Saint Monica’s Podcast | Episode 4 Selecting Curriculum
Getting Started Part 2: Selecting Curriculum
SHOW NOTES:
Your best resource will be a few local, established homeschoolers who know the ropes and requirements in your state. They will be able to point you to options that they have found helpful, especially local co-ops or hybrid programs.
Now that you’ve set your goals, determined your calendar, and started to find your personal teaching style, you’re ready to select a course of study.
Curriculum: all inclusive, integrated individual courses, individual complete courses (mix and match)
All-in-one Examples:
--Paideia
--Calvert
--Saxon math
For more Resources – Parousia Press and Saint Emmelia Ministries for Orthodox reviews and more information and resources.
2. Planning Individual Courses
--Mix and match! If you feel comfortable pulling together your own syllabus, you can create coursework for your high schoolers - especially in the humanities. We’ll discuss how to make sure your course satisfies the requirements of a Carnegie Unit (credit) in a future episode, but this is a great way to utilize the library and other free resources.
--Look up the high school graduation requirements in your state and make sure you are covering the correct numbers of history (some states will specify certain history courses,) literature/writing, science, math, foreign language, PE/health, and electives.
In our state, homeschools are considered private schools, and can set their own graduation requirements, but you do want to make sure that you include any expectations for college applications. If in doubt, call the admissions folks at any prospective colleges and ask them what they will be looking for.
Online classes: Memoria Press, Liberty Online
St. Raphael School | Classical Education in the Orthodox Tradition
Circe Institute | Cultivating Wisdom & Virtue
3. Finding Complete Subject Curriculum
--Great for Math and Science, foreign language, driver’s ed, electives
--Some of these will come with all of the needed books and equipment for the course.
Hybrid Schools and Supplemental Programs: The best and worst of both worlds.
Examples: Classical Conversation, Veritas (not the same as Veritas Press!)
Things to consider:
Typically cover humanities, perhaps with a math/science option
Some will have a fine arts, drama, or music focus as well.
Others run K-12 and may be tough to enter at middle/high school age due to not having laid the memory work foundations during the early years
Some will be more focused on a Protestant world view - this does not mean we should necessarily avoid them as Orthodox, but it may mean some extra conversations at home and extra explanations to the teachers and administrators. More discussion about this in a future episode.
Many will require you as parent to do some teaching or monitoring.
Often, they meet one or two days a week and give instruction for independent study for the rest of the week
Accountability!! And someone else tells your kids what to do - it’s nice to get some of that off of your plate.
Now you are stuck with someone else’s (probably traditional) school calendar.
We LOVE our hybrid school. We did all our homeschooling at home until the oldest was about 7th grade, then joined with a few other families to create a co-op which included the little guys as well as more challenging work for the older ones - and science, which always got pushed to “later” at home.
We now use a Classical Model hybrid with a couple of fantastic teachers who push the kids to read and write more than I would have the energy or time to organize and oversee at home with just us. We supplement with separate math, science, foreign language, art, and dance. The kids have learned to manage their own time and work - gradually and not without occasional pain and suffering and consequences. Overall, we were able to choose teachers with a solid Christian world-view, who are open to hearing about Orthodoxy and respect the various students’ faiths.
Something I feel strongly about is not shifting curriculum in the middle of the year on anything like a regular basis. Unless there is a safety issue or just a complete failure to connect with a child, try to stick it out at least to the end of the semester. A student can quickly learn that jumping from one thing to the next is an option if the first thing is uncomfortable. “Never make a life-altering decision between midterms and finals.”
Noelle
In our next episode, we’ll give you the inside scoop on Hybrid Schools.
If you like what you are hearing or know someone else who would benefit from these discussions, please share our podcast online. We’ll see you next time.
God bless, Noelle and Angie