iStockphoto.com/Amy Riley
DCL
Homeschooling a high school student is daunting for most people. The information that is being learned is more detailed and you are feeling pressure to make sure that your teenager becomes a rocket scientist before graduation.
One thing that you don?t hear much about are the opportunities afforded to the home schooled high schooler that the kids in conventional education settings just don?t get. I will crawl, gingerly of course, out on my pecan limb and say that I believe that homeschooling is more often the more eco-friendly choice when it comes to education and it is simpler to get your students involved with nature. That involvement can be life long.
Erin's Awesome Adventures
My oldest child, Erin, developed a fascination with marine biology the summer she was thirteen. We were not regimented in our approach to schooling so I just kept handing her books and materials and she just kept absorbing them. She read everything from Moby Dick to The Old Man and the Sea and always was hungry for more.
We made a model of the ocean floor, drew pictures of fish, studied ecosystems and raised tadpoles. Finally I was tapped out and so was our library but she was still going strong. Then I got the idea.
Finding the phone number of the Dallas Aquarium didn?t take long and soon I was talking to the woman who ran the place about Erin being involved in an apprenticeship program. She would go to the Aquarium on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and do whatever she was told from addressing envelopes to cleaning the shark tanks.
For three years my daughter was in her element so to speak. She learned about chemistry, biology, and the precious resource of fascination that is held within the confines of the oceans of the world. By taking care of the fish and other residents of the aquarium (including an ill tempered snapping turtle named Snapple who marked her hand forevermore) she learned to have an appreciation for the life, and understanding of eco-systems, and a knowledge of how fragile the chemical balances were in the natural.
The last year or so that she was there she was the one that took the elementary school groups through the touch pool area where they were allowed to reach in and touch horseshoe crabs, starfish, and other denizens of the tide pool. Her face would light up as she introduced each citizen and explained something about it. It was contagious, the visitors would take on her enthusiasm and her awe and they carried it away with them.
Create Opportunities
Homeschoolers have the unique opportunity to customize their child?s education. For the older student, a period of apprenticeship at a local zoo, animal shelter, aquarium, or other area of interest can create a lifelong understanding and appreciating for life; ocean, plant, or mammalian. Your chosen organization may not have a program of apprenticeship; you may have to create a presentation that they can look over. It may be a completely new idea to them.
The rewards are many. Anytime you can get a student involved on a personal level with nature you have done something worthwhile. Books, tests and term papers may have their place, but head knowledge will never overshadow heart knowledge when it comes to the planet.
