Last month (May) my last child completed her home education and had her final law required evaluation. This has been a case of mixed emotions for me. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to facilitate education of my children at home using the materials we wanted to use and what they wanted to study. I’ve enjoyed the freedom we had to shape our days any way we wanted and allowed them to explore topics they were interested in, all the while checking off the requirements in the law text. I got to watch my children grow and teach them my values and from our Christian worldview. I never minded the sacrifice of my time or money to do it. It was way beyond worth it to keep them out of the public school system. My children never suffered academically or socially. But now that chapter is over, so what’s next for this former homeschool mom? I just don’t know. Not yet. I wish in some respects that I was qualified to be an evaluator for other home educating families, but I wouldn’t meet the law requirements. I want to keep the resources here on my blog for however long they are relevant for anyone needing help or forms to print out. But, I also want to transition my blog into something more relevant to where I’m at right now. I have other blogs floating around the internet that I just am not going to resurrect and not ready to let this one go. For now, nothing is going to change but posts may cease until I decide on a direction to go.
I want to recap my daughters 12th grade year, her 8th year of home education. I also want to encourage anyone with a home school child in or entering high school not to be intimidated by any requirements, people, or record keeping. It’s not very different than home schooling them in the younger years and you can create your own transcript accepted by colleges and create your own diploma (and/or use the one provided by the department of education). I have several posts I will make references too that I’ve already written in terms of record keeping.
Those are only a few posts I’ve written in the past. Search around you may find more. My blog has many posts about this topic as well as all the ins and outs on how to comply with the Pennsylvania Home Education law and why you shouldn’t allow your public school district to bully you into giving them more than is required of you. It’s important for you to follow the law as it’s written and not do more.
Back to my final homeschool year. My daughter had kind of a “light” year academically. I say this because a lot was review over the course of years of school. There just aren’t that many new things to learn. She also opted not to take a 4th math course this year (the law only requires 3 years of math to graduate). She did continue to work a part time job though where her consumer math skills are used. She did a Bible course that went over how to live as a Christian in the world. Nothing mind blowing, but good to keep fresh. She did one semester of Life Science and one semester of Astronomy. Again, nothing mind blowing as these topics are often covered throughout a students school life. When you get to the 12th grade year it’s much harder to choose new material and you instead focus on perhaps a different publisher who may teach slightly different, or something slightly more in depth than previous school years. Nothing could be as fun or challenging as what she’s already done with Forensic Science and Marine Biology.
For history I had decided to focus on learning about Rome. This included her having to read challenging thought provoking writings from a philosopher in that day. She learned about Roman culture and how their government was formed. This was a way for me to show her how America’s government was based off of Roman government rather than learning things about how our government system is supposed to work, since that’s been done in the past. I then, for her culinary course, had her learn about ancient Roman foods. For English this year, it was all about writing. This is something she absolutely hated. It was challenging and intensive. This was for a purpose though because I know what college is like. She has opted not to go on to college yet, but instead continuing to work and figure out what she wants to do, but I still wanted to prepare her. We, together, continued to go to the gym regularly as well. She also obtained her drivers license this school year. Lots of learning happened, even if some wasn’t that interesting.
I have always built my children’s courses based on their interests so my son’s courses weren’t exactly what my daughters were. However, since they were only 2 grades apart they often did subjects together. Don’t be afraid to challenge a younger child with the older child’s curriculum as long as they aren’t too far apart in age it should be fine and you can pretty much customize any curriculum to your needs. I always kept my children in separate math courses but you could even have them do that together depending on your children’s understanding of concepts. I recommend moving them towards independent study as well. In the younger grades I was involved a lot more than when they reached middle-high school grades. If your child intends to go to college teaching them how to work, study, and problem solve by themselves will be a huge help to them, also for life skills. I also highly recommend your children take some kind of consumer math course as this is a needed math for life. Teach them how to file their own income taxes too once they have jobs. If you don’t know how I suggest doing a little homework yourself so that you can equip your child.
Please look around my blog for lots of valuable information how to successfully home educate your child in the state of Pennsylvania. It is really not that hard, for now. Who knows what the future is going to look like. The single most important thing you need to do is know the law and don’t allow yourself to be bullied, because believe me, school districts do, including my own. In my humble opinion its not necessary to pay an annual membership to the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). I did for a few years and saw no real benefit when I could advocate for myself. If you really needed the help of an attorney you could attempt to find one locally (you’d probably be looking for an education law attorney but make sure they read and understand the home education law). The HSLDA is certainly an option if you wanted to join their group. At the time of this writing it’s $150 a year. My experience wasn’t great after spending the money and than being told to give the school what they were requesting of me that was clearly against what the home education law states. It was clear they were not supporting not just my view of the law, but the actual text. I was told to do this to avoid any possible litigation…but there would have been zero need to go that far because the school was requesting something they were not privy to. It’s my understanding the new attorney assigned to PA views things differently, but that’s another problem because the next guy could be worse.
I have mixed emotions now that I am done being a homeschool mom. On one hand I know I will miss it, on the other I will be glad not to have spend all that time grading work or dealing with my school district or any of the federal and state things that seem to be on the horizon with changes to home education which are not in favor of the parents. My children are also adults now. Sure they live at home but they live their own lives. They drive, they work, they hang out with friends, my son is in college so when in session I don’t see him much. They live at home because they can’t afford not to but one day they’ll move out. I have absolutely no regrets withdrawing them from the public school in 2017. It was good for all 3 of us. We became closer, we learned together, and I felt better about what they were learning. Was it always easy? No. Did I have haters? Yes. Did my children every complain about being taught at home? No and that’s the truth. Read this.
Links to some posts I wrote that may answer questions or encourage you.
- True or False
- 20 Questions
- Highschool Credits
- Lies districts tell
- School Codes and the Law
- Portfolio and Evaluation
I hope this blog has been a help to you and please pass it on to anyone who is or wants to home educate their children in the state of Pennsylvania. Everything here is free. Free information from countless hours of research and personal experience and free documents to download, print, and send to your school district. My goal was to make things as easy to understand as possible. In the future I may be removing all posts relating to curriculum or how our year was going, but I would like to keep up the resources as a guide. Keep in mind that the laws could change and my blog may not be the most up to date going forward, please be mindful and keep up with the law changes by reading the text itself. I may update information from time to time but it may not be timely.
This blog is for information purposes only and not meant to be legal advice. Note that I have no control over the advertising that may be shown on my blog nor do I get any compensation for any advertising.