management and all the other hoo-haa the school requires? Why do you have to get his homeschool grades transcribed as “S” – what I mean is, why get them transcribed at all? The only reason to do so is to fulfill graduation requirements, but why graduate from there?</p>

<p>My son did homeschool classes, high school classes, and classes from the local univ. When he applied to college I just made a “master transcript” that recorded everything. We sent in that, and also had the partial transcripts from the high school and local univ. sent as validation of that work. We did not ask the high school to accept any credits, and he did not graduate from there. He did compete in his sport for the high school (like your son), won two state titles for them, went to prom, competed on brain bowl, etc. What he did not do was don a cap and gown in June and cross a stage to shake hands with the principal.</p>

<p>Personally, I don’t see any harm in letting your son go to the high school next year if that’s what he wants, but if he were my son I’d discourage him from trying to make the square peg fit into the round hole at this stage. I think it will make a mess of what you’ve got in terms of his presentation of himself in his college applications. That said, if he’s being recruited to play and his choice of college is going to be primarily dictated by what college team he wants to play for, then it might not matter too much.</p>

<p>Remember, most recruited athletes apply early, so his grades from senior year will mostly be after-the-fact. I mean, he’ll have to keep them up sufficiently so he doesn’t get rescinded or anything, but his acceptance will be based on his homeschool work thus far, and on his test scores.</p>

<p>Wouldn’t you both be happier if he just went to the high and took classes that complete his college prep on his/your own terms? Even jumping through all the hoops to technically graduate from the college will be meaningless as far as college goes. He’ll already by accepted by somewhere long before that happens.</p>

<p>My son didn’t graduate, but he went to graduation to hang out with his friends, and he went to the senior all-night party with them. It was great fun for him, and he didn’t give a rat’s patootie about shaking hands with the prinicipal.</p>

3

<p>'rent,
Thanks for the response. That is what I suggested as well, but he is saying he wants full-time enrollment or none at all, which is ridiculous as half the senior class leaves after a couple of classes for work, dual enrollment, whatever. This has become a power struggle instead of us figuring out together what is best for him. </p>

<p>Did your son continue his sport in college? I keep hearing how hard fall semester is with finishing apps, visiting schools, maybe taking another shot at the SAT/ACT, etc. I am thinking we will be overwhelmed enough without throwing in dealing with high school on top of all that. Sigh.</p>

4

<p>I was homeschooled from birth through my freshman year, and then decided to try the local public school my sophomore year. I ended up loving the experience and graduated from there this year. The first few weeks were very rough, but i caught on quickly enough to have straight As. As far as balancing everything, I am a 3 sport varsity athlete who will be continuing sports in college. I am very glad I had the chance to learn to balance my course load with sports and other extra curriculars in high school, because I know it will help to ease the adjustment to college life.
Also, my high school experience made me appreciate what my mom did for me by homeschooling even more than I did already. I was very advanced in school and had a better background in academics than any of my peers. Many of them were jealous of my homeschooled background:)</p>

5

<p>Are there other homeschooled seniors in your area? When my kids were seniors in high school, I gathered them together and planned a year of fun activities just for them. This helped to make their senior year memorable. So there were several parties, short trips, a dinner cruise (instead of a prom), yearbook and a graduation ceremony for them.</p>

6

<br>

<br>

<p>Yes, my son has continued his sport in college.<br>
I didn’t think the fall of senior year was any harder than the spring of junior year – they were both filled with college visit trips, meetings with coaches, advanced classes, tests, tests, tests… all on top of 4 hours a day at practice and at least one weekend a month out-of-town for competitions. My son applied early, had his acceptance by mid-Dec. and things mellowed out considerably at that point. He enjoyed his hybrid year of homeschooling, high school classes, classes at the local univ. (he liked those the best). And he also loved the freedom he had during his “high school” years to take classes wherever he found the ones he wanted to take, or to study something on his own. In fact, one of his application essays was about making his way through all those options on his own terms. It was a terrific little essay, and funny too. Very unique.</p>

<p>But although we didn’t find the fall of senior year overwhelming, my son was not trying to jump through the hoops he would have had to in order to graduate from that high school. He could take what he wanted and leave the rest. He ended up taking 3 classes at the high school that year; physics, AP comp, and Spanish. At the local univ. he took a variety classes in philosophy and political science. He loved those classes – they hooked him in a real significant way, unlike the high school classes which were more or less just academic housekeeping to fill out his transcript.</p>

<p>And he continued with literature at home on his own. Oh yeah, he did calculus also at the local univ. for a couple quarters.</p>

<p>Anyway, if your son really wants to do the full-tilt high school thing, and you’ve given him a heads up on the potential problems, then I guess you can’t refuse to let him. It’s what he wants to do, and he’s nearly an independent young adult. One thing you might want to talk out beforehand is what goes first if it’s all just too much for him to do and still keep his grades up. Would it be some of the extraneous high school classes like Life Management, etc, and let go of the idea of graduating from the high school? Would it be time spent on his sport? Would it be social time with his friends? Would it be prepping for and taking any more SAT tests? Anyway, you two should come to some agreement about that before there is a problem and the stress makes that decision making harder and more contentious.</p>

7

<p>Kate in FL, one more thing…</p>

<p>If I was you I would still go ahead and have your son apply to colleges as a homeschooler. I mean, using the Homeschool Supplement to the Common App, or whatever the colleges’ procedures are for homeschooled students. Since your son is going to have done next to nothing at the high school at the time he’s applying to colleges, you should go ahead and make up a homeschool transcript with his homeschool grades, and, sure, have the high school send an official transcript of classes that he’s taken/taking there, but otherwise have the high school involved as little as possible in the application process. For one thing, if he applies as a homeschooler to a Common App college, you will write the counselor evaluation. This would be so much better than having an over-worked high school counselor write it who doesn’t know him, doesn’t know what he’s been doing for the past 3+ years academically, and may be clueless or biased about homeschooling.</p>

<p>He may have a high school teacher who’s known him for awhile who could write a letter of recommendation, but perhaps think of someone outside the school to write the other.</p>

<p>I mean if your son wants to be a “regular” high school student next year for personal reasons, that’s fine, but at this late stage I wouldn’t really give that much focus in regards to his college apps. Like I said before, if he ends up applying early as many athletes do, what he does at the high school next year will be almost irrelavent. Even if he doesn’t apply early, you don’t want his academic record to be summed up by a bunch of "S"s and merely one semester of grades from the high school.</p>

8

<p>Kate,</p>

<p>First, I understand your feeling of not wanting him to go back to public school this late in the game. It will make college applications trickier, especially since if you have to rely on the public school for counselor letters and the transcript.</p>

<p>That said, it would be possible to make this switch in our district, but the penalties would include meeting all of the state’s graduation requirements for coursework, accepting a transcript with S’s, and of course…taking and passing the FCAT. Is he applying to Florida schools? Thinking of Bright Futures? If so, check carefully to make sure he will still qualify for the BF scholarship. There may be requirements related to how long he’s been enrolled in a school. You can call the BF people directly and get answers to these questions. </p>

<p>Like parent of 02, I think that if he does this, applying as a homeschooler would be a great idea IF he is allowed to do so. It depends on where he wants to apply to college. If he’s interested in Florida’s public universities with Bright Futures in mind, ask the guidance counselor who should be very familiar with these applications, if this is an option. Better yet, if it’s Florida universities he’s interested in, why not call their admissions and ask them directly if they will accept his application as a homeschooler if he is no longer registered with his county and graduates from a public school. As 'rent of 02 said, being able to create the guidance counselor letter, master transcript, and course descriptions would best highlight your son’s accomplishments.</p>

<p>Be aware that UF has become pretty persnickety about applications from non-traditional students. With all of his S grades, state universities will likely want verification of his coursework through SAT II scores. Has he taken many courses through FLVS? If so, his grades and credit should transfer directly to the public high school transcript. If he will attend public school, why not sign him up now (while you’re still the guidance counselor) for Life Management Skills using FLVS? It is not a difficult course, nor time consuming, and using FLVS is a perfectly legit way to meet the state requirement. </p>

<p>Good luck with the decisions!</p>