Thirteen Year Project Nearly Complete

When I woke up this morning to the sound of the front door closing I thought it was my husband leaving early for work. Minutes later I noticed the clock read "630". Then I remembered that our firstborn was working today at 630am and hoped that what startled me was the sound of her leaving on time. But I hadn't reminded her to set her alarm. I also hadn't heard her in the bathroom getting ready. I never crept in the kitchen to make sure she'd remembered to take her vitamins or eat a good breakfast. Did she really leave without me doing anything for her? Has she really grown up so much that I do not need to "help" her anymore. Really?

I suppose I'm very relieved, thankful and a little surprised. When she isn't working, and she's just a part of the larger group of our children at home, I mostly treat her like them. Not because I want to hold her back, but because she still needs alot of reminders to do the "family things the family way." So although I would like to pronounce her an adult and never treat her like a child again, I am reminded that it is a process. Now I have to mention there are numerous skills in which she excels; Bible memorization, special projects, sewing, music, and earning/saving money, to name only a few. What is most impressive is that I have not struggled with her at all in this one area -her schoolwork. She has been the perfect homeschool student. Better yet, this particular work of hers, mine, and ours, is nearly complete!!! Applause. Applause.

She will be graduating this year. I have homeschooled her since...well, since the day she was born. She has been a stellar student. When she was four and I forced myself to take on a teacher role that I was not comfortable with (dramatizing phonics in K4), and she hated it. Phew! I was thinking, "You mean you don't want me to do all the activities that are in the teacher's manual?" We had been instructed to crawl under the table together for who-knows-what now. Basically she said, "Can I just do the workbook pages, Mom?" I can remember thinking, "Is is really going to be this easy?" I won't have to read the script. We aren't going to dramatize every day's work before you do it? Indeed it was easy. She completed the entire workbook in a matter of days. So, I put in her in K5 the next week. : ) She has consumed dozens of workbooks since then. She wanted them!

For thirteen years. She did every assignment. We moved away from workbooks as she grew older, of course. Thankfully, the most difficult task I've had as her teacher was making the decisions about what curriculum to use. I never took it lightly. I prayed, researched, and toiled for months every spring. Ultimately, I was so confident in the materials that we'd purchased, I never looked back and never changed mid-year. It worked. She was self-taught.

At many crucial points I decided not to make her take a separate course in certain traditional subjects such as spelling and grammar. I was experimenting somewhat with the idea that children who read quality literature can become skilled in language arts without separate workbooks and lessons. We also had chosen to use a literature based history program every year. Therefore, I suspected she would be steeped in literature that would ultimately teach her how to write and spell through exposure to "the right way". I didn't invent that idea. There are many names for teaching language arts without using workbooks.

I also didn't push for a foreign language. I know this is expected of college bound students. Afterall, I took four years of French. I even took the French achievement test, sending me into French 201 in my first year of college, and it ruined my GPA for the duration of my four years. I wasn't that good at French. Clearly. And I've never used it except to impress my children. ; ) I asked our daughter to choose a foreign language and bought a text for it, but I never pressed her to do it each day. She chose how much to learn. I knew she could take more classes at a community college if she really needed them.

At sixteen she tested "out" of the K-12 spelling program that I had abandoned when she was six! Over the span of ten years she had learned how to spell enough words that she exceeded the twelvth grade level. Amazing!

Did she miss something important? Based upon our recent experience with the IOWA, CLEP and SAT prep exams, the answer, in our situation has been a resounding, "No". Praise God. That's what I suspected, for this student. I'm not advocating it for all students, even my own. But during the process I talked to my husband about my ideas for her, prayed about them, and ultimately went with my suspicions with his approval. It worked! She is not handicapped. Clearly.

She is very practical and logical and eventually became sensitive to doing "busy work". I could rarely justify making her do anything that seemed to have to no bearing on her future success. Now that she's excelled on three (practice) standardized tests, she's asked if she can abandon the grammar part of her senior year book. Of course I asked for her reasons and then carefully considered the potential impact of letting her "skip" this segment of education about I-don't-really-know-what. If she wanted to be an English teacher I'd have to make her do it. But she doesn't. So I enjoyed, for one last time, making a practical decision, on her part, about her high school education and agreed with her.

She is still working very hard on all the subjects she has left to complete. She also works twenty-four hours at week at her job, often starting at 6:30am. She continues to practice the piano and guitar. She is still required to perform certain chores in our home. And we always want her to join our family in mealtime, worship, play and church. We are grateful that she still wants to do (most of) those things with us. (We still have her heart, but that's a topic for another day.) So her schedule is packed.

She's been praticing CLEP tests for math, chemistry and language arts. If she takes them she'll earn college credit for what she already knows. But she hasn't decided to pursue college yet. And she might not. On her practice exams she's proven that she can pass and earn the credit right now on college math and English composition. With a little studying she'd pass the chemistry exam too. That would be nearly equivalent to one semester of college. That is wonderful! That would save her over nine hundred dollars on those three classes alone.

Yesterday she took a practice SAT. She's studied for one or two days recently. She earned a score of nearly 2000!!! She out scored me by 100 points on both math and language arts. I am not surprised. I am thrilled! There are many great colleges who expect scores like hers, including my alma mater. Of course, these days one must write an essay and she did well on that too. Not knowing what a "good score" was, she had decided that she should atleast achieve 2000. I think she missed it by 10 points. So she'll be polishing her writing skills and practicing again before May. She'll do it. And I'll be so proud of her.

I am looking forward to seeing her official homeschool highschool transcript with all of her credits, excellent GPA, and impressive SAT score. I think I'll frame a copy of it to encourage myself during the next seventeen years of homeschooling. : ) Afterall, I've never had a report card as a teacher. We've never really known if our standards for our homeschool would measure up to any external standards for education. It was a rational guess that it would work. Mostly, it was a faith walk.

Truthfully, the most credit must be given to our Heavenly Father who has heard all of my pleas for wisdom in homeschooling. I have taken every doubt to Him. I have abandoned the temptation to fear man and the "system" over and over, in order to make a decison for my child. I have known in my head that I could not ruin an obviously intelligent and independent learner. But God has spoken to my heart and given me confidence in His ways. We started homeschooling for many reasons, but we kept homeschooling so that we could follow the leading of the Holy Spirit in every area of our children's lives, including their education. This summer or fall, upon my daughter's graduation, we will praise Him and rejoice that He has been faithful.