Creating Community for Our Teens

 

I love this time of year when everyone in the home education community starts getting excited about all of the choices out there in the home school land.  Unlike our schooled friends, we have so many paths to choose from.... it's kind of like shopping for holiday presents!  But if you are new to the community it can also be a bit overwhelming to decide which path, curriculum and whom you will choose to spend time with.

When my daughter was young I was one of those moms who choose them all, and whatever S and I paid the most attention to as the year progressed stuck. Terrible, and way to over-scheduled I know, but for many reasons, the best is that she is the only child left in our home (the others are topics for another post), doing everything worked beautifully in our world. As the years passed though, I can assure you that feeling of being overwhelmed starts to feel more and more like opportunity.  You may even start spending less money on all those wonderful resources. LOL....  If you do choose a new resource or curriculum it will be a choice that just folds easily in to your home school philosophy and plans. 

 In our family as fall crept in each year we became excited about heading out into the home school campus knowing that we would see the families that we had been hanging out with for year and years.  As we planned the year we knew we would one again be attending favorite clubs and annual support group activities and the pattern of our days went on like this as each year passed until this year.  Something is shifting as we enter the high school years where S is transitioning into her Scholar Phase.

Today our girl is fourteen and we know and are committed to our home school philosophy, for us it's the TJEd a classical liberal arts educational path.  We know the books she will read, who will mentor her and what she will spend her time practicing and attending for the most part,  all we have to do this year is tweak it here and there with a new mentor, study group, etc....   and continue to model for her a love of learning and to inspire her.  The one thing that is not so clear like it was in days past is who she will be hanging out with?  

Many home schooers make major changes in anticipation of this time in their kids life. Some send their high schoolers off to neighborhood schools, some attend school online where the student still has to show up for their scheduled days, and others fill their days up with outside classes and volunteer work around town and liike us there are some that spend their time in liberal arts study.  

The beauty of the home schooling life has led most of these teens to be quite independent and self directed,  most are following their own bliss, their own way.  So all these unique individuals who are spending their days doing different things in different ways may not have a common ground like we see in our teenage traditionally schooled friends.  Schooled students journey's are pretty similar and the high school path to college is set up for them.   Home school-high schoolers journey's can be and look very different from one another.  Especially if they are not heading to a "specialized college education" right after high school;, so they are not busy collecting high school credits and SAT test scores.

Many families also tend to shift from child centered, to work centered, and to "specialized learning" centered in an effort to prepare their teens for college.  While this change in the young adults life is happening, their parents focus naturally changes too.  These changes may limit the parents involvement and availability to drive them, to hang out with, and socialize with other families as they did when thier childrens were in their younger years. 

These changes in the family educational life and cultural direction couldn't be farther from what natural human development intends.  Our young adults are ready to take their place in society and our high school home schoolers need community more than ever! 

These changes have led us to ask where and who are the kids that are on the same path as our daughter? 

 Where do we find or how do we build a home school, young adult community?  

I see throughout my home school community our teens are looking for others like them. If we have done our job well nature intends for them to start taking their place more and more in the adult world.  These transitioning young adults want community and the play ground park bench just isn't going to do it anymore. 

Our teens are busy with their studies, but long to bounce their personalities and ideas off of other people other than their family, but who are the kids who have the time and who is taking the same classes as them?  They are looking to see themselves mirrored back out there in the bigger society.  These years are a time for our children to go out in the world and seek other mentors, but society is not set up for our home schooled gang and is organized around keeping their schooled peers in a building,where all of the other students are pretty much on the same path until they leave for college,  it is what I call, "a holding pattern".  Jobs for this age are scarce as well. Other than the adults in their lives having gatherings, where will they go to have their longings to be around other young adults and different adult mentors other than their parents met? 

Home schoolers are families that choose to do things a little different, we intended for our kids to be self directed, to create and to walk in the world while thinking about it in a different way, most of our children are ready to get out in the world, and are mature enough to handle it!

So now that our babies are in the "teen" stage of life, where is the community that will accept our young adults?  And in true home school form I ask, if it doesn't exist, how my friends do we create it?

Comments

[Valiens]

Una is very glad she had Latin grammar, and that she's been writing so much. She's wishing she'd paid more attention to math, but is catching up quickly having switched from Algebra 1H to plain Algebra 1. Oddly there is not history this year...

Two separate teachers I know/met over the summer have told me they really like the kids who come into H. S. from home schooling. This is seeming to be the case at Naples High as well.

I think the real challenge is as you say, finding enough mentors for the kids to bounce off of and keeping the social thing going as well. Una's got a lot of strong women teaching most of her classes, very fortunate, esp. in math and sci.

We never anticipated finding ourselves with a kid in public High School. But she wanted to go, very much so. It's been good. I can't wait to hear about the home school teens plans for this year!