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Homeschooling high school seems like a long list of to-dos. You spend hours each day chugging away at math, English, social studies, science, foreign languages, fine arts, and electives. You've got to earn those credits for graduation while also thinking towards future plans of college, vocational training, or military service. There’s little time left for anything else!

Once you reach the high school stage, most parents have abandoned the four-day homeschool week in an effort to cram in all the necessary academics. After all, when kids were little the school day was short. Seriously, how long does it take to run through math and language arts with a first grader?

Take the mystery and fear out of homeschooling high school by understanding the lingo. Here are a few acronyms and some jargon that you need to understand when you start educating your high school freshman at home.

CLEP – College Level Examination Program

Instead of attending college, a teen studies independently at home. After thoroughly preparing for a course, he takes a multiple-choice exam (called a CLEP test) at a local college or testing center. If he passes the exam, he receives college credit for the course just as if he had attended college. Each college handles CLEP credits differently. Inquire with the particular institution in question if you want the credits to count for college.

Throw out the four-year high school plan! Abandoning that popular notion is the first step to pondering the possibilities of homeschooling high school.

How to Swim Against the Current

For example, some teens are ready by eighth grade or earlier to tackle high school level courses. Allowing your teen to cover academic subjects they excel at like science or math or electives they have a passion for like photography or web design gives them ample time to master them. Look at these 4 benefits of allowing a teen to cover high school level subjects earlier than high school.

Are you finding that the school days keep getting away from you and you're not getting everything done that you planned? Do you struggle to finish all of the lessons you prepared for the day?

If you're the mom of kids in 6th grade or above, let me ask you an important question. Have you included your students in the planning and execution of the school agenda? If not, that may be part of the problem.

Once kids are in middle school, they should start the process of taking ownership of their education, and part of that includes organizing their time. These are the perfect years to teach children about scheduling and time management, skills they will need for the rest of their lives.

Have you ever noticed how the field narrows when you move from homeschooling the elementary years on up to homeschooling high school? As children transform into tweens and teens, families tend to enroll them into a traditional school. But why? There are so many great reasons to homeschool high school!

I know that when the topic of homeschooling high school comes up in conversation,  many people can only come up with reasons why I shouldn’t homeschool high school:

What about prom?
Don’t they want to play sports?
But they won’t have a graduation!

Calling me in a near panic from his class, my recent homeschool graduate was preparing for his last test in a college business course. Regardless of previous grades, the test was an immediate pass or fail for the entire course. The instructor told the students they would be required to close their laptops, take brief notes, and listen the old-fashioned way. I reminded my son that he had been learning and listening the old-fashioned way since I first taught him how to read. After a few more reassuring words, he was ready for the review and test. Hours went by until I heard back from him.

Being a wall for your homeschooled teen doesn’t stop when he formally finishes high school, but it begins well before he is a teenager. However, the teen years are the most crucial because they are when a teen is learning independence. Resenting limits while at the same time needing them can make for explosive situations in your home.

We are living in unprecedented times, about halfway through a year that will likely have its own chapter in future history books. Everything has been disrupted, from meat production and toilet paper availability to gas prices. Images we never thought we’d see have become daily observations. Even those living the most flexible lifestyles have found themselves out of sorts, out of routine, out of control, and that includes homeschoolers.

At first, when the nation’s public schooled children were sent home to learn, we homeschoolers felt like champions. We offered our help, our wisdom, and our experience. We knew this lifestyle and felt prepared to face whatever was to come because we’d been home all along. We were fine.

When you think homeschool learning spaces, the first thing that typically comes to mind is a nature center or a reading nook, or perhaps even an art center. But what about kids’ electronic devices? How do devices such as tablets and computers fit into your plan for a homeschool room?

Our homeschool is not exclusively digital. We enjoy learning through books, science experiments, and hands-on projects. But we still have several devices for our kids to use as part of their home education. Unless I stay on top of the device organization, those cords get tangled and tripped over. 

Have you ever mentioned poetry and heard a groan? Every single time I told my students we’d be starting a poetry unit, the room filled with a chorus of nos. My students, like many people, found poetry boring and hard to understand. Poetry was a language they believed they did not speak.

I understood exactly where they were coming from. Until I took a teaching writing class in college, I stayed as far away from poetry as I could. What changed? Thanks to writing teachers, mentors, and poets, I learned how to approach poetry with curiosity instead of the idea that I needed to find a hidden meaning. I learned there are lots of ways to read and interpret poetry, and no one but the poet knows its exact meaning.

You might not be sure about homeschooling, not to mention child-led learning. I know that I had a skeptical reaction initially. As someone who came from a public school education, it only seemed natural that the teacher was the boss and that learning had to happen in the classroom. 

But when it came to educating my own children, I quickly realized that this type of model did not work for us. So after homeschooling my kids for more than two years, I can confidently say that homeschooling is the best because it allows for genuine child-led learning.