Blog

Read Part 1 and Part 2 here. Get your high school planning grid here.

Presuming you have committed to a high school math program and foreign language in 8^th grade, then here’s what I’d like to suggest as your no. 1 decision for 9^th grade:

Choose a class or curriculum that will teach your child to write well—even if your kid is possibly heading into a STEM-related field.

Collegebound kids will do a lot of writing as part of the admissions process and even more writing once they hit campus. AP exams require a lot of writing too, and those will be critical to earning college credits during high school (something your child will never regret.) Finally, writing well will set your child apart from most applicants—it’s not a common strength, unfortunately, among American teens.

Why start this early in high school? Because writing well takes practice and maturity. A writing-intensive program should be sustained throughout high school, and 9^th grade is when the groundwork is laid (if not sooner).

The first step is to learn the mechanics of writing well, followed by learning to think deeply and broadly as your teen matures (FYI, a reading-intensive program helps with the latter).

The target for your collegebound student?

By the beginning of the senior year, your teen can write compelling, thoughtful, and original essays that show his or her intellectual promise. Not only is this important for writing admissions essays, but more so, because writing well is a by-product of thinking well.

If you want to send your child out the door confident that she or he knows how to think critically and reflectively about ideas and issues, then run a writing-intensive program throughout high school. What’s the connection? Writing is a powerful learning tool. It forces us to perform complex cognitive tasks as we decide what to say and how to say it. Composing requires deep processing and that reinforces learning and triggers insights and connections. I’d so much rather ask students to write essays as a measure of what they know than take a test. Briefly recapping in a writing journal every day—here’s what I learned, for example—is also more powerful and enduring than traditional outlining. You want your kids to be mixing what they learn from others with what they think and ponder. We’re raising independent learners who will change the world, right? Not parrots.

What to Do in 9th Grade, Part 2

You might also like: How to Evaluate What Your Kids Write

Check out these writing-intensive classes for 9^th graders:

This is the fourth in a series of decisions to make for the collegebound student. See the previous mission-critical decisions here, here, and here. Grab your planning grid here.

The best advice I have for teens who want to get into the college of their choice and earn the maximum amount of scholarship money is this: Approach high school like an athlete in training. Begin with the end in mind. Be strategic and intentional. Focus on the essentials. Don’t sweat the little stuff. Give yourself as much time as possible to get into the best academic shape of your life.

Every decision you make about your academics, your extra-curriculars, your summer break, and where you work should set you up to attain the goals you have for yourself post high school.

Mom’s and Dad’s job: To support your ambitions, not determine them.

And what about the teen who just isn’t sure, or focused, or motivated? (Certainly a large portion, especially early in high school!) Parents, you can best help by assuming the role of a coach who inspires, who disciplines, who provides the training, schedule, and equipment, and who red shirts an athlete who is just on her or his own timeline. (That might mean taking 5 years for high school or a gap year between graduation and college entrance.)

One thing a good coach doesn’t do is play the game for the team or drag a reluctant player through the motions.

With that framework in mind, let’s look at the second most important decision to make in 9^th grade (or whenever your child is ready to start assuming responsibilities for her or his high school career.)

As early as possible, determine the Advance Placement (AP) or College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) exams your collegebound teen should start preparing for. Scoring high on these exams earns your child college credit at the lowest price possible and ticks off credits toward a degree early. Almost all universities and colleges in the U.S. award credit (without charging you for this). The score your child must earn, and the amount of credit received, will be listed on the school’s website.

Because top scores are so valuable in terms of college admissions, college credit, and scholarship consideration, the astute student will give herself or himself several years to master the content and skills on the target exams. That means taking classes or using curriculum in 9^th and 10^th grade that lay a solid foundation for the content and skills on the intended CLEP or AP exam.

For example, if your child might eventually sit for the AP U.S. History exam, complete a solid high school-level American history course in 9^th or 10^th grade, then take an AP U.S. History course in 11^th or 12^th, followed by the AP U.S. History exam. Use materials in both the high school history course and the AP course aligned with the AP U.S. History course description available on the CollegeBoard’s AP Central website.

You might also want to invest in a few study aids or a vocabulary program aligned with the exams your child is targeting—nothing too intense, just some fun resources that get your kid familiar with the terms and key concepts in a particular subject area—long, slow training is better than a short, fast (cramming) approach to mastering material. Quizlet or Brainscape Academy both provide online AP flashcards or you can purchase print versions from Barron’s on Amazon, as examples. Documentaries are another excellent resource for laying down fundamental understanding in a subject area—it’s always advantageous to get a broad global view of a subject before diving into the specifics.

CLEP exams are shorter and easier than AP exams—most are simply a computer-based series of multiple-choice questions—so any collegebound student can succeed on these. Students can retake the CLEP exams until they get their desired score, and exams are taken at your convenience at a local test center. You register online for the exam (bypassing negotiating with a local school official as you must to sit for an AP exam). CLEP exams can also be taken during college (that’s when my sons used them). So they are a great option if the goal is merely to earn college credit. Course descriptions for CLEP exams can be found here.

The AP exams are a much better choice for students seeking scholarship money. (Because they are more rigorous, decision-makers regard them as a better measure of a student’s academic promise.)

How many AP or CLEP exams should your teen take in high school? That number should be driven by your teen’s interest in the subject matter and her or his willingness to prepare for the exam. It is better to take a few and score high than a lot and score middling (the exception is CLEP exams taken to earn credit and not intended to be reported for college admissions.)

I highly recommend the AP English Language exam for ALL collegebound teens because preparing for that will help your child learn to write well (the no. 1 goal for 9^th grade). And that skill is going to come in handy in multiple places during the college admissions process! AP English Language will also help your child learn to read critically and expand her or his vocabulary—all skills measured on the SAT and ACT entrance exams, so prepping for this one exam covers several essential bases for you.

What to Do in 10th Grade, Part 1

Take a look at these foundational courses at Aim Academy for 9th and 10th graders and their corresponding AP course:

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