Educating Locally. Learning Communally. Living Freely.

High School Credits - How Do They Work?

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Thursday, September 25, 2014

  High school is the most challenging time to homeschool.  In the younger grades it is fairly easy to homeschool by simply following the laws for the state (Wondering what these are?  Look on your PHEA acceptance letter).  In high school parents have the additional challenge of meeting the requirements for graduation.
  South Carolina does not require students to pass an exit exam in order to graduation.  A student simply needs twenty-four credits.  A credit is equal to 150 hours of study in a subject.  So 150 hours spent studying Biology is one credit.  Students can also earn half credits in a subject (75 hours of study).  Counting every minute spent studying is not necessary - generally if a student finishes the book he earns one credit.
  Credits are given in five main subject areas: Math, English, Science, Social Studies and Foreign Languages.  Additionally student may earn credits for other areas of study as electives (Home Ec, Music, Art, etc..).  South Carolina has guidelines for how many credits a student should have in each subject, particularly if the student plans to attend college.  You can see a chart with the guidelines on our website.
  In our recent discussion of Saxon Math, we pointed out that the older Saxon textbooks are not rigorous enough to count as an honors credit.  South Carolina recognizes three levels of difficulty in high school level courses.  College Prep (CP) classes are the base level courses.  Honors are a step above that and must be shown to require a higher level of difficulty that College Prep (You can figure out if a course is honors by comparing your book to the state guidelines.  If the course follows the guidelines it is CP; if it requires more work then it is Honors).
  The last level is Dual Credit (DC) or Advanced Placement (AP).  These courses are college level courses taken during high school.  Dual Credit courses are taken at a college or university.  Advanced Placement courses are taught on a college level by an AP certified instructor, and a standardized exam is given at the end of the course.
  Because they are more difficult, Honors, Dual Credit and AP courses are weighted differently when we calculate the Grade Point Average (GPA).  The GPA is used to tell colleges at a glance how well your student did during high school.  The GPA is used by many college admissions offices as a basis for admission as well as being a deciding factor in many scholarships.  I won't go into a detailed discussion of GPA's here, but if you'd like more information, you can find it here.
  Homeschooling high school, and particularly making sure you understand and fulfill the graduation requirements can be challenging.  Working with families of high schoolers is a large part of what we do in the PHEA office.  If you have any questions please let us know.  And be sure to check out the high school section of our website - it has a lot of great information!
 
 

Teaching Discernment

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Friday, September 12, 2014

  We often chuckle over the message board in front of the school down the street.  Every week one side proclaims the "Life Skill of the Week" apparently in an attempt to inform parents which particular character trait they will be instilling in the school's students that week.  My favorite week is "Sense of Humor Week".  How do you even teach a skill like that?
  For our own family, I have always thought that character development (life skills, call it what you like) were an integral part of the way we raise and discipline our kids.  We don't have a class during school for responsibility, we give our children responsibilities they can handle and continue to raise the bar as they mature.  Honesty is not a skill; it is expected and dishonesty is punished. 
  Still, there are a few character traits that our kids need to develop that deserve some thought on our part, and a bit of effort instilling them in our children.  Discernment is one of those.
  Simply put discernment is the ability to assess information and make a value judgement:  Is something right or wrong?  Good or bad?  Profitable or unprofitable?  Or does it matter either way?
  But discernment goes beyond that; a discerning person knows why something is right or wrong, good or bad.  He also needs to understand the implications of belief systems that oppose his own.  It is all fine and well to argue for creation against evolution, but we do we realize that evolution sets up a system of thought with far reaching consequences?  The idea that man is a highly specialized animal rather than an image-bearer of an Almighty God filters into many areas of life from how and why we educate to how criminals are punished.
  We live in a world full of choices and at a time when we are pushed from every side to make choices (or to tolerate the choices of others) which go against everything we have been taught.  From the old hobby horse of evolution to gay marriage to legalized marijuana to global warming, our children will be faced with a vast array of issues in which they must show discernment both in their own choices and how they deal with the choices of others.  We need to make sure that we are equipping our children to think about these issues and make good decisions.
  We have a lot of options when it comes to the curriculum we choose for our students.  Gone are the early days of homeschooling when parents had to use secular books or develop their own material.  Now we have so many options for Christian based education that it is sometimes hard to choose between them.  And living in a conservative state as we do, with churches everywhere, it is relatively easy to raise our children in a Christian bubble where they are shielded from all views that oppose our own.  But to do so is to do our children a great disservice.
  We should instead teach them to check the things they hear - bearing in mind, of course, which subjects are age appropriate - against what they have been taught and against the Scriptures and make their own judgements.  We commend the Bereans in Acts who went to the Scriptures to "find out if these things be so" but do we remember who they were fact checking?  Seriously, does anyone fact check the Apostle Paul?  And yet, rather than accepting his word immediately as truth, the Bereans searched the Scripture to be sure his teaching was true.  May we be diligent to do the same - and to teach this important skill to our children!
 

Relaxed Schooling

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Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Pinterest
  Back in April, I was beginning to think about the new school year when I read another mom's blog post about year-round schooling.  She had, after years of teaching from September to May, decided to try teaching year round.  Doing school without set vacation days would give her time to take off when she needed it, and allow more time to pursue topics of interest as they came up.  And, it occurred to me that there wouldn't be so much pressure to accomplish so much in one day if the school year wasn't confined to 180 days packed into nine months.

  Filled with rosy visions of quiet, productive days around the school table, I set off to plan our own school year.

  I have always been intrigued by the idea of year round schooling for many of the same reasons mentioned in that blog post.  But I had always resisted the change - after all, there is something very nice about having eight or ten weeks of complete freedom from school books.
  But this year I decided to make some changes.  I knew I wanted to take some time off when our third child is born later this fall, but I also wanted to have a definite ending point for our school year - I still want at least a few weeks to ignore the school books each summer.  I decided that we would take off all of June and slowly ease into the school year starting at the beginning of July and working a few days a week as I had time, but without totally giving up our summer freedom.
  I planned out our first semester - 85 days where every subject was covered - figuring that we would spread those days out between July 1st and mid-December. I decided to call our experiment "Relaxed Schooling"; it wasn't quite traditional, but not quite year-round either, we were just relaxing our schedule a bit.  And I was going to be relaxed about this year, not stressing about doing five full days of school each week or pushing so hard to finish everything I had written down for the day. 
  Our experiment hasn't gone quite like I planned.  We took off three weeks right at the beginning to help a sick family member.  And it was really nice - I had the time I needed, and when we did have a little time at the school table we just worked along to accomplish the next thing on the lesson plan sheet.  I was relaxed!
  Fast forward two months, and for various reasons we have not covered as many days as I thought we might have by this point.  I think our first semester - which we usually finish in December might spill over into January.  Those rosy visions of relaxed days around the school table are fading as I try to jam more school days in around doctors appointments and our other commitments.
  Still, I don't think our experiment has been an entire failure.  Overall I do feel more relaxed about how much we accomplish each day.  I am much more willing to recognize when I am trying to squeeze too much work into too little time - always a recipe for frustration and tears.  Some days we do everything on my list.  Some days we spread the list over two or more days.  Rather than dragging my kids kicking and screaming through assignments when I feel like we are running out of time, we set them aside for another day.
  So far I think our school year has lived up to its name.  The whole point of "relaxed schooling" isn't to fit school into a well-planned and rigorously scheduled box.  The point is to relax and take school one day at a time.

What about you?  Do you follow a traditional schedule?  School year round?  Unschool?  What do you do when you need a few days or weeks off school?

 

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