Category: Homeschool For Success

Things are changing and the stakes are high.

Read the previous important articles in this series here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

By 10^th grade, your teen will be at the tail end of early adolescence, and that is a very important milestone. While you can’t miss the physical changes occurring in your child during this season, just as dramatic are those you can’t see—the cognitive ones. Your child’s brain is exploding with new potential. He is acquiring complex and mature problem-solving and decision-making skills. She is developing a capacity for abstract thinking and psychological insight (about herself and others). Your teen is primed to become a sophisticated critical thinker and highly skilled expert in areas of strength and interest. Yah!

At the same time, your child’s emotional equilibrium is recalibrating and may frequently be out of whack. This roller coaster ride of feelings can be intense and unpredictable. Without some guardrails from parents and insight into what’s going on, your teen can be shell-shocked and distracted. Preparing for college may be the last thing on his or her mind. Uh-oh.

That’s why your No. 1 priority for 10^th grade is this:

Have your teens study how their brains are changing. Knowledge is power and this will help them leverage their newfound capacities for maximum impact rather than being at the mercy of their bodies’ unpredictable growth spurts. You can accomplish this in many ways: an introductory psychology course, a biology class focused on human development, a book, a video series, or a research project. Research shows that teems who understand how their brain works are better students. (Here’s a good article about this.)

There’s ample reason to take things very seriously.

Lifelong consequences are at stake. Your child’s adolescent brain is better suited for new learning than the adult brain—test this out by both taking up a new hobby, game, or interest—note how quickly he outpaces you. At the same time, what your teen invests in during the brain’s growth spurt will become hardwired and solidified—so choose wisely. Habits are forming. If your teen spends a lot of time practicing an instrument, she’ll be able to pick it back up again anytime later in life. However, if he is laying on the couch and playing video games, those neural networks are hardening into patterns that will be difficult to break.

All hands on deck.

You have a mission-critical role in this process: Be there, listen, engage, converse. Prioritize meaningful conversations. Ask good questions. Accept your teen’s crazy ideas and interests. Be chill if you don’t agree—kids evolve if they have room to do so. I found my teens were most open to conversation at inconvenient times—like after I’d gone to bed. I had to let go of my bedtime to be available. I also found my teens often opened up on a long drive. If you notice a certain context makes your teen more conversational, make that happen often. Study the material on the developing brain alongside your teen. You will probably find she is more open to your ideas if they originate from an outside source, like a textbook or lecturer.

Wait. What?

One more tip you can use: Teen brains are more motivated by rewards than adult brains. This is probably why teens enjoy competitive sports or join clubs with social action goals. They like short-term goals and the recognition that often accompanies them. You can use this insight to motivate your teen academically. It’s one reason my kids enjoyed AP testing—they wanted to earn that high score—and that motivated them to study deeply and extensively. I created incentives for my English students at our homeschool co-op by participating in the Scholastic Writing contest (Lili Serbicki does this at Aim Academy) and organized a competition for the top research paper and short story each year. By far and away, my kids and their friends did their best work and learned the most in subjects where a tangible reward they valued was the outcome.

Finally, the antidote for teenage risk-taking and impulsivity? Responsibility. This activates and stimulates the development of regions of the brain (like the cerebellum) that help us manage impulse-control. (Next time, decision no. 2 for 10^th grade will help you with this.)

Recommended Resources

Your Brain – a course of study for 13–18 years old from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia

Learning How to Learn: A Guide for Kids and Teens by Barbara Oakley, PhD and others.

Relevant Aim Academy Classes

10^th grade is so strategic, I have three mission-critical must do’s for you. Action item No. 1: Help your teen understand how his brain is changing so he can make the most of his newfound potential. Read that post here. Action item No. 2: Increase your teen’s level of responsibility to grease the skids of her budding maturity. Read that post here.

And Now, Action Item No. 3:

Find a strategic summer job, internship, or extraordinary experience to prepare your teen for the decision-making ahead. There are two big reasons for this:

What Are You Going to Be?

Any day now, adults will start obsessively asking your teen what he intends to study in college. Over and over, he will be given the impression that he should know the answer with certitude. And this is anxiety-producing for many.

Did you know what you wanted to do with the rest of your life at age 16? Most teens don’t either. Studies have found anywhere from 30%–80% change their major, most after investing in classes that don’t count toward the new degree.

With no other context to draw on, teens often assume that interest in a school subject, say biology, means they should pursue a career in biology. But there is very little overlap between studying a subject and working in the field.

A better way to go about this is for that biology-loving kid of yours to spend a summer working in a lab, shadowing a veterinarian or medical doctor, or participating in a field study.

Kids need experiences to figure this out and right now there is little cost or lost time involved in getting your child out in the community where she can be exposed to different occupations and the training required.

My son thought he wanted to go into political science and law until he spent a summer working for a lobby in our state capital. He still follows politics with a passion but his takeaway from that was “politics is a game of inches,” and he didn’t have the patience for it. He went into business instead.

At one point, I wanted to find a community service project for my daughters and me to get us out of the house and our homeschool bubble. We started tutoring at an afterschool program in the city. Soon I was driving them and three friends to the ministry weekly—we did that for five years. Of the five girls, four became teachers, including my two daughters.

I wasn’t expecting that, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense to me. This experience gave them a real context to evaluate teaching as a career—they are all still teaching today (three of them for Aim Academy, my two daughters and Dr. Lauren Bailes).

Your child will need you to help make a strategic job, internship, or awesome experience happen. Like most homeschool opportunities, you’ll have to bootstrap that and maybe push open a few doors. There isn’t a guidance department to set this up. I just looked around for friends and acquaintances doing interesting things and asked if my kid could shadow them for a day. Occasionally this led to a job or other career-clarifying opportunity.

My two daughters went on several cross-cultural mission trips in high school. One mission trip showed my daughter Kayte she had quite an ear for languages (she was picking up Spanish with little previous exposure faster than anyone on the team)—a talent that would never have been uncovered in our homeschool since I absolutely do not have that gift. (I dropped French three times in college to prevent a D from showing up on my transcript.) She went on to major in French and mathematics, and minored in Arabic. She used her languages everyday when she ended up teaching math at the most diverse high school in Pennsylvania.

What awesome experiences are within range for your kids? Grab them. Even if the takeaway is, “Wow, I didn’t like that.” Good to know. Cross that off the list. On to the next one. Experience is how kids (and adults) figure things out about themselves. If they can learn to reflect on what they learn, they’ll get better and better at knowing what choices to make and in what direction to head. We help by prioritizing opportunities–make your default position, “Sure, let’s try that.”

Now to the second compelling reason:

Your teen will need something to write about for his college application essays and talk about in interviews. A program focused solely on the academics is just boring. Admissions offices and scholarship committees want to know how your homeschool differs from conventional schooling! They want to read an essay that sets your child apart from others and interview candidates who are memorable. Being distinctive means being different.

Your collegebound 10^th grader will tell the story of her homeschool experience over and over—my thirty-something adult children still are. People are curious about homeschooling. These mission-critical opportunities that help your child decide what to study in college will also be part of the highlight reel from her homeschool story. Start shaping that narrative now. Keep it authentic and make it sticky. 😉

What to Do in 11th Grade, Part 1

11^th grade is the most important year of your collegebound teen’s academic life. Because this year is so mission critical, I’ve got several steps that are too important to skip:

Reduce Stress

Manage the stress levels in your home for your 11^th grader. Simplify your teen’s life—this will be his toughest year academically, and he needs you to have his back. Help him clarify his priorities, guard his schedule, and make tough choices. Make sure he gets enough sleep. The brain consolidates learning while sleeping and while taking breaks from intense cognitive focus. This is why cramming does not work. The best test prep includes time to rest and refresh before heading into the testing situation. Finally, make sure he still has time for exercise and fun. Life’s a balancing act, and the junior year is a great context to learn this.

Course Load Matters

If your child is AP material (i.e. she is ready for college-level work), take a couple of AP courses so she will have scores to report on college applications next fall. If your child is not ready for AP-level classes, then plan a course load that reflects the highest level of academic challenge your teen is willing to tackle. Schools look for rigor on the high school transcript and weigh that in their acceptance calculations.

Testing Begins Now

Take the PSAT  in October. This test is shorter than the SAT and is intended to give students a snapshot of their academic strengths and weaknesses so they can prepare strategically for the SAT. Most collegebound students take the SAT or ACT in the spring of their junior year and again in the fall of their senior year (See this post for differences).

National Merit Scholarship Program

The PSAT has taken on a singular importance of its own—the PSAT scores are used to qualify students for the National Merit Scholarship Program and other elite opportunities. If your teen agrees to release his scores, he will start to receive tons of mail from colleges and universities which see your child as an ideal candidate. (This mail gives you critical insight into the types of schools where your teen will be most competitive.)

The National Merit Scholarship Program (NMSP) is the most prestigious merit scholarship (though not without its critics). Merit scholarships are based solely on the student’s academic achievement, not the student’s financial need. Most universities also have selective scholarships for their top incoming students, and many use the PSAT scores to qualify as well.

Students qualify for National Merit status based on their PSAT scores in their junior year only. Finalists are selected from that pool of qualifiers based on GPA, course load, and letters of recommendation. If your teen has already shown high academic promise, especially by consistently scoring in the 95% or above on standardized tests, then have her take the PSAT in 10^th grade for practice or the PSAT 10, if available in your area. Those scores do not count for NMSP but can help your teen prepare strategically for the PSAT in 11^th.

The PSAT must be scheduled through a local test site. Start by calling your district’s guidance office and ask to register your homeschooled student with them for the PSAT. (If you have a relationship with another school, public or private, ask them first—it helps if your teen has some comfort-level with the test site.)

You’ll Need Letter Writers

Your teen will need letters of recommendation if he plans to apply for scholarships and acceptance at competitive schools. Don’t leave this to chance. Identify the most credentialed and professionally accomplished persons within range. Ideally you will have several candidates. Tell your teen what is going on and that these are people to impress with his character, work ethic, and academic promise. Then get your teen in front of these potential letter writers—register for the classes they teach, get an internship where they work, or offer to do odd jobs around their house (all strategies we used). Be intentional. There is nothing wrong with having foresight here—traditional students have lots of high school teachers and coaches to ask—homeschooled students often don’t, so you need to be deliberate. When the moment is right, you or your teen (ideally, your teen) should ask the person if he or she will consider writing a letter of recommendation at some point in the future. You’ll get a more thoughtful, detailed letter (i.e. more influential then) if the person is forewarned.

Stay tuned . . . lots more to come for this age group.

What to Do in 11th Grade, Part 2

In the previous post about 11^th grade, I noted this is the most important year for your collegebound teen. You can read the first set of priorities here.

Now to the second tier of recommendations:

Know Thyself

This is a good time to have your teen come to a deeper understanding about how she is wired. The best way to accomplish this is to take a psychology course. She will use the insights she gains to help guide her decision-making during the upcoming senior year.

Some of us are wide-open to experience—we can choose a college far from home and thrive. Others of us are more cautious. Choosing a school in unfamiliar surroundings, without an easy option for getting home, will add an unnecessary layer of stress to the college transition. Some of us are extroverted—we’re energized by meeting new people and forging new relationship, while plenty of us find breaking new ground draining.

Figuring out what conditions make your teen thrive will be critical to choosing a college that’s a best fit.

You can find out more about the Big 5 personality traits here. Consider psychology classes at Aim Academy here.

Read Before You Buy

You and your teen are closing in on the biggest financial decision of her life—much more significant and complex than buying a house or taking a job. Complicating our teens’ college decisions can be our own fears and motivations as a homeschool parent—it’s very easy to turn our kids getting into school—especially getting into a “good” school—into a validation of our decision to homeschool. We need to be self-aware of how this can make a complex decision-making process even more complicated and stressful.

So before you head out the door to visit potential schools, get a frame of reference—read about college admissions, financial aid, choosing a major, and campus life. A few hours invested in education yourself will help eliminate time wasted on schools your family just can’t afford or that don’t offer the course of study your teen needs.

Here are a few books to get you started:

Fiske’s Guide to Colleges 2023 by Edward Fiske (the bible on college admissions)

Choosing College by Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta

The Price You Pay for College by Ron Lieber

Paying for College by the Princeton Review and Kalman Chany

Websites: CollegeTransitions.com and GrownandFlown.com

Start Looking

Don’t pack all the college decision-making into the senior year. Start looking at colleges now. Make visits, explore careers—in tangible ways show your teen the goals he is working so hard to reach. Visiting potential schools and places of employment will provide motivation to stay focused and industrious. This year visit schools that represent different categories–small and private versus large and public, for example. Seeing the contrasts among schools will help your teen better grasp what feels like a good fit for him and what doesn’t.

Make sure you visit the departments your teen may be interested in–this is much more important than the school at large. Meet some of the professors. Sit in on a freshman-level class. If your teen is hoping for scholarships, making an impression during this preliminary visit will help those decision-makers put a face to his application when it arrives (always a plus).

To Test Well, Prepare

Unfortunately, the homeschool teen’s test scores are weighted more heavily in the admissions process than those of her conventionally-educated peers. Those applicants have composite scores created from class rank, GPA, and school profile to add to the mix. Your kid will have her essays and interviews to level the playing field, but first she needs high test scores to get to that stage.

Testing is a game we can all learn to play better. Tell your teen to approach it as you would a sport. Train. Lean into what she learns about a growth mindset, optimism, grit, and resilience in that psych course she’s taking. Above all, be well-rested going into any high stakes test situation.

Take a test prep course like this with Kathryn Gomes and this with Lili Serbicki. Read the latest edition of  Gruber’s Complete SAT Guide. You wouldn’t send your child to her driver’s test without familiarizing her first with the course—same deal with the SAT and ACT. Prepare. The more your teen knows about the test, how it is scored, and what content and skills will be tested, the less stressed she will be. The more she practices, the better her scores.

And to seal the deal, sign your teen up for Study Skills: Notetaking and Study Skills: Learning Strategies with Rebecca Robbins. When you consider how much your teen will invest in a college education, these classes are a small price to pay for your teen to learn how to study right and to learn how to prepare best for gameday.

What to Do in 12th Grade

So here you are—the final stretch. Congratulations. Don’t worry. Be happy. Decide to enjoy these final moments with your young adult. Your influence as a parent is waning. After this year, you’ll be wise to wait to be asked before giving your advice. (Remember, I’m speaking with hindsight now.)

If you’ve been ticking off mission-critical boxes since your teen was in 8^th grade, then you only have a few milestones left to accomplish. This is the last in the Collegebound? series, and here are the big three priorities for your senior:

1. Make time for college applications and all that entails.

I had no idea how much time this would take! If your child applies to competitive schools or hopes for scholarship awards, then applications must be thoughtfully and carefully prepared. Applications to top choices should take hours, if not days, to finish. If essays are involved, then those should go through multiple drafts and edits. (Find a critical reader or writing coach to help your teen with this.)

The whole point of the application package is to give decision-makers the best, yet representative, picture of your teen’s academic potential, sense of purpose, and unique characteristics. A college admissions director once told me colleges aren’t looking for well-rounded students. They want a well-rounded student body made up of diverse and unique students. Take that to heart and submit an application focused on what sets your teen apart.

So, make room on your 12th grader’s fall schedule for preparing applications, essay writing, college interviews, and final college visits. Even if your teen doesn’t apply for early admissions, get those applications in by the end of December to show drive and organization. (Note to the wise: many scholarship decisions are made with the earliest batch of applicants, so the early bird gets the worm here.)

You can turn all this work into an elective on the transcript. Or consider block scheduling—do all the college work in the fall, including test prep for the final SAT or ACT, finish up other academic credits in the spring.

If you’re not sure how your child can put his best foot forward, get help. My friend Farrar Williams and her colleagues at Simplify Homeschool do just that, and they specialize in homeschool students’ college decision-making and applications.

2. Don’t slack off (too much).

Some kids make the mistake of showing a lightened load the senior year because their minimum requirements for graduation have been completed. This is fine if your teen is heading to the local community college or doesn’t hope for scholarship consideration.

If not, then the course load needs to still show challenge and academic interest. Meeting the minimum requirements for graduation looks like lack of ambition. Importantly, take a math course—pre-calculus, probability and statistics, data science, AP Calculus. Your teen doesn’t want to tackle the college math requirement after a 12-to-18-month break from doing math.

3. Learn to manage (and grow) money.

Your teen will be living with the weight of the financial decisions she makes regarding college debt for a long time after she earns her degree. For many graduates, this severely limits their life choices: They may have to take a job they don’t really want, long delay owning a home, or live with you for years after finishing school. (The latter may not sound too bad to you, but it is psychologically undermining for them.)

Even though this is my last point, looking back, I think this is the most important priority for the senior year. Ideally, you’ve been working on this life skill with your teen up to now as well. Your senior needs to learn to manage money, debt, loans, and financial aid. He will need your help—you might need help! It is so complicated you might end up thinking it is intentional—I did. I lost my religion quite a few times working with my kids’ financial aid offices (I had three in college simultaneously and that right there was half the problem.) Create a filing system. Keep everything handy and well organized. You’ll need this information repeatedly.

Enroll your teen in a good finance class. Solutions from Dave Ramsey are obvious choices here, but there are others. (We personally followed Larry Burkett’s advice—Dave Ramsey’s forerunner—don’t take on more college debit than the likely starting salary of your first job following graduation. That amount was relatively easy to eliminate quickly.)

Your teen should have a checking and savings account to manage, as well as a debit (or credit) card with a maximum limit set relatively low. These are the fundamentals.

Now to really position your teen for success, help her learn how to make money grow. I’m taking a lesson from my sons, who got interested in investing very early through another mom in our homeschool group. They paid for most of their college because of this, along with finding atypical jobs during high school that paid better than most. They then started investing again as soon as they graduated and entered the job market. Today, they both prefer to invest rather than spend, and it has given them and their families the freedom to live where they please and take jobs they love. They passed on top tier schools for a humbler state school with a much lower price tag. Sometimes I still hear them lament this, but I don’t think they’d have the lives they now enjoy had they taken on that boatload of debt back then.

Thanks to all the readers who’ve been through this series with me. For those who want to start from the beginning, start here.