Changing Things Up

Seven of our 10 children have capped off their homeschooling careers by beginning classes at the local community college when they were around 16 and then graduating with an Associate's degree at approximately the same time their peers graduated with high school diplomas.  And it has worked out very well for us and for them.  I am a huge advocate for early college for high schoolers.  But we are about to abandon or at least seriously change up what we have thus far done when it comes to the last three of our offspring.  What?!!!  I know right?  That is what I keep thinking too.

It is definitely a little scary. I know how the early college thing works. I have effectively been the adviser to each of my older seven. I talk to them about their future goals and possible majors, I check and re check the graduation requirements, I make class recommendations, help them plan schedules each semester and teach them how to register for classes. When we started out, I had no idea what I was doing, but I've got this now. So, we've decided to challenge ourselves and try something new.

When we first started to explore the idea of early college we wanted to try it out because: 1) we both went to high school, and firmly believed then and now that at least the senior year and probably the junior year was a total waste of time and 2) if our kids could get into the community college as high school students, they could go for free and thus cut the ultimate cost of college degrees by however many years they could get in. I still think these are valid points. However, I don't think it is necessarily urgent that kids start and finish college early. I don't believe there is a deadline on learning. So, just like I don't believe in lists that purport to encompass what my first-grader must know (unless that list is: that she is loved, that she is smart, that she is important), I also do not believe that the value of a college degree grows in inverse relation to the age at which it is obtained. There is value in all learning and we can continue to learn all our lives.

So, for our last three kids,  we are embracing an opportunity for them to do some learning in a different way than their siblings did. School for my sixteen year old will probably look a lot like school for his two younger siblings, and that is: math every day, read stuff, write stuff, and learn what you want to learn. His entrance to a four year university will probably rely more on his college entrance exam scores than it has for his older siblings who were able to transfer with full associates degrees, so I am already encouraging him that a good portion of the "Learn what you want to learn" part, should probably be test prep. The rest of 'school' will be traveling to new places and meeting new people, an opportunity that was not an option with my older kids and which we think is worth trading the benefits of early college for.