OMG! What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?!?!?

I’m not sure when exactly the reality sank in that we have FOUR SHORT YEARS to cram Dalton full of every single life-preparatory skill he needs before we set him free. I think it was a few months ago when I realized that the next presidential election will be one he votes in and this was the last chance I have as a Mom to fully impart political knowledge on my child with real life examples.

You might think I’m getting ahead of myself. Dalton turned 13 last fall. This fall he’ll start 9th grade here at Duong Academy (aka Homeschool).  Highschool. gulp. I’ve never been particularily intimidated by the learning portion of home education. So it isn’t that. Its the rest.

I’ve mentioned that recently Dalton’s talked about looking into a career in either paleontology or biomedical engineering. This is the first time he’s even uttered a goal other than Hobo. It gave me a little chill. It also brought home that I am fully responsible for getting him ready to pursue such careers. It is All.On.Me.

When I started looking into colleges and reading about their various homeschool acceptance policies, I started to really freak out. I live in a very homeschool-friendly state that, by law, must accept my child’s academic career based basically on my word. But the really GOOD schools are competitive and require more from everyone, not just homeschoolers. And because some schools base their acceptance criteria on class rank - something obviously lacking in a homeschool portfolio - they look for other things from homeschoolers to approximate a rank. Things like honors, awards, acheivements, etc. Remember how I said I could handle the academic stuff but not the rest? That’s what I meant. Honors? Awards? Acheivements? Portfolio? Selling my Child to the Top Bidder? I want to cry.

So I started researching opportunities for Dalton, specifically, to get more involved in his areas of interest. I found a terrific summer internship program at a zoo nearby but….drumroll….we missed the deadline. Seriously its a four year staged program and we missed the deadline for year 1. We’ll do it next summer, but honestly the reality that we should be actively working NOW sort of smacked me in the face.

So now I’m sort of fully emerged in the learning curve that I hadn’t really thought I’d have to think about for a few more years: portfolios, dual credits, transferring and of course the costs associated. Since every year, now, for the next four years will be looked at by colleges, we have to really focus on keeping good records. I’m looking into umbrella programs, charter homeschools, the UT (virtual) highschool and other options as possibilities.  I’m also hyperventilating about those enrichment academics that I believe are so important but I have never quite gotten around to making an outside priority: a foreign language and musical instrument. So we’ll have to really put our heads together. Money is, of course, an issue. We don’t have unlimited funds for homeschooling, outside classes, college courses, music lessons, a foreign language tutor, etc. So we’ll have to get creative.

I wish I could say I have it all planned out but I so do not! I think that we’ll likely use a combination of curriculum we use now that we know works along with some virtual credit or non-credit courses through UT for the next two years and then start working on dual credit classes in 11th grade. That way, when he graduates, he’ll have knocked out two years of college - the really mundane, fundamental classes already. But this is all subject to change at a moment’s notice!

Most of all, I’m trying to remind myself (over and over and over until it sinks in) that this is not a death sentence, this does not mean sitting behind books for most of our days for the next four years. We can - and will - still live life because that’s where the REAL learning happens and honestly if colleges are looking at candidates, do they really want the one who just read a lot about a subject or the one who really went out and lived it? I know which I’d want! So we’ll find a way to do the most amount of learning in the least amount of “boring” desk time. Dalton’s a really fast learner. We’ll figure it out.

So when I have a better, firmer grasp on the Four Year Plan, I’ll blog it or post it in the homeschool section here on my blog. First step will be to crack open Grace LLewellyn’s Teenage Liberation Handbook to reground myself in the educational philosophy I believe in most. Then I’ll be reading the rest of her books and making Dalton read them, too. We’ll call it summer reading.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 1:22 pm and is filed under House Keeping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.