One of the questions we are asked most often is, “How do you homeschool high school?” In this podcast, Heather sits down with our homeschool’s first graduate, Mary Hannah, to talk high school, purpose, and tailoring an educational experience that allows your child to pursue their calling in life.
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Books mentioned in this podcast:
Since our first unsure steps as homeschoolers, we’ve understood that meat was hung on the bones of education by way of experience.
Early classroom educators understand this, too; it’s why our kindergarten memories center on hatching chicks and emerging butterflies, on paper cups of dirt sprinkled with grass seed, and trips to the farm to watch the sheep lose their fleece. In the best schools, these memories are still made. But even in those schools that fit the definition of “best” by society’s standards, hands-on learning, field trips, and other opportunities to learn outside of a textbook dwindle as students inch nearer graduation. Kids whose grasp of the politics of abolition might be enriched by standing inside the recreation of a slave’s cabin are never given the chance; it’s enough to read the dates, store them in short-term memory, and regurgitate them on a test that might bear the fruit of a college acceptance letter.
Most homeschoolers lament the rote, mechanical learning offered in most educational institutions. We see the shortsightedness, we feel the disconnect, and we vow to do it differently. And we do.
We make a lifestyle of learning important. We buy electricity kits and raise tadpoles. We go to art galleries and visit with a farrier to see horses shoed. We prioritize our educational spending, setting aside funds for museums and aquariums and zoos.
If you’re like us and living on a budget, maybe you even rotate, getting one big ticket membership each year, and visiting that spot so often that by the end of twelve months your kids can tell you exactly how much growth the coral reef in the back tank experienced. (True story.)
But then, high school looms.
And those tests …
And suddenly, maybe a visual cataloging of the snakes in the reptile house at the zoo isn’t as important as learning to fill out a lab report. Or maybe all those times you blew off math in favor of another field trip to see the hardships of pioneer life up close really won’t pay off on the SAT. Plus, there are all those pre-programmed teams and groups and extra-curriculars that are going to score major points with admissions offices. And ohmygoodness, I do not have time to take you to see a staging of Lés Mis! You have to do 10 more pages in that analogies book before Saturday!
Breathe, Momma.
You know now the reality of the saying “the days are long but the years are short.” Your time homeschooling any one child is limited, even if your season of teaching your own covers 30 years or more. Achieve the goals God has called you to, yes. But don’t forget that going, doing, seeing, being has a richness — and a value— all its own.
You will not regret extending your lifestyle of learning into the teen years. You will not regret the discussions that arise from even the most tired and trite of outings. (Don’t believe me? Take your high schooler to a fire station.) You will not regret journeying as a family, asking questions, and learning together.
You will not regret it. But you will remember it.
This post first appeared on To Sow a Seed.
