Panelist 5

MARRIED 30 YEARS, MOTHER OF 3 CHILDREN

3 COLLEGE GRADS (2 BERKELEY, 1 DAVIS); 1 AT HOLY CROSS SEMINARY

HOMESCHOOLED FOR 15 YEARS

Interviewer:  Can you tell us a little more about your family?

M:  We have three children, one girl, two boys. We thought public school would be just fine. But I feel like education and academics have changed dramatically over the past 30 to 50 years. I saw my mother’s first and second grade primers and they were like what is taught in 5th grade right now. I mean, it's incredibly different, how the education system has been dumbed down. So our oldest was learning three-syllable words, but they were only teaching one-syllable words at the school, and now it’s February and I’m thinking they should run out of one-syllable words soon and move on, but they didn't. So I just was very discouraged, and pulled them out.

[Another Panelist]:  That’s where it is today.

M:  It really is, and for me it was a matter of time being wasted. They get up in the morning, you have to dress them, feed them, get them out the door, put them on the bus, spend this time getting them to class where Johnny can’t behave so no one can pay attention to actually teaching, and then, oh wow, we had five minutes of learning.

Interviewer: So basically you started with public education and then the academics made you decide to homeschool?

M: Yes. I didn't decide to homeschool for spiritual reasons. Our spiritual life was separate from our academic life. Then I realized our academic life just had to come home, and home was all about the spiritual life, so that was a natural order for us.

Interviewer: And how did you approach high school?

M: In high school our oldest was bored, and started studying on her own. She was a National Merit scholar. She guided herself through; she did not go to junior college except for Spanish one summer. She also took some online classes with Northwestern University. But the majority of her work was self-directed studies at home. I just found a picture of her and my neighbor’s daughter cutting a cow’s heart open on my dining room table with the eyeballs and everything next to them. That girl, our neighbor, is a nurse now, flying on emergency helicopters.

Interviewer:  So, your oldest went straight into Berkeley from homeschooling, without junior college, but your boys went to junior college before University?

M:  Yes, I didn’t know anything about this "junior college into college" business. We happened to live near a junior college. One of my sons was in love with astronomy, so I said, "They have astronomy classes. Let’s see if we can get you in there." So, we enrolled him in junior college astronomy in high school – but we didn't think he would do that great, so we enrolled him pass/fail. He ended up with an A, and the teacher was so upset because he couldn't give him the A, but could only give him a "pass." So that experience gave me the idea of sending my boys more and more to the junior college for the things I don’t do and don’t know. Because I know my gifts, and math isn’t one of them. So they went into junior college during high school.

Interviewer:  And your boys ended up doing their first two years of college at the junior college while they were in high school, and then transferred to the 4-year university as juniors?

M:  Yes, both of them transferred in as juniors before they were 18. The local junior college was practically in our back yard. It was very convenient to send them there for classes. We started off with just one class, added more, and pretty soon they were full time. Basically, they did junior college for high school. One transferred into Berkeley and was there for 2 years. He just got accepted to MIT Sloan for a master’s. My second son graduated from junior college with an AA by the end of highschool, and then transferred to UC Davis. He then went to Holy Cross and is graduating from seminary next year.

Interviewer:  Is there anything you learned or would do differently?

M: Something we faced, which was a homeschooling surprise – we thought we had this thing together – was that when he transferred to Berkeley, my A student got a D in Calculus. [Sigh.] That was a fun Thanksgiving. “You got a D?!”  There are things called “weeder classes.” They are weeding out the people who don’t belong in medicine. Don’t ever let your children take a weeder class in college. Then they come home with a D. It ruined his GPA for the whole time at Berkeley. That’s the homeschooling disadvantage – you don’t know these things.

[Another Panelist]:  Nowadays some people are starting to know that. A friend whose son went to Berkeley for biomedical engineering knew that ahead of time, so she had him do all of those classes at junior college and then re-take them at Berkeley where they are much more difficult. He had a class where they were so impacted that he had the lab one semester but there was no room in the lecture, and he had to take the lab without the lecture. The following semester he did the lecture.

M:  That’s why they have the weeder classes, all the classes are so impacted. However, during the junior college experience, my children learned how to get into a class. You sign up but the class is full. They learned to go and sit in the class and wait until everybody else dropped out, and then they would get added. It was a good lesson, even though it doesn’t always work. They got into more classes just by showing up for 3 weeks. Go be persistent, that’s what life’s about.

Questions from the Audience for the College Prep Panel

Audience:  How do you recognize a weeder class?

G:  They’re mostly math and science and they would be labeled "Intro Calculus," "Intro this," and "Intro to that"; they’re huge lecture classes. Chem, Physics, those kinds of things.

Audience:  There’s an issue that’s come up in our homeschooling community just because now for the first time there are people thinking that they’re going to try to homeschool high school. This issue is mostly about moms homeschooling boys, and wondering if that’s the best thing for their boys because they have conflicts with them. What you do with that, when boys are becoming men, and you are trying to make a commitment to homeschooling but thinking that they need to do some intentional things?

G:  What do you mean intentional?

Audience:  Well, like what do we need to do, do we need to make sure that they have things they’re doing with other adults that they’re accountable to, do we need to make sure they have some kind of intentional internship, do they need to be taught by dads…

M:  So it’s not just mom nagging at home all the time which is what we always hear. I have boys who were like that. And if they’re not competing with someone else, a boy is not going to be happy with mom. If mom’s going to be the teacher for one guy home alone, it’s tough. I would not recommend that, at least with my boys. Boys need something to compete with and you don’t want it to be their mom.

G:  I think that’s where junior college can come in handy, or an online class, or a co-op type of class. It’s really good to have other people involved. We also got that with speech and debate – that was a really huge thing because there was so much parent involvement in coaching them. I also think high school is a time where they need to start owning what they’re doing too, and we need to either accept what they are going to do or not do, or find them another way. So, less fighting and more just letting the natural consequences happen.

Audience:  So my oldest is only 14 but I’ve heard this from older people and I’ve tried it a few times and it works. So I want to hear if you experienced this but I’ve heard that teenage boys, 13, 14, have just got a lot of hormonal energy going on and they need to be exhausted and so I had a friend who sent her kid to work on roofs with a roofer friend of mine and he came home happy. And I think sometimes maybe – but I wanted to hear what you’d say – is there a physical element to that? They just need to be digging ditches or something? Just to expend the energy?

G:  Yes!

M:  Yes – literally – have them dig ditches! We had a place on our property – it was adobe – which is what they made houses out of in the old days. And one day both of my sons got shovels and they started digging. So it started off a little hole and the hole ended up almost half the size of this room, even though it was like digging cement. And it would be literally like this: "Where are you going, son?" "To dig." "Great! Bye! Have a great time!" They would go out there and just dig, dig, dig, just to do something. And we have all these stories about it and they always had so much fun. If you don’t have land you can’t really do that. But they need to do something to let off steam, something totally physical. Women can sit around and read books – you know some of us are physical – but guys have to move. One of the great tips that I got was memorization and walking with boys. Want to memorize a poem or something? Go for a walk and memorize it while you’re walking. The brain, and the walking, and the memorization go together. That is also how I got the boys to memorize poetry – by moving and walking. Moving is very important.

J:  Oh, we’re supposed to actively engage our 14-year-old boys? Whoops!

Interviewer:  Anyone else have any advice?

G:  I felt like grades 7 through 9 were much harder with my boys than high school.

M:  We had all these great papers I find like, "Should we homeschool next year? Give me 8,000 reasons why." And then he had to give me one reason, why would I do this again. Yeah, I have the cutest papers.

Audience:  I’m not sure if you mentioned this, but I've heard that some people just take the California High School Proficiency Exam at 16-years-old so they’re not finishing all the high school credits when they’re taking the tests. This is the California CHSPE.

G:  It’s so they can go full-time in junior college without graduating from high school.

Audience:  Or they have to take the high school credits?

Interviewer:  The state recognizes the CHSPE as the equivalent of a high school diploma, so if you pass the CHSPE as a minor, you can begin enrolling in junior college full time as a minor without any unit restrictions, and it also enables you to work as a minor without needing to get a work permit. If you do NOT take the CHSPE, you can attend junior college as a minor but you are viewed as a high school student in 'dual enrollment' and you are limited to usually 2 classes and 10 units per semester. Also, if you have not passed the CHSPE you are required to get a work permit to be employed as a minor, and your school principal determines the number of hours you are permitted to work. We’ll discuss all this in greater detail in another presentation tomorrow specifically about the CHSPE.

G:  I wanted to throw in something I forgot to say earlier. I tried to get my kids to take a gap year between high school and college. Not all of them wanted to do that, but the ones that did, I think it was really good for them.

Audience:  Quickly, did anyone have problems with their kids filling out the FAFSA and having huge blunders?

G:  We made so many mistakes with that. It’s a nightmare.

E:  I did all my kids’ and now I’m down to 7.  I just didn’t feel that they were ready to do it themselves—an 18-year-old and potentially $20,000. I’m not going to take a chance.

M:  The first time around, the FAFSA is overwhelming. But once you do one, it gets easier.