Sunday, February 8, 2009

West Virginia homeschoolers

This article about homeschooling in my home county of Raleigh County in West Virginia might be of interest to some of you WV homeschoolers.

I think it's funny that the lady from REACH they are talking to starts off one of her quotes with "That's the beauty of homeschooling..." When my son and I are doing schoolwork and we do something that he wouldn't be able to do if he was at a public school, I say "That's the beauty of homeschooling."

I say that quite a bit.

I have never homeschooled in WV, but my sister has been homeschooling in Raleigh County for about 13 years or so. Her oldest son (maybe proud Auntie has mentioned this before) received a full scholarship to Concord University based on the work he did at home, his ACT score, and an essay he wrote competing for the scholarship.

I can't remember who my sister met when my nephew was receiving the scholarship, but whoever it was (a dean of some sort, maybe?) told her that Concord is a very "homeschool friendly" university and that his own children were homeschooled.

I was pretty impressed with that because Concord is not only my alma mater, it's also where I met my husband! Of course that was back in the days when it was just old humble Concord College. ;)

Oh, and I'll also add my nephew took 6 classes last semester and made 5 A's and 1 B!

I think he takes his academic excellence from his Auntie Tina.

Okay. Maybe not.

3 comments:

Coal Miner's Granddaughter said...

I am in awe of anyone who can homeschool. I would love to, but I don't think I have the temperament for it. I tend to get impatient when I instruct someone and they don't get what I'm teaching. Impatience is not a virtue when homeschooling. :)

Evil Twin's Wife said...

I have brought up homeschooling to my son several times, but he likes the socialization of being at school (we send him to private Catholic school). I will send my daughter to public school simply because my kids are so far apart in age and she'll want to socialize too (we live in a neighborhood of not many children, so it's tough).

Anonymous said...

A helpful homeschooling hint, trade kids with someone else for teaching purposes! Your own kids know all your buttons and they will not respond to their parents in a teaching environment like they would to even the neighbor or anyone else who is not their parents.

And if you are serious about homeschooling, then that's a very good thing, because some of the schools in WV simply sweep homeschoolers under the rug and forget about them. The last 4 years my kids homeschooled, the only actual school supervision they got was once a year testing, except the LAST year only ONE of them got tested. The last 3 years, my oldest kids never opened a book. They just reported to take the end of year test and somehow managed to pass. My youngest QUIT SCHOOL altogether at 15. The school system did not care at all.
And also, homeschool is not "accredited" so if your older kids decide they want to go back to public school, they might get a bad surprise. One of my daughters tried to enroll in public school for her senior year and they told her with no credits she would have to go back to tenth grade!