Homeschool High School / Unschool Q: How do you determine credit for unschool / extracurricular activities?

Question

At least a 3rd of my son's learning is from extracurricular (speech club) and unschooling activities (apprenticeship, computer stuff, music, etc.).

For these activities, I am pondering a fair and accurate way to "award" high school credit. He is definitely learning a great deal with these activities and I think his transcript should reflect this.

But... for those of you with a student or are yourself in high school and following at least a somewhat unschool approach...

Can you suggest any guidelines / methods for awarding credit? Documenting the learning is easy because nearly everything is project oriented with tangible output.

We don't really track our "unschool" hours but perhaps we should.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Answer 1

I am not sure if my suggestions will help much since I can only say that that part of the unschooling journey is a bit more traditional :)

This is where the parents, and the teen sit together and get to brainstorm as to how to use "educational speak", meaning using their skills in creative writing to put a name on the "real life" experiences that their children have had over the years.

It is a simple game of semantics.

Weekly swimming, roller skating, and drill or physical training in the Civil Air patrol all falls under PE, and following directions. (listening skills) ^_^

Cooking, for 4H, and the weekly preparing of the meal, learning how to budget, a paper route, turns into home economics, and math, and economics.

Aerospace in 4H and the Civil Air patrol equals science credits.

Flying lessons; map skills (geography), math, and so on.

I believe that when we use these real leaning/life experiences and put them into edu-speak to satisfy the powers to be, we know for sure that our kids have had the experience that comes with each subject rather than passing a written test saying they have.

Here are several web sites that may have some other idea's; keep a journal if you'd like and let the pencil do the talking.

http://sandradodd.com/unschooling

http://www.homeschool.com/advisors/McKee...

http://www.nhen.org/nhen/pov/teens/defau...

http://info.nbtsc.org/schoolfree/

http://sandradodd.com/life

Answer 2

My friends with high schoolers have said that they track their kids' hours spent in programs like that and award credit accordingly.  

In order to earn a full credit, a student should spend 3.5-5 hours per week on a subject; if your son spends that much each week on speech club (attending, preparing, researching, etc.), that (in my mind, at least) would count as an English/Speech credit.

The same for apprenticeship, computers, and music - if he spends at least 3.5-5 hours per week in each of these, that counts as a credit.  Computer science and music are pretty easy to assign; the apprenticeship, depending on what it is, could count as science, business, etc.

I have a 10yo, so we're not there yet, but I count his competitive baseball team as a PE credit, Scouts as a class (the child easily puts 3-5 hours per week into his badge work), and plays that he is in as a theater arts elective credit.

That's how I would do it - time.  If he puts in the time, he gets the credit.  You could sit down with him and decide on criteria for grading, and then just apply that criteria to his work.

Hope that helps!

Answer 3

Well you have to look at what the sylubus is for the various courses in school and compare that to what your child has done.

You also can't be totally unfair.

Say you have a telescope and star charts.  That can count for six months of Earth Science.  Maybe you can fudge 1 year, because I got astronomy in school 3 times, but it was like 8 weeks each time.  So technically if you have a scope and spend years outside it's really only 1 or 2 science credits.

I taught myself meterology with a kit, chemistry with a kit, astronomy, electronics.  So that's like almost 2 years Earth science even though I did some of them for several years.

So if your computer work includes power point presentations, they teach that in school and it's like 1/2 year computer.  Word processing is another 1/2, and if you can import pictures and graphs and do tables it's like another 1/2 year (Word Process 1 and 2).  If you do excel spread sheets or work with the Access data base, that's also a semester each.

I programmed in Basic for 10 years on my own, learned it from scratch.  That can count as 1 or 2 years of programming, plus I also dabbled in Modula 2 and C so maybe I could squeek 2 1/2 years of programming of out that.

That's pushing it.  Technically it's more like 1 1/2 years.

Basic 1 and 2, C language 1

Plus I did a lot of HTML, so technically I think I could rate myself as having 2 years or 2 1/2 years high school or college level programming.

College, however, likes to see 2 years of C++

and I hate C and C++

I unschooled in photography and darkroom and that counts to my way of thinking as Photo 1 and 2

I was taking pictures of the moon, meteor showers, copy photographs, etc.

I was doing darkroom and enlarging in my bathroom and later the garage

I even dabbled in color darkroom.

Since I got included in a Sky and Telescope compendium, that counts as Journalism 1 and I was writing since I was 7 and got published at 16.

I would write, submit, get rejections and finally got a hit.

My mother homeschooled me in Typing and I was doing 45 WPM by age 8 so that's Typing 1 (keyboarding)

My mother homeschooled me in musical notation, harmony and theory.  So that's 1/2 year music

I taught myself guitar at 17.  So that's years of music there.  But my proficience is only guitar 2 maybe

So guitar 1 and 2

Bass 1, 2 and 3

Piano 1

I'm rating myself based on what I would figure you get out of 20 weeks in a course.

In Piano I had Mystery of the Barracades learned but not perfected and was working on a small Bach piece (one of those finger things he taught his kids) and the Minuete in G which I never finished.

OF course I doodle, but that counts superficially.  I can hold my own in most keys but I can't do riffs and wild things.

In a college course it would be finished pieces and I had  2 1/2 and they were rough so I won't call it Piano 2 only 1

In cinema I had enough to get a college certificate by the time I was 18.

In college I learned history and other aspects I never studied heavy on my own.  My experitise was in filming, editing, soundwork, special effects.  Which I did from age 12 to present date.

I homeschooled in lower division college, I bought just about every book Barnes and Noble put out, except for Organic CHemistry which I'm taking now on the web and Math which I always hated and still can't get past page 4 (It's College Math 101 which dispenses with Algebra 1, 2, Geoemetry 1 and Trig 1 by page 4 and goes on from there)

I still have the book and it's a sore spot.  Only book I didn't do cover to cover!

I keep telling myself ONE DAY I will make it to page 200

Some of what I learned was out of date.  In Anatomy and phisiology they didn't know why we saw in color, now they

"say" they do.

So I still take "continuing eduacation" via the net.

I'm going through all this to sort of help you

I have years of typing but still can't pass the city Clerk Typist test so

Typing 1

Meterology, Astronomy, Geology, Inorganic CHemistry, Rudimentary (non-math) physics, Electronics = Earth science 1 and 2, maybe 3

Music 1 (notation, basic harmony and theory)

Piano 1

Guitar 1 and 2 (years of rhythm playing and some Bach work)

Bass 1 and 2

Photography 1 and 2

Filmmaking 1, 2, 3, 4 (college level)

Audio recording 1, 2,

Journalism 1

Creative writing 1 (I entered story in a talent contest, it got panned)

Above is all homeschool/unschool age 6-18

That's 60 college credits.  Technically enough for an AA degree in Liberal Arts or Music or Photography or Filmmaking.

That not enough for High School though, but I went to private and brick school and trade school so if you add them in I had enough there.

In later years I did

Audio 3, 4 and 5

Filmmaking 5 and 6

Bass 3

Journalism 2 and 3 (lots in print these days)

Programming in Basic 1, 2, 3, 4

Programming in C 1

Programming in HTML 1, 2, 3, 4

Programming dBASE 1, 2, 3, 4

Business Managment 1

That's another 66 credits

That's enough for a BA degree

I was "work schooled" in Film History plus I had 3 credit hours of that in college.

My work school, however, amounts to an easy 21s credit on top of the 3 so that's 24 more (we had a library of 200 books and I read a lot of them and saw hundreds of film examples and I researched projects for professors).

I studied history of music in film, animation, silents, sounds, color, formats and processes

So that basically puts me unschooled at a Masters degree, which except for that Math 101 course which manditory, is valid.

Math 101 is manditory for a degree and one day I must try it in brick school and see if I can get a C at least.

But science I have sevearl technical articles in print that also counts as Thesis material.  It's math I'm still weak on.  I could not factor if my life depended on it!

So that's your rule of thumb.

If you build a dog house and a bird house from wood.  That would be woodworking or woodshop 1

Do astronomy with a telescope that's 1/2 earth science

Even if you do it for years.  BEST you can get is Earth Science 1 out of that

If you take care of plants, re-pot them, douse them with Iron maybe that's 1/2 Earth Science

A mixture of light botny and horticulture

If you write and get published in a print zine, that's definate Journalism 1, if it's a short story Creative Writing 1

If you make web sites with hand coding that's Programming 1 or even 2

You type with all your fingers 30 WPM accurately that's Keyboarding 1

You do it at 50 WPM thats' Keyboarding 2

If you can install cards into computers, add drivers, upgrade your memory  that's Computer Technology 1

If you build a system from scratch, including putting in the CPU chip, thats A+ certification and that = Computers 1, 2 and 3

If you can play guitar along with a CD without making mistakes that's Guitar 1 and possibly 2

If you can play ONE piano piece OTHER than chop sticks from a classic composer with fingering thats Piano 1