High School at Home part 1

4 years ago when my oldest entered the 9th grade I had a panic attack.  How am I going to give him a high school education?  After all he needs to be prepared for college or the work place in order to succeed in life.  This is my responsibility.  I don’t want to fail after all this time & effort we have put in to school for the past 9 years.  Wow what a burden and responsibility!
Sort of makes you break out in a cold sweat doesn’t it? 
Our motto at the beginning was just one year at a time.  We weren’t set on homeschooling at first.  It was an experiment that we wanted to try and we would take it a year at a time.  This would be not different(hear me trying to convince myself?)  So we sat down and laid out a basic plan.  First stop our states graduation requirements & the local universities application requirements.  That was logical and pretty much laid out the basics for us.
So at least there was a plan—I felt much better about that(why I don’t know). 
Since Michael LOVES science, math & history. 
He chose to do more of those items than were required & the qualified as some of his electives. 

Our problem came with English.  We expected to be able to take a class taught by a local professor but the professor didn’t offer his class until Michael’s senior year. 
So often that was a last minute decision on our part each year when we found out that it wasn’t being offered. 
However, I do believe it is important for home school students to take a writing class outside the home their junior or senior year.  We found when it is only Mom or Dad reading the papers & essays it is hard for the student to really get a good idea of how they are doing.  More people will be reading high school students papers as they head to college so this is a good time to start that transition process.  It really gave confidence & showed Michael he COULD write even if he didn’t enjoy it.