Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Possible (high) school option

Our school only goes up to 7th grade. And I have been thinking a lot about what comes next. I have always said that when Aiden is 10 we will do a tour of all the schools in the area and let him choose (after explaining all the consequences with each type etc).

So now I had an idea and I'd love to hear if you think it would work/be feasible:

What about a homeschooling collaboration? So if I homeschool my kids and a few other parents of "smart" kids homeschool too but we all get together each day to school them together (different ages, different LOGs) - using our combined abilities, areas of interest and resources to help the kids learn what interests them in a topical format as deep as they want to go, using the main subjects to cover the theme (maths, science, biology, geography, history, language, literature etc). Then we could assist them to go where they need to learn what they want and when they are ready we could help them do any of the three available school leaving exam sets that they want to. We could also extend into distance university courses quite easily like this.

It would fill the learning, the friends need, the learning to work together etc etc.

Could it work? Or am I being too naive about it all? Would other parents put in the same effort as I would?

thoughts? opinions? ideas?

I think some homeschoolers do that. I know my school district has a program for homeschoolers where they provide space for families who homeschool to meet and work together (and maybe the district provides some info on curriculum and such, but I am less sure about that).

try searching the term 'homeschool co-op'

It is certainly possible to homeschool high school. You'll know your boys in quite a different way by the time they are high school age. Sometimes there is an extracurricular activity that they so love that academic fit takes a back seat.

A common route in the US for high school aged homeschoolers is for the Homeschooling Parent to declare the child to be 'dual enrolled' and assign some work themselves and get the rest from our local Community Colleges or local University, for credit or as an auditor.

Is there something like a Community College system near where you live?

Smiles,
Grinity

Hi Grinity,

We don't have community colleges here AFAIK. I will definitely look into homeschool co-ops thank you

It's a huge gap here - and the few schools that may make some adjustments to the learning are VERY expensive. So many parents from the school keep saying "I wish there was a high school option that would suit my child, where they can keep learning like at our school". I intend to allow each boy to choose for themselves their type of high school, but I need to be prepared for whatever that choice brings.

Of course if we end up home schooling while still in Foundation phase or Primary School... well then I may need it sooner of course! hehehe

thanks for the comments and suggestions

Maybe now is the time to go into business as a 'micro-school' for High school aged kids, so that by the time your children are ready you'll have a whole community for them all set up?

Best Wishes,
Grinity

If you aren't already aware of them, there are some great resources here:

The Kahn Academy

The Hippocampus

Academic Earth

The Annenberg Foundation

Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)

The OER Commons

You might be especially interested in this subset of the OER resources.

It would be easy to use these to set up a co-op high school. There is enough there to get you started and give you some resources to build from, and incorporating these kinds of online resources takes some of the pressure off of the parents to develop complete courses, and allows for more flexibility in scheduling, because students can access the bulk of the content instruction at their convenience. IRL or group online chat facilitated discussion sections once or twice a week in combination with a message board for discussion questions and sharing writing and projects would help round out the co-op experience.

This is a great idea Grinity!!

With enough parents with the right backgrounds, you could schedule "lectures" during the week and the kids could show up for the ones they needed.

You could rent class B office space or make use of local university spare classrooms or even get corporations to donate space.

You would need a core group of teachers, but that would be taken care of by tapping charter funds.

wow I like this idea!! I will need to find out if I can do it as a homeschool set-up or a business instead of an actual school though - to set up a private school here is insane with all the red tape etc. I am definitely going to look into it properly.

My current business is sort-of already halfway there I guess, and this would kind of be a natural extension

Unfortunately here private schools get ZERO funding - not one cent. That's why it's so expensive. The concept of Gifted here has literally been wiped from our vocabularies, it's a taboo topic just about, as the state and everyone scrambles to try and get generations of kids, and adults, basically educated in the aftermath of our history (apartheid etc).

I will look into donations of space and more but I seriously doubt it will be forthcoming unless someone happens to understand gifted and is not tied to too many company policies or politics.

Go go go! And yes, there will always be roadblocks. They serve the needed function of testing to see if that's really your heart's desire.

smiles,
Grinity