Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

To date DS#1 has applied to nine colleges, been accepted at five and the remaining four should notify him in January to March time frame. One engineering school accepted him into their honor’s program and offered a nice scholarship — enough to cover a little more than 1/3 of each year’s bill. A university offered him their scholar’s scholarship which is a bit more than the other scholarship and it would cover about half of each year’s bill. We’ve been excited and elated to see the acceptance notices come in and to open the envelope and find a scholarship offer in there too. Last night DH and I were chuckling over the notices and offers. We have a lot to be happy about.

Twelve years ago this very week the public school was trying to convince us that our DS would never ever read and we should just accept that fact. They tried quite hard to convince us that there was nothing we could do to change the situation or remediate his severe reading disability. No, it wasn’t easy and it did take a lot of work and research but I still shudder to think where he would be if I had not done what I did. Sure, the critics can spout that he might have been fine if I had not intervened but you know what? That was a chance I was not willing to take! If I had to do it all over again I would still make the same choices I made for DS#1 his kindergarten year.

DH started to chuckle as we reminisced about IEP meetings and the crazy things the school’s experts said to us. “What is it?” I asked.

“Well, then you said you wanted to homeschool our boys and though I didn’t say it at the time my thought was—oh no, she’s gone crazy! How on earth is she going to stand to be with them all day. How are they ever going to get into college without a high school diploma? And now look at DS#1! Colleges are offering him (academic) scholarships and he’s been accepted to XYZ Engineering school which is not an easy school to get into either.” We continued to chat about this for the next hour, our pre-homeschooling thoughts and concerns, laughing at how naïve he was to be concerned about a homeschooler getting into college. We’re both glad we homeschooled the boys and I’ve enjoyed the journey.

All these years I thought DH’s major concern when I wanted to homeschool was whether our boys would be socialized but it was really the concern that without an official diploma, issued by an official education entity our boys would not get into college. Would you be surprised to learn that this concern still exists today in the homeschool community? It does.

Recently I was chatting with a friend in Pennsylvania who is moving to another state where homeschooling is ‘GASP!’ not regulated. She is placing her kids into the public school so they will have an official high school diploma, issued by an official educational entity. Honestly, I think it is a shame. It is not a matter of trusting herself to educate her kids but the belief that she cannot issue an official diploma that will be acceptable to colleges. She isn’t alone either. Again and again I hear from my fellow homeschoolers in the rather unregulated state of Delaware who believe that they must have an official diploma, issued by some official educational school entity. It is the reason they give. They want someone else to confirm that the kids have done enough to earn that credit in math or science or history, to assemble the high school transcript and, most importantly, to place the school’s official seal of approval on the transcript. Baloney.

Honey, the transcript is easy to assemble. An official raised seal can be purchased through many office supply stores or online, and you know the kids have done the work since you are the one telling the satellite school what the kids have done. Yes, the transcript was easy to put together this fall. The course description document, while quite time consuming, was actually really fun for me to assemble. It was like putting together a verbal scrapbook of all DS has worked through these past four years. Who better to put together the Guidance Counselor letter than the person who was with the student day-in-and-day-out these past 17 years? Finally the college’s also want a school profile and again, who better to describe what our school requires and how it operates then us? Obviously the package was positively received to date by five school’s. DS wll have a diploma, issued by us and it will be official.

In the near future I’ll share how I assembled our transcript, our course description document, our counselor letter and our homeschool profile.