High School Credits

For my high schooler last year to meet the requiremnts for speaking components I kept track of anything he presented….for example if he gave his testimony at church etc., if we had family over I had him memorize and recite poetry or scripture, when he wanted something (he wanted a drivers license at the time)  I had him do some research, qoute and site sources, and then he had 5 minutes to give my husband and I an argument why we should let him__________.  I also had him read in a couple classrooms at a small private school close by.  I counted this as Public Speaking/Presenting and Volunteer.

You are likely doing all the right things it may just be a matter of how you word and keep track of what he is doing.  This varies so much by area, state and depending on what college he is hoping to attend.

If you are reading good books, narrating, doing grammar, and intend to learn essay writing, research papers, public speaking–you’ve got all the components.  I’d just make sure you are spending an amount of time per week that would be comparable to work for a credit–if you think about it, didn’t your high school English class take something like fifty minutes a day 5 days a week plus some homework?  If you are doing some work each day, or working on reading, writing, etc. for an appropriate amount of time, then count it as a credit.  You don’t need to say you used a formal program.  Do keep records for what you DID, and then I think you’ll be fine.

YOU assign the credits for your high school, not the college.  No one “gives” you credits.  YOU award them on your high school transcript which you create for your child’s homeschool career.  It can be perfectly official-like, because YOU are a school and you issue the transcript.  The college (almost all of them!) recognizes this, and takes many things into consideration for your child–transcript, grades, outside classes, test scores, recommendation letters, awards and things like that–all add up to what you submit to the college and the college then admits your child. 

What I do especially with the courses which I did not use a set curriculum is I write a course description, detailing what we did, how we learned, what books were read, what activities completed, and where appropriate I might include an exam or a paper to show what we did.

Many thousands of homeschoolers have been admitted to colleges in this way, ranging from local community or state schools all the way up to the very most exclusive schools in the country.  You can do it.  Let us know if you need help in the areas of transcripts, course descriptions, college requirements, financial aid, testing, etc, because many of us have been or are going down the road now.  My son is currently making applications to schools, all of which have admitted homeschoolers before.  One even has an admissions counselor especially for homeschoolers.  So it’s doable. 

HSLDA just highlighted this article on calculating credits. I especially like how it encourages us not to become legalistic, yet gives good guidelines, just as Bookworm does.

I don’t know if this will help or muddy the water, but what I have to do for my accountability group (they have worked closely w/ our state colleges/univ and neighboring schools to come up w/ this) is to list my course work for my high schooler as such:

Engl I – General Literature; Enlg II – World Literature; Engl III – American Lit; Engl IV – British Lit

Then within the frame work of those courses I address written work (essays, research papers,etc.); speaking skills (oral narrations, presentation of projects, etc.); grammar (for 9th we do actual grammar work and the rest of the years we address grammar using Blue Book of Grammar/IEW fix-it and within written composition); and finally the lit component which includes various literature selections from the areas required along w/ analysis of the literature which in some cases is narration and others it’s a more complex essay analysing the work).  Within all those I also address vocabulary – esp preparing for the SAT/ACT – and some test taking strategies to prepare for standardized testing.