The Best High School Guidance Counselor

Transcription

1 Parent Training a la Carte The Best High School Guidance Counselor Lee Binz, The HomeScholar

2 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 2 The Best High School Guidance Counselor By Lee Binz The HomeScholar This is NOT a free e-book! This book does NOT come with any resell rights whatsoever. If you received this e- book for free, from any source other than The HomeScholar, or are aware of its illegal distribution, please send an to: [email protected]. You may not alter this e-book in any way, shape, or form, and it must remain in this original PDF form with no changes to any of the links contained within. Copyright 2011 THE HOMESCHOLAR. All rights reserved. This book may be copied or printed by the original purchaser for personal or family use only. Such reproductions should not be sold or distributed. Except for the above stated authorization to photocopy, no part of this book may be reproduced by any means without written permission of the author. Printed in the USA Published by The HomeScholar; Marine View Drive SW Normandy Park, WA Disclaimer: Parents assume full responsibility for the education of their children in accordance with state law. In addition, parents assume full responsibility for the accuracy of all homeschool records

3 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 3 The average guidance counselor in a public high school has 350 students.. That means that those counselors don t usually know each student at all, and when a student has to go in for advice or for some consulting, the counselor knows nothing about them. Even if you are half as good as a high school guidance counselor, you will still be a hundred times more effective. What high school guidance counselors do? According to the statistics, 92% of high school guidance counselors will do these five things: 1. Use of college catalogues. You can find catalogues like the US News and World Report Ultimate College Guide at the library, buy it at the bookstore or at used book stores. If you know how to find your local public library, then you can do this. 2. Individualized counseling sessions. How many times have you been alone in a room with your child and talked about what might come in the future? If you ve done this before, then yes, you can do this. 3. Use computerized career information tools. I can pretty much say that you ve already used a computer before; so you can also do this. 4. Arrange for and interpret tests. Two websites that you need to get these things done are where you get information on the SAT, PSAT, AP, and CLEP tests, and where you get information on the ACT test. With these two websites, you can arrange for and interpret all the tests that you need to know about. 5. Use non-computerized career information. This means that you allow the child to learn naturally and allow them to have some work experience. If you do allow your child to do these things when they re sixteen or seventeen, then you can do this as well.

4 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 4 The things that most high school guidance counsel does are the things that you are completely capable of doing. You have everything under control, and you have a good feel for what a high school guidance counselor does. When I was getting my hair done one time, I got to listen to two moms talk about what it was like to deal with guidance counselors in our local public school. One mom was upset because her son was struggling with math, and he had almost failed Pre-algebra. The mom was concerned and asked the guidance counselor to place him in Pre-algebra again because she knew he didn t understand things, and she didn t want him to move on and be lost in Algebra. The counselor insisted that he had to stay with his age-mates and needed to not fail a class; therefore, he was going to be moved on to the next class. The mom thought that she had no choice because this was a professional educator, and she had to deal with what the guidance counselor said. By the second week of school when her son was becoming more distraught, she asked him how math was going. He said that he wasn t getting it and that he didn t understand what the symbols meant. They went to talk to the guidance counselor and they found out that the guidance counselor had accidentally placed the child in a Pre-calculus class instead of following that Pre-algebra class. I can guarantee that a homeschooler is not going to make that kind of mistake. We tend to be nervous about that to begin with. We know our child and we know what our child is capable of, so there s no way we ll be skipping through three levels of math and putting them in something that s way over their head. Another time, I heard a conversation about a guidance counselor from a homeschooler who was thinking about putting her child back in a public school.

5 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 5 She went to talk to the guidance counselor and told the school that her child had finished this amount of math and was ready for Calculus. The guidance counselor told her that the Calculus class was completely full for the year so her child was not going to have Calculus for their senior year. Instead, the child was placed into a Business Math class. Business Math is a fine math class; but, if you re expecting to take Calculus, it really doesn t look very good in your transcript. That does not happen to a homeschooler because our classes are never full. We may be scared of our classes, but the class will never be too full. We can find any curriculum to teach any class that we need. What you need to take away from the reality of guidance counselors is that it really is the love for your child that s going to ensure your success; that you care deeply about what is in their best interests, so you re not going to hurt them. We are also deeply invested in their success because we have this financial investment. We know that if we were to boot it and not do a good job, we would be financially responsible for that student for the rest of their life. We also have that huge emotional investment in their success because we want them to do well. The high school guidance counselors do those things to the best of their abilities; but, they don t actually know the child. You don t need to feel hesitant in your own abilities, and don t feel like it would be better in a different situation where they have an official guidance counselor. It s you and you re the best person for the job.

6 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 6 Continuum of being a parent In the beginning, we were simply the parent, and then became the teacher. Later in high school, we become the mentor; the person that helps the person through things that come up. And then later on, we become the friend. My job right now with my own children is to become the friend. Sometimes I will mentor, but only when asked. The parental role completely shifts to a project manager. As the project manager, you re not actually doing the heavy lifting; you re just telling people what to do and when to do it. That s what your job is as the guidance counselor. You need to know that children will change their mind. They may change their mind from something like chocolate ice cream to vanilla ice cream, and that s not going to matter. But if they change their mind from wanting to be an automechanic to an automotive engineer, that is completely different. Make sure that you use your role as a project manager to take into consideration all of the different ways that they might change their mind. One of the things that you can do is to prepare for college, just in case they change their mind, and to educate so that you can have maximum flexibility. If they decide to be something completely different from what they originally wanted, they can do that because you have given them college preparation that s needed. Whether they decide to use all of that preparation or not, at least they have the flexibility to do whatever they change their mind to do. How to provide for college preparation? Plan their classes, arrange their tests, help them search for colleges, prepare their records, and guide them through the college applications. All of these things are not hard; they re just new. The more you listen to this class and the

7 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 7 more you absorb, the more you ll think that this isn t hard and that you can do this. First, think about what homeschool records are going to be required. Colleges definitely want to see a transcript; sometimes, employers will want to see a transcript. Second, have a reading list because that reading list can help you fill out course descriptions. It can do a lot of good as far as colleges wanting additional information, and the reading list will provide that for you. Keeping receipts from the library can help a lot with your reading list, as they can show you all the books on your reading list. You also want to have course descriptions. A course description is just a one paragraph, descriptive essay. Keep your course descriptions limited to a simple one paragraph. Colleges also want a list of activities and awards. They will usually have a form to fill up for that so you can get away without having an activity and awards list on your own. The problem with that, though, is that you might tend to forget a lot of things; so it s very helpful to have a list ready to help you remember what they ve done over time. If you have a child who s in junior high, you ll know what is going to be required from you, as the guidance counselor, at that time; you know the jobs, you know that you have the ability to do it, you know that you re motivated by the love for your child, you know that your role is shifting, and you know that the homeschool records required are the transcript, reading list, course descriptions, and activities and awards list. Since you know all these things, there s nothing for you to be afraid of anymore. You re already engaged in the process and you re already thinking it through. If

8 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 8 you re planning ahead like this, it can really go a long way to make sure that everything is going to work well in the end. Planning High School Courses It will help you if you go over the planning guide every year so that you know what they have covered and what they haven t, and you can make sure to fill in any gaps that show up. One of the problems that I see fairly commonly is that homeschoolers will try hard to do such a great job in educating their children that they end up doing too much. You want to avoid doubling up by looking at the planning guide and looking at each class you need to do each year. You ll notice from the planning guide that there s only one task that you need to do each year. Make sure that you prepare for college admissions tests in high school. The first thing that you can do is to provide a quality education and continue educating your children to their ability level. Your children will need some legible handwriting because the college admissions tests do ask for a handwritten essay that the child will write in the school testing environment. It doesn t have to be cursive, and it doesn t have to be perfect. You have to continue teaching math every year, as it will help them with test preparation. All of the college admissions tests do have math and as long as you continue to teach math each year at their ability, that will help you a lot. Each of the tests also includes reading; so, make sure that you cover reading and the ability to understand what they read. You want them to learn how to write a quick essay so that they could write that twenty-five minute essay for test preparation. Vocabulary development will also help. I have an article on my

9 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 9 website called Play Your Way to a Great Vocabulary ; it has a lot of outside the box ideas for vocabulary development. Freshman Year There is one job for your student when you have a freshman and that job is to think about college. Freshman year means 9 th grade, and the average freshman student will start as a fourteen or fifteen year old. As the parent, you want to think and learn about how to homeschool high school. You also want to think about some college prep classes. Look at the planning guide chart and just look through where you are on that. There are core classes and classes that aren t exactly the core. Core classes will vary by family and usually it will be math, science, history, and English. But there are some classes that one family will consider as a core, and others won t. Some families will see that Bible classes are important every year; other families will say Logic is important. Make sure that you cover all the core classes at a minimum at freshman year. Remember that test preparation is the good education of your children and math is key. As long as you have those two things, you don t have to worry about test preparation during freshman year because you are doing test preparation while you are covering reading, writing, math, and vocabulary. As a freshman guidance counselor, one thing that can help you is to start your transcript and your course descriptions. I recommend that people start that in the spring rather than in the fall because sometimes things will change. You might start out intending to teach Latin and then drop that and decide not to do it after all. By starting later can leave off the classes that didn t make the cut.

10 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 10 It s impossible to be behind in freshman year because you can regroup all sorts of troubles as you ve got three more years for high school. Do your best and plan ahead just in case something happens in the next few years of school. But in the worst case scenario, you really can t be behind with a freshman. Sophomore Year Sophomore year is a time when you want to prepare for college. Sophomore year falls in the 10 th grade, and usually kids will begin their sophomore year when they re either fifteen or sixteen years old. That s when you want to have a map of your college prep courses so you can prepare and plan. Be sure to evaluate that plan every year and get the big picture of covering the core. Sophomore year is when you think about starting a foreign language. Colleges will ask for two or three years of a foreign language and they want you to have one foreign language. If you start during sophomore year, you can have one year during sophomore year, one year in junior year, and you can either drop it or you can continue it in senior year. If you started in sophomore year and the foreign language was a total disaster, even the curriculum was horrible and the student wasn t going to tolerate it anymore, then that will still give you the opportunity and the time to switch to a different foreign language and try again. Another big key about sophomore year is to take the PSAT for fun. The PSAT is like an SAT practice test and is usually the first college admissions test that students take. It doesn t count for much when kids take it as a sophomore; it s really just for them to practice for when the PSAT is for real in junior year. I don t usually recommend that kids take the PSAT any earlier than sophomore year because the PSAT does have some geometry and it s pretty unusual to

11 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 11 find a sophomore who s already passed geometry. It doesn t count in terms of scholarships; rather, it s meant to be practice for the SAT so that they could see what it s like. During sophomore year when preparing for college, you might be called upon to make some decisions about community college for your family. It s a good thing to do some research about community college. If your state allows for dual enrollment, which means that your state allows your child to go to community college while they re still in high school, then you have to make that decision late in sophomore year. Just like last year, you want to spend some time doing your transcript and course descriptions. Do this in the spring each year, so you only have to write course descriptions for classes you actually complete. If you have a child who consistently scores pretty well on standardized tests, there s a possibility that your child might become a national merit scholar later on. They probably are quite involved with math; so, sophomore year might be a good time to begin studying for the SAT test. For study guides, I recommend the one that s by the Princeton Review. I just find those study guide materials a little bit more of an easy read for teenagers. It s an added incentive to get your transcript done because your transcript may be needed to get a huge discount on your driver s insurance. When your children turn sixteen, they may get a good student discount if you provide your homeschool transcript. With 10 th grade, it s almost impossible to be behind because there are two more years of high school going; it s not really difficult to catch up. If you get these things done, then you re well-prepared for everything.

12 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 12 Junior Year Junior year is when you have to find a college. Junior year is 11 th grade, and it will usually begin when the child is sixteen or seventeen years old. This is when you want to make sure that, not only have you covered the core classes, but you also have made sure that you started foreign language. There are other classes that are often required by colleges; but, they re not really core classes. You can still get them done during junior and senior year; so, it s not difficult, but now s a good time to be thinking about the other classes beyond the core that you need to do. Make sure that your child has two credits of P.E.; you might want them to have one credit in junior year and one credit in senior year. If you ve been doing it all along, that s fine as well. For fine arts, colleges usually like to see at least one credit of fine arts so junior year is a good time to have that. Sometimes that will be one credit in one kind of fine art, either music, art, theater, or dance. Other times, it will be just a survey of fine arts. It could be a fine arts class that you pulled together. It s a good time to think about electives and what electives your students enjoy. The things that they do for fun are often the things that you can put on their transcripts as electives. You might want to consider spending some time trying to find some private scholarships. Most of the money that you get when you get into college is going to come from the college itself. But there is a certain amount of private scholarship money available. Apply to different companies that have nothing to do with the college that your child goes to. Often they will allow you to apply to those private scholarships during junior year.

13 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 13 I spent our junior year trying to find these private scholarships that my sons could apply to and that was all they did for our writing plan that year. Their writing was applied to scholarship after scholarship; it was college scholarship writing; but, they did it for high school credit. There are some scholarships for younger students; but, they re a little bit harder to find. My kids were a little more motivated to do their writing when they saw a tangible benefit like college scholarship money. The transcripts and course descriptions are going to be needed; so, make sure to work on that. It would be good to do your transcripts during fall as well as spring of junior year because you might want to take the transcript with you to college fairs. You might want to bring one of your course descriptions as well and get some important feedback from the colleges. Essay writing really is a key skill. They re going to have that handwritten essay during the college admissions test; but, also that is a skill that they re going to use for the rest of their lives. Essay writing is used constantly on college tests and applying for jobs. Even as parents at home, that is something that we use all the time. If you have a junior, make sure to locate some college application essay questions and have them write those essays for practice. Just go to the college website and search for freshman admission, then locate where that application is. Somewhere on that application is a statement that they should write an essay about something. You can use essays as part of your English program for junior year, and they will be able to write that as a junior, but those essays from colleges don t

14 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 14 usually change from year to year; so, when they become a senior, they might dust it off a little bit and use that same essay. Finding a college comes with a stepwise process that needs to happen in order to find a college. If you can pull your act together during junior year, you can be much more successful and less stressed. Step 1: Make sure that your child takes the PSAT in October of junior year. The hard part of the PSAT is that it s only offered one time-- only in October. Some schools will have you sign up for it in September and some will have you sign up for it the previous June. It s easy to track down if you simply call the public high school near you. The hard part is that sometimes we will forget. The PSAT will put your kids in the running for the national merit scholarship. If you look at PSAT materials, PSAT is just the first name of the test; the second test is NMSQT which means National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. When you take the PSAT in 11 th grade, you are eligible to win the national merit scholarship. The PSAT will also ask your students certain questions about themselves-- like what grades they re getting, what classes they re taking for this year, what classes they re taking in high school, etc. That s one of the reasons it s helpful to show the PSAT their transcript. The test will also ask them questions like what their interests in the future are, and it can help with what their major is going to be a little bit. Step 2: Locate a college fair. When you go to a college fair, there might be tons of colleges that are there, and it might be the colleges coming to you instead of you going to them. It s much like a homeschool convention: each booth has a different college in it so you can go door to door and get to know a lot of colleges.

15 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 15 After the college fair, think about the colleges that you met there, and make sure to plan some college visits. Your goal is to find a college and there are too many colleges out there; you go to college fairs to make that first cut and go visit some colleges to whittle it down to a reasonable number of colleges that you want to apply to. Try to get to that place where you have just enough colleges to apply to, but not so many that it s impractical for you to do that. The national average number of colleges to apply to is six; my children applied to four. Make sure that you do have a wide variety of colleges in public and private, and do not just go with one. During junior year, you have to weigh the difference of the SAT and the ACT. When you apply to college, colleges will usually accept both. If either test is fine, then you can use a different measurement to decide which one is best. What I recommend is that you take a sample in each; locate the sample tests of the SAT and the ACT and give those tests to your child while they re at home. Weigh those two tests and compare them. Focus on the test that makes your child look like a genius. One-third of kids will do better on the SAT, one-third of kids will do better on the ACT, and a third of the population doesn t really matter which one you choose. You don t have to choose the test that the whole school is doing; you get to choose the test that makes your child appear smarter. Once you ve determined which test makes your child look smarter, then that s the test you can study for. They study for the test during the time when fall starts and until the spring; but, spring is when you want them to take the test. They have to register for the test; so, some planning has to take place. Have them registered for either test in the

16 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 16 winter of junior year so that they could take it in the spring. If you have a choice, I prefer having them take the test in March of junior year. That way if they don t do well, you can still have them take it again in June of junior year. There are some other tests that you might want to think about if you have a junior; these are the subject tests. Subject test information is available on There are some colleges that will have a preference between the SAT and the ACT. It would be helpful if you could find out which one is best for your child. There are some colleges that will strongly encourage requiring an AP test or a subject test. If you could find out during junior year, they can take those tests during spring of junior year, and you ll be able to meet that requirement with very little inconvenience. Think about which specific tests you child needs because it will depend on the college. That s one of the reasons why finding a college is such an important task for junior year, because you need to find that college so that you could find out what their policy is on the SAT or ACT and other requirements. When you have a junior, you want to think specific thoughts about how your child can get in to that college. Check whether your child meets the college requirements, and make sure that you can check off each thing that may be required. Once you ve identified the college that they may want to go to, go to the college website and look for their homeschool admission policy. You should be able to come up with any unusual requirements that they have. There are three different kinds of colleges that you want to make sure that your child applies to. They are called the reach, the fit, and the safety. A reach

17 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 17 school means that it would be quite a stretch for your child to meet their requirements. A fit school means that your child is there in the 50% of all the other kids that go to that school. A safety school is a school where your child exceeds expectations significantly. What you don t want to do is have your child only apply to one kind. If you eliminate all reach schools and your child could go to Harvard or Yale, then they may not be able to get there if they don t apply. At the same time, if you have a really bright child and they re only applying to Ivy League schools, all of the other kids that apply to Ivy League schools are also bright. At a certain point, it becomes a flip of a coin as to who gets in. If the flip of the coin doesn t go your way on all that he applies to, he s not able to go to college. Make sure that your child always has some reach, some fit, and some safety schools because they could be rejected by some. Remember that before summer happens, you want to know where they re going to apply in the fall. Junior year is a pivotal year when there are a lot of tasks that need to happen. One of those things is to have some outside documentation of your homeschool. For some colleges, that s as easy as taking the SAT or ACT, so for some kids and some college situations, all the further that you need to look is just to take the college admissions test. There are some colleges that will want to see some subject tests. If they want those tests, it s good to give subject tests right after they ve completed the subject. If a college wants to see a subject test in history, you want to take the American History subject test right after they finish American history. There are also other kinds of outside documentation that you can plan for, too. Community college is outside documentation that can provide some proof that your child knows what they know. AP tests are another way; CLEP tests are

18 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 18 often a good way to provide outside documentation that students can do. They can do those tests to demonstrate knowledge that they have in certain fields. There are some colleges that will take the CLEP tests and will grant you college credit. Even if they don t grant college credit for it, you can still use that CLEP test for outside documentation. Senior Year Senior year is when you apply to college. Senior year is 12 th grade, and children will usually start senior year when they re seventeen or eighteen years old. It s not unusual for a child to graduate as a senior when they re twenty years old; so, if they start seventeen or eighteen, that s well within normal. Applying to college is a year long process. With senior year, cover the core classes and also check for those non-core classes that we checked last time. At that point, you want to decide if you have any holes. Senior year is the time when you want to fill in any holes that came up. If you have accidentally left a class off, you don t have to worry. Pay attention to it now because you can fill that hole during senior year. To find those holes, use the planning guide so that you know which of the classes are generally required. You also want to look at the actual colleges where you plan to apply. Sometimes they ll ask for unique things. I saw one college at a college fair asking for the fine arts class to be only one kind of fine art-- either music, art, theater, or dance but not blended together. You want to know that when you apply during fall of senior year so that you can make any adjustments.

19 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 19 Senior year is also the time to fill in any holes with tests. During junior year, maybe your child failed the SAT or ACT or maybe you forgot. If you can still sign up and take that test during the first couple of months of senior year, then you ll be able to fill that hole before they apply to colleges. The earlier you recognize that there s a problem, the earlier that problem can be solved-- if you reach out for help. Applying to College The biggest piece of information about senior year is that you begin the process of applying to college on the very first day you start school during senior year. If you can start the college application process during the first day of senior year, you ll still get it done on time even if it takes you two to three months. Probably the most difficult part of the application is the essay; colleges may have one to three essays that they require. Sometimes colleges may have the same essay, as it s fairly common for them to have the same essay. If you apply to four schools and each of them has three essays, that doesn t mean you re going to end up writing twelve different essays; usually there will be some overlap. The problem with the essays, though, is that they are self reflective, technically perfect, and they have to tell the college who your child is as a student and demonstrate for the college how well your child communicates. The problem with that is that it s hard for teenagers to be self reflective; technically perfect is something that is difficult and intimidating and it takes a lot of time. Sometimes it s okay for you to put school aside for awhile if you need to do that instead, or use their application essay as their only English program for that time period. The college application is a process; it s not the college application moment. It s kind of like doing your taxes, which you can take it out all of a sudden. Make

20 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 20 sure to put that on your calendar, and it does have complicated application forms. They will ask for lists of volunteer hours, reading lists, and activities and awards. That s why we want to keep homeschool records. One of those pieces is that letter of recommendation. They want to see a letter of recommendation from somebody who knows the child well. It can help you if the person who writes that also writes well and, if possible, knows your child well in an academic setting. It doesn t mean that they have to be a teacher. One of my good friends at church wrote the academic letter of recommendation for my children. The next thing to do is to prepare your homeschool records. Transcripts are required, and your homeschool transcript is perfectly fine; but, you also want to submit any outside transcripts. Course descriptions are often required; it s just a paragraph of what you did, what you used, and a description of how you graded it. Colleges also want to see test scores; so, make sure to submit test scores with your records. The deadline for applying to colleges is equally inflexible as compared to the deadline for your taxes. The problem is that the deadlines vary by college; that s why I encourage people to start their applications on the first day of school in senior year; no matter what the college application deadline is, you can get that turned in on time. The other deadline that comes up is for the FAFSA. The FAFSA is for financial aid, and it is to be filled out in January. I recommend that you fill it out on January 1 st during senior year of your oldest child and then continue filling that FAFSA out every January 1 st of every single year while you have a child either a senior in high school or in college. You must continue doing that until your youngest child finishes college. The website for that is

21 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 21 The main reason that s important is because financial aid money is first come first served; so, make sure that you are the first one to get the money. The other deadline you may need to know is May 1 st, which is the date that colleges give everybody to reply when they give an offer of acceptance. Graduation Checklist Make sure that you order a diploma. Homeschool guidance counselors can get it at The transcript is easy for you to make; you can get and get the help that you need there. There s also help available on the Gold Care Club as well. Plan some sort of a graduation party. A lot of people will have a senior portrait taken, a cap and gown, a graduation invitation or graduation announcement, or even a big ceremony. Whatever you do, some sort of a party or celebration is a really good idea. You can experience a lot of the success from just being in tune with the things you need to do by taking this class. That success can come to you in terms of scholarship and admission. By applying early in September, you re going to be the one who s heaving this huge sigh of relief as your friends frantically scramble to get their applications done. Question and Answer Question: How does the guidance counselor motivate the students to do their work, or is it too late? Answer: You could turn them in for a new model as that worked for some people. There are no perfect children in the world; even people that have very compliant children will also have some struggles motivating. I do have an article called Lack of Motivation in Teens on my website.

22 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 22 Sometimes a lack of motivation indicates that your child is very bright, possibly gifted, and is bored in school because boredom can do that. Sometimes they re bored not because they are extremely bright, but because it doesn t seem to apply to them. In that situation, try to get more delight directed learning into their homeschool and see if that can help. If they re interested in boy scouts and they re motivated to do that, then you d be able to have them get a lot of their credits through their boy scouts activities. Another thing to remember about lack of motivation is perhaps they are very sleepy. Teenagers can require up to ten hours of sleep or more each day. They also tend to get too plugged into technology so they have more trouble sleeping than people who are not as tied into technology. If you can work on getting the right amount of sleep, then that can help. Make sure that there s no technology in their bedroom: no phone, no cell phone, no TV, no computer, and that their bedroom is just for sleeping. Worst case scenario, you still have somebody who is showing some lack of motivation. Try to go the route we did when our children were much younger and go for cause and effect. If you do not get your schoolwork done, then you will not leave the house. Sometimes they ll be motivated by whatever it is that you need to take away. Question: Does taking community college classes add to or increase the value of a homeschool transcript for colleges? Answer: No, it does not. It is outside documentation of some other things; so, it is possible to bring something good to the mix. However, there are also colleges out there that really do not want students to take classes at the community college; they don t value them for different reasons.

23 The Best High School Guidance Counselor! 23 Sometimes it s because they don t feel like the credits will transfer to their college; sometimes they don t like the lower academic level of the community college. If you have a very bright child, community college sometimes seems like the answer; but, the very competitive schools tend to look down on community college more than others, so in that sense it becomes less of a fit.