We've been undergoing the agonizing process of deciding whether to send Spaz to high school next year (as we did with his older sibs) or to homeschool him for high school. After more than a year of thinking and avoiding and contemplating and processing and PRAYING and thinking and avoiding some more, it's time to actually make the decision.
Okay, I know. It's well past time to have made the decision. We're very good at trying to prolong the inevitable. Why make a difficult decision in a timely manner when you can put it off until the very last minute? Procrastinating on such things keeps life interesting and stressful. You ought to try it.
Being a Person Who Thinks Too Much, I have long been compiling a mental list of Relevant Factors We Ought to Consider. And I have indeed been mentally considering said factors. Being a Person Who Likes to Have Everything on Paper or Screen, I have long intended to type out said mental list. Being a Person Who Procrastinates, I did this on the day that was my self-imposed deadline for making our decision. Being a Person Who Is Compulsively Persnickety About the Structure and Order of Any Written Material Including Lists,
And being a Person Who Ought to Write More Blog Posts, I have decided to turn my list into one and share it with you, for whatever it's worth.
Keep in mind that this is my kid and my family and my situation. "Your experience may vary." (Or, "Don't try this at home." Or something like that.)
Oh, one more thing- although we've considered both public school (for about two minutes) and charter school (for a little longer than two minutes), our decision has come down to homeschool or Christian school. Since this is West Michigan, we have approximately 73,000,000 Christian high schools within a 25-mile radius, but we've narrowed our choices to two: the reduced-tuition, socio-economically-diverse, becoming-college-prep urban Christian school that Biz & Cheez attended, and the full-tuition, very-homeschool-friendly, conservative, Classically-bent suburban Christian school that two of his friends attend.
That said, here's my banged-out, not-necessarily-comprehensive "list", just the way I typed it out for Hubz & myself. (Well, except for the blog names.) You'll be happy to note that it contains far fewer Randomly-Capitalized-and/or-Hyphenated Words than did this introduction.
Things to consider:
And now, being a Person Who Ought to Go to Bed Soon, I am ending this post without much of a proper conclusion, except to say this: We did actually make the decision. Now we're giving ourselves that 3-day "buyer's remorse" period, also known as the Waffle Period or the Second-Guess Period. Okay, so it might be more like 5 days. Because we're very indecisive like that. Or wait-- maybe we're not. I don't know. At the very least, we tend to be kinda sorta tentative. I think.
CHARACTER, FAITH, DISCIPLINE, ETC:
How would each option-- homeschool or Christian high school-- be likely to influence his spiritual and personal growth?
Is it time for a new “stage” in his life? Is it time to “release” him?
*Going to school would be another step away from us and toward independence. It would be an intermediate stage between homeschool and college /adult life.
*Our own personal limitations don’t allow us to be “everything” to our kids, esp as they get older. It may be time to enlist the help of “the village” to nurture faith & world view & leadership skills & discipline in ways that we can’t or don’t, and to release him to be more influenced by other (hopefully godly) adults as well as peers.
*He needs at his age to have other godly people speaking into his life besides just parents & grandparents. Do church/youth group and homeschool activities/classes provide enough of that? Would school provide too much?
*School provides more opportunities for both negative AND positive peer influence on his faith & character.
*Going to school, even Christian school, would provide an opportunity for him to be a little more “in the world” and deal with a few more issues of life while he is still under our guidance.
*At TPH, he is likely to be exposed to questionable views & media that one or both of us might feel is bad for him. Are we as parents equipped to deal with this and guide him in the right direction w/o alienating him or causing strife?
*Going to school would be a broadening experience-- for better or for worse?
*God has a call on his life, although we don’t know exactly what that is. Would one environment --homeschool or Christian school-- better equip him than the other to grow into that call?
PERSONAL, SOCIAL, & OTHER FACTORS :
*Going to school may leave less time and energy for pursuing his music.
*Does our family “fit in” at TPH? I've often felt like we don't. We aren’t urban, globally minded, or committed to diversity. Would we fit in at FCS? We don’t quite fit the conservative stereotype. At either place, would we feel at home? AND… does this really matter?
*Going to school would wrench him away from the homeschool friendships he’s formed, but he’d be likely to form other friendships that are just as good for him. This worked out fine with Biz & Cheez.
FAMILY:
How would each option impact our family?
*Would going to school pull him away from family? Would a little bit of pulling away actually be healthy for him & us? Is his relationship w/us strong enough to prevent pulling away to an unhealthy degree?
*If he goes to school, we would “lose” a certain dynamic & togetherness that we seem to finally have achieved as a family. But might this be OK? How much would we really be losing? Would we really lose it, or would it just change? Family life does go through different stages.
*If he goes to school, “what other parents do” would become much more important.
*If he goes to school, esp TPH, we’d be doing that “living in two worlds” thing. This felt very difficult to me with the other two. It was hard for me to “embrace” school & be involved, and I felt like the kid in school was more “separate” from our family.
*If he goes to school, Fuzz would get a lot of 1-on-1 time and might blossom better out of his shadow.
*Am I going to pursue a career or at least have some sort of paying job? If so, do I really want to commit to at least 4 more years of homeschooling?
*Spaz & Fuzz will be in high school together for a year or possibly two. We have to consider what we will do with her. Might we end up with kids in two different schools?
*Is homeschooling high school going to cause too much stress for Mom? I would have to be teacher, administrator, and guidance counselor!
*Will there be more tension in the home with him staying home or with him being in school?
*Would his relationship with Mom be better if I am only his mom and not his “schoolmaster”, too?
ACADEMICS/COLLEGE PREP:
Which option-- homeschool or high school-- is more likely to (a) prepare him for college and (b) foster a desire to go to college?
*Would I, with the help of outside &/or online classes and good resources, be able to give him a good high school education that will prepare him for college?
*Would I be good about “making” him do hard things in the classes I am in charge of? (He would always have outside classes in some subjects.)
*Is it true, as some claim, that the customized education and potential for independence provided by homeschooling is better preparation for college than conventional high school is?
*Is his lack of motivation & self-management going to be a bigger problem with school or with homeschooling?
* Would the rigors of high school academics be more likely to “burn him out” or “spur him on”?
*Would I do a good job with college admissions prep -- ACT, AP classes, dual enrollment, transcripts, etc?
***************************************************************************
