<p>Wow thanks for all these replies and suggestions! I need all the help I can get:)
I love homeschooling, though it does present some difficulties. I'm going to send in a portfolio type transcript as well, since I don't get grades. I'm taking cc courses so I will have those grades, and some teachers to give recommendations.
Giannievve, you had a lot of questions so I'll try to answer them...
I kinda miss my friends from the highschool. I was actually new to that highschool in 9th grade, and left half way through 10th grade (last year), so I didn't know anyone THAT well. I wasn't great friends with any of them. I still see them a few times a year, and spend a lot of time with my friends from my old school, where I went from K-8th grades, and my friends from church.
As far as EC's, I do a lot of things during the day when everyone else is in school. I do a lot of horseback riding, babysitting, some community service (though I need to do more), I have a lot of hobbies. I'm not in any clubs, though.
Procrastination and fear of falling behind are big issues for me. There are some subjects I love (english, history, foreign language) which I have no trouble studying, and others, like math and science, that I don't always want to do. There are up and down periods, usually during the up periods I make up for what I've fallen behind in. Also, taking a CC class, I get the long December-January winter break, so I will use that to catch up on my work. I am sometimes worried that I'm falling behind in some subjects, but I know that I am learning a lot, and I just need to keep pushing myself. Eventually at crunch time I get done what I need to get done. It's hard to keep up sometimes, though, I won't pretend its not.
My CC course is at 8 AM so I don't get to sleep in three days a week, and on tuesdays and thursdays when I don't have class, I babysit in the morning, so I don't get to sleep in. Last year I did sleep in, and wasted a lot of time, so I purposely made my class early in the morning. I have my CC counselor, and the counselor from my old highschool kindly offered to keep helping me, though she didn't have to.
I feel pretty confident that I will do well applying to college. I may not have grades but I can demonstrate that I am a more independent, serious and motivated student than most traditional high schoolers, and I can handle college level work and working on my own without guidance and hand holding. I really want to go to Oxford University in England, that's my goal, and I'm not wavering. You just need to be confident that you are capable of what it takes, and do the work, and getting into top tier colleges is completely possible.
Good luck to all of you!</p>
<p>Nice plans meliora, how many CC classes are you taking? Your situation of leaving and going to CC sounds a bit similar to mine only I left after I finished 10th grade.</p>
<p>Hey nosx, for my first semester I only took one CC course, American History. Next semester I'm taking two (the second half of the History course and a College Composition class). Next year I'll be taking 3 classes each semester, probably Early British Lit, Physics, a Public Speaking class, an introductory philosophy, ethics, or logic class, introductory psychology, and either environmental science or introductory political science/ comparitive politics. How many classes are you taking?
Did your parents take you out of school? How do you like homeschooling so far? How do you tell if you're keeping up with other students, do you worry about that at all? I get a little stressed, worrying about whether I'm keeping up in some subjects. One thing I liked about starting homeschooling was going at my own pace, but I've found that for math and science, my pace is getting slower and slower! lol
~Emily</p>
<p>Im taking 5 CC courses now and will take 5 next semester. My parents left the choice up to me, but I have been in and out of French Schools, so I know how I compare with the french kids which is really good. So I know im not lacking.</p>
<p>wow, 5 courses each semester! That has to be REALLY hard... I was wondering if maybe I should take a few more, but I'm worried about getting in over my head, plus I already have some curriculum stuff for this year.
Actually, though, the CC class I'm taking right now is REALLY easy... if all classes were this easy, I could definitely handle 5 classes. But I doubt they're all this easy, unfortunately!
Maybe I'll try 4 each semester next year. I'm already signed up for two next semester, I don't think I'll do any more next semester, besides I don't know how I'd pay for it. I have to help pay for them.
Do you live in France? That's so cool, you must be fluent, I wish I knew another language that well. Good luck with all your studies!
~Emily</p>
<p>i'm just wondering, what was it that made all of you leave high school?</p>
<p>hey tennisdude, there were a lot of reasons why I left. I found out about homeschooling becuase I have several homeschooled friends, and they were always so enthusiastic about it. I read up on it and decided I really wanted to try it for myself.
I came to see all the problems in the public school system, actually in the school system in general, public, private, anything. Once I realized the problems, I just couldn't disregard them, and couldn't stay there. First off, the INSANE amount of time wasted in schools: moving from class to class, waiting for disruptive kids to quiet down, waiting while attendance is taken, etc. In a class of 15 kids, with classes a little over 30 minutes each (my highschool didn't have block scheduling)... think about this: a good teacher will only take about half the class talking. That's rare. Most teachers take up well over half the class talking, while the students just sit there. In a 30 minute class with fifteen kids, if a good teacher only spoke for 15 minutes and left the rest for discussion, the students still only get one minute each. In a whole day, with maybe 7 or 8 classes, students get maybe 7 or 8 minutes to speak up. And of course, that's not realistic, becuase usually only a few students do all the talking, and most teachers don't leave room for discussion.
As I was dealing with these ideas while I was still in school, I started watching the clock. In one of my Spanish classes, we spent 5 out of the 37 class minutes talking about spanish. The rest of the time was spent bored out of my mind while the teacher tried to quiet down some extremely rude kids. About one hour of every day was spent walking between classes. I could have been at home, learning a ton, in that hour and a half wasted.
Schools force students to sit perfectly still and quiet for hours at a time. That's not at all natural. It's not surprising that in these circumstances there is a lot of need for discipline.
Schools care less about learning than they do about keeping the peace and remaining dominant. The entire approach to learning in schools is absurd. Kids just won't retain knowledge about something they aren't interested in. You can't force feed learning. Most schools today teach the kids all the facts in all the different subjects. By highschool, the students have crackedthe code. They hate learning, but they'll learn just enough to get through an exam. After that, the knowledge is quickly forgotten. In the meantime, they haven't really learned how to learn, they've been assigned problems and textbook chapters, been given the work to do, but they don't know how to find the information on their own, make it relevent, make it applicable, make it interesting. They'll leave highschool with barely a scrap of knowledge and no idea how to get that knowledge back without a teacher and textbook.
The idea that you can't learn on your own is completely unfounded. Many of the greatest minds in history were self-taught. Abe Lincoln (I'm studying him right now so his name pops out in my mind), many of America's founding fathers, the great classical thinkers. Up until the 20th century the U.S. was being run by a bunch of dropouts -- less than one percent went to college, the vast majority didn't even go to highschool. But they still made America the superpower it is today. Schools have given kids the false idea that learning can only happen there. They want people to believe that, but its just not true. With the right resources and determination, it is completely possible to learn without textbooks, teachers or grades, and still be a successful and well-rounded person.
Ok, I've lectured enough. I'm very serious about this subject, so I could go on and on. I really want to improve the public schools, I want to be a teacher eventually. I'm not giving up on the school system. But for myself, I'm doing what I think is best for me, and teaching myself as best as I can. Even if I don't learn all the facts the kids in school are 'learning' (and I do keep up with them pretty well), I'm learning how to learn on my own and find the information without someone holding my hand, which is the most important thing anyone can learn. That right there is worth more than 4 years in highschool.
~Emily</p>
<p>there's definitely more freedom through unschooling</p>
<p>Hey, I'm a homeschooled senior. I just got into NYU. I stuck with a fairly traditional course list, but did all of the teaching myself, with exception of 3 college courses and Chemistry (we have a group of homeschoolers who do chemistry together, so we can have enough lab equipment). Me and my dad have lunch together once a week where we talk about what I've been doing and plan what I'm going to do next. This is my fifth year, and it's worked quite well for me. If you guys have any questions, let me know.</p>
<p>wakenda what did u do about sending grades to NYU?</p>
<p>I wrote my own transcript, and sent course descriptions explaining course content and grading criteria.</p>
<p>oh ok so you wrote what courses you took and their corresponding grades, by any chance have you taken any cc courses, or no?</p>
<p>I knid of took a couple classes at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I knew the profs and they let me take 'em. But UW had no record of me taking them. I wrote in my descriptions that they were at UW, but didn't have UW send them anything. Yeah, I just wrote it myself. It was one page, just grades and classes, and another page explaining what was taught and how it was graded.</p>