Starting to Homeschool in High School

At Time4Learning, we hear many “accidental homeschooler” stories. Accidental homeschooler is a term that we coined to refer to the families who are starting to homeschool not out of a philosophical or life style choice but as result of a process of elimination in that they’ve tried traditional schools and they have not worked out. Mostly, people seem to start homeschooling in elementary school but there are a lot who start later on.

Maryland Homeschool High School Story

R (son) went to a public high school in Maryland. He was not very academically oriented and was totally focused on his sport (at which he was Olympic calliber) which he did outside of the school.

In the first half of tenth grade, his grades slipped from Bs to Cs, he seemed unhappy, and there were some discussions about switching to a private school. Near the end of the first semester, on a Friday, there was some incidents which confirmed the parents' suspicions that he was involved with drugs, perhaps dealing. There was a confusing set of phone calls and activity on Friday (never fully understood) which also included a visit from the local police.

By Sunday night, the parents had made a decision to not send him back to school. They decided to start homeschooling him on Monday and would try to find a decent alternative school. They told R on Sunday night and he did not complain.

Monday morning, they took him to the office (he is an optician, she is the office manager). The father started to establish a program. They took him to the office daily and his father put together his educational program.

For math, he basically got the school text book and teacher guide (getting the teacher guide was a major problem, he finally got it by a teacher just handing it to him since he couldn't seem to buy it anywhere) and starting work R through it.

In language arts, after having some discussions with R, his Dad decided that the major goal was to get his son to read. It seemed that he had never really read a book. He picked King Rat by James Clavell because it was the type of book that would appeal to his son, was meaty and so would provide a sense of accomplishment, and he remembered it as a gripping story from page one.

The first week did not go well on this score. R was surley and while he spent the requisite one hour a day on it, he seemed to have covered less than half a dozen pages by the end of the week. Week 2, R started reading and over a few weeks, devoured the book. They talked about what to read next and R asked if Clavell had written anything else. This opened the floodgates.

On science and social studies, they discussed what courses to do when and basically followed the public school text books.

There was no socializing or other homeschool activities, there was just a daily focus on academics. In Maryland, there are meetings with public educators mandated to get reviewed and advised. Some meetings were very helpful, some were a waste of time, in one case, the reviewer was hostile. Overall, they had minimal impact or input.

They did look for schools for a few months but did not really pursue it. Over three years, he covered a good high school curriculum and graduated. He continued his very active athletic career during this period (he was a world class paddler).

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I found this a very interesting story. It shows how parents need to be responsive to their child's needs. It shows how parents need to ferret out the problems that their kids are having and help with leading them out of it. In particular, I think it is typical of a "silent portion" of the homeschool community, those that are approaching homeschooling as "problem-solving" , not dogmatically or philosophically.