transcript

I see a lot of questions about transcripts, so I thought I'd put this out here. I decided to register with The Farm School as our umbrella program in TN for the "high school" years, in part so that I could do exactly this, and generate a transcript as we went. At the end, if we want, The Farm will create a diploma for us. The transcript is generated via a simple online program - I'm sure there are tons of the darned things, but the one they use is homeschoolreporting.com in case you're looking for one. One of the handy features is that when you go to type in a "class" it gives you a long list of suggested high school classes so you can use something that sounds nice and normal. You can also assign grades and credits if you want.

So this is what the transcript looks like for Morgan's "freshman year of high school":

English 1
Math- logic
Computing - graphic design
Health
Biology
Physical education
Ancient history//World Geography

But we're unschoolers, right? So how the heck did she manage that? Do we do online classes or something? Nope. Not a bit of it. I keep an eye on the sorts of things she's doing - what she's reading, writing about, drawing, watching, playing - and I take notes on that when I think about it. Then around the turn of the "semester" I look through my notes and see what would be a good fit. I compare what high school say students learn to what colleges assume high school graduates retain, and I take that pretty heavily into account. I'm not interested in holding my kid to a superior standard, just providing a reasonable "translation" of natural learning into a simple, lowest-common-denominator sort of format.

Mostly, it's pretty easy. Natural learning really does lead kids in all sorts of wonderful directions! It even leads to a fair amount of intellectual rigor in terms of questioning sources, analyzing information, expressing ideas clearly, even examining the ethics of decision making. It does because natural learning isn't about doing just enough to pass a test, it's about following the rabbit trails of curiosity and discovering where they lead. So that even when the "subject matter" derives from fan fiction and video games rather than textbooks and approved reading lists, curiosity itself leads kids to develop the kinds of mental skills that schools work so hard (and often with such futility) to impart.

If you're looking for more information about creating transcripts, portfolios or other kinds of reporting for unschoolers, here's a really good collection of resources
http://www.unschoolingmom2mom.com/getting-a-diploma.html


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December 2016 update!

Well, it's the end of another reporting period, time to cobble my notes into something that sounds reasonable. Last year, things changed a little between the "mid year report" and the final version, and I expect that will happen again this year. Remember, this is an interpretation of real life, natural learning, which twists and turns and doesn't follow a plan. And I'm trying to cram all of that into some fairly narrow categories provided by my reporting program. This is how it looks so far - with commentary, because I'm in that kind of mood.

English 2. By which I mean, she reads stuff, encounters literature and literary references, talks about stuff, compares and contrasts, and is generally articulate and aware. I'm debating changing this to "contemporary literature" but maybe next year.

English, writing - creative writing. I'm irritated to discover that the reporting program doesn't actually have a "creative writing" category, so I'll figure out how to tweak it later on. There's also a "composition" category, and I might use that. She writes A Lot, and not all of it fiction. And communicates about writing A Lot on various websites. So I'll see where I want to go with this.

Computer programming. This is something she's dabbled in, on and off, and needs to end up on the transcript somewhere. I've done some casual research into high school programming courses, and she's dabbled all over that stuff. Apparently school programming classes aren't all that impressive. See my complete lack of surprise.

Drawing - intro to animation. She does a lot of drawing and some animation, so once again this needs to end up on the transcript somehow, somewhere. And yet again I'm having a hard time fitting it into a category. Don't they have "basics of animation" classes in high schools? They should. It's the 21st century for crissakes.

 History - modern. Lots of stuff going on in her world connecting to the world wars these days. I'll keep this for this "semester" but it's possible I'll list something else next "semester." That's what I did above for world history/ geography - each was a half credit, "single semester class." As it were. In real life, of course, there's lots of swirling around, overlapping ideas.

Math - applied 1. What a delightfully uninformative category! Perfect for unschoolers. Realistically, her math is coming from computer stuff - programming, animation, and video games. So you can see, it's sometimes hard to know where to "record" things. At this point, I'm thinking of keeping programming separate from math because it can be used as a "foreign language" for some universities, and that might be handy.

Psychology - gender studies. Not that "gender studies" is a category, but I'm going to make it fit somewhere. This has been a Big Topic of Conversation in our house, and for a kid who doesn't really "make conversation" by nature, that's significant.

Physiology. Hmm. Might be a stretch, but maybe I'll dig out the old "physiology coloring book" to add to what's happening around this topic. Or maybe I'll find a better category by June. We'll see.

Physical education - because all those hours on the trampoline might as well count for something, right?

So as you can see, the "mid semester" point is more of a rough draft than a finished product. A lot of what she's doing is ongoing. A lot of it can be categorized in multiple ways. And she's going in a bunch of directions at once. Also, the program I'm set up with, via the Farm, isn't very oriented toward tech-savvy kids. I will contrive!

Lazy teens and self-motivation

There are several different issues with the idea that your teens are "lazy". The first is that it takes a good bit of time for kids to re-learn how to self motivate! School - and often homeschool, too - strips that away from kids. "Deschooling" as it's called takes months - for teens, expect nine months to a year, and know that, depending on how big of an impact school had on them, it could even be longer. :( It helps to imagine that your kid has had a serious long term illness and needs time to recover. Let them chill and recuperate. Hang out with them. Watch some shows and play some games together. Gently offer to do fun things together, but don't push. Take time to get to know each other in a different way than before.

Another big thing to know about young teens, though, is that the big developmental processes going on in their brains takes a lot of energy! They may need a lot of down time, time to ponder, time to daydream, they may even sleep more. Around the online home/unschooling community at large, this has been dubbed a "cocoon stage". Not all teens "cocoon" but many do.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that natural learning won't look like school learning. It will look like kids pursuing their own interests - even their non-academic interests. Things like doing hair and playing video games. So it will help you and your kid for you to treat those as "legitimate" interests from which they will, inevitably learn. There's plenty to learn! And it doesn't need to be directed toward any particular goal. School sets you up to think there's this big race toward a finish line, but it's not true. It's really okay to give your kids a chance to breathe and discover who they are and how they learn, naturally.

Something that comes up a lot in the autonomous education /unschooling movement is the way kids learn these kinds of skills without necessarily being taught. And often the ways they learn them are by doing exactly the sorts of things that parents and teachers commonly try to limit. There's a disconnect in adult expectations between the skills that we want kids to learn and the way we want them to learn those skills.

So parents will panic when a kid shows good attention span or focus when those aren't directed at chores or school work (Kohn mentions worthy subjects). Or worry when a kid keeps trying and failing at a game over and over, maybe crying and swearing, but persisting. Or when a child insists on using Just these materials in Just this way to do a project. Or creates a detailed plan and wants to stick to it, despite obstacles. When kids do those things independently - self confidently pursuing their natural curiosity - it's often seen as problematic.

safety, morality, and trust

This is from the unschooling basics email list, 2006, hence the q&a format. Ray (then 14) had been living with our family for less than a year. Karen S. btw, is now very much a radical unschooler.

--- In unschoolingbasics@yahoogroups.com, "Karen Swanay" wrote:
>If a child is allowed, encouraged, not
> guided away from anything they want to do, then how can you (anyone
> not just you) say things will never go wrong?

Think about guiding "toward" rather than "away". Not "away from danger" but "toward" good decision making. Its not just a semantic difference - it creates a really different family atmosphere.

Will things go wrong? Of course. But all the control and guidance and protection in the world won't stop "things" from "going wrong". The difference is that kids who have felt supported by their parents are far far more likely to turn *to* those parents when things *start* to go wrong, or even before.

> And that is exactly why I'm stuck...kids will want to do something and
> to respect what they want to do and help them do it no matter what
> seems wrong. It's the "no matter what" that has me.

There are times when one of my kids wants to do something, try something, and its really not such a good idea - but my response isn't necessarily an outright no. Why does my kid want to do this thing? what are his or her goals and expectations? Is there a different way to meet those goals? Would more information help to adjust those expectations to something more realistic? Sometimes that's *exactly* what my kids need, a little "reality check". The thing is, they know that what they'll get from me is "reality". I'm not going to represent my fears as fact, I'm going to say "I'm worried that...". I'm not going to overstate the danger in order to get them to do what I want. I'm a trustworthy source of information. That's really important.

If my 6yo wants to climb something that's too high for me to support her on, I'm going to tell her that. What if she still wants to climb? Depending on the very, very specific circumstances, the answer may well be "I'm really sorry, that's not an option". But I'm going to try my darnedest to find another way for her to get what she wants - or at least Part of what she wants. Since she has had that experience over and over, she knows she can trust me to help her, and not merely hinder her.

> 15 yr old boys
> want to have sex. That's biological drive.

I live with a 14yo boy and I find this comment somewhat dismissive. Its not like he's a disembodied penis looking for a vagina! He's a human being with thoughts and feelings and worries and frustrations and questions and needs that all intersect with that "biological drive". He's not on the prowl for random sexual encounters, he's a real person looking for real relationships. And ultimately, some of those relationships will include sexuality.

>Do you help your kids
> achieve that?

I don't assume I can stop him. I can throw obstacles in his path and hope he doesn't do anything too stupid. I can try to scare him with skewed information. Or I can talk *with* him and try to assure he has the information and skills he needs to make good decisions. But he's not going to believe the information or learn the skills if he things I'm trying to control his behavior, not even "for his own good". He's going to put his energy into thwarting me.

Some of the skills my guy needs to make good decisions about sexual behavior include communication skills. He needs to be able to communicate as openly as possible with any potential parnters! He needs to be in the habit of listening and thinking, and not just reacting when an opportunity becomes available.

How do people learn to have good communication skills? Well, practice helps - so I and my partner work on communicating openly with him and with each other. Its not always easy - Ray's used to being told what to do and having to sneak around or be defiant in order to do what *he* wants to do. It has taken time to establish ourselves as trustworthy sources of support, and *we* have the advantage of not having been the main sources of control in his life for six years.

One of the topics that comes up for conversation in our home is sex/sexuality. This is where communication can get tricky, bc we (my partner and I) want to give Lots of information and yet we have to be very very careful of Ray's boundaries. We want him to know that his boundaries are *very* important in the area of sexuality. Part of that is we want him to be able to recognize and communicate when he's not comfortable/ready so that he's not impelled to have sex *before* he's comfortable and ready. The other part is that we want him to respect when a potential partner isn't comfortable or ready. If he's used to people tromping all over his boundaries, he's going to be much less likely to respect someone else's.

> I mean, do you guide your kids at all with morals, ethics and values
> or no?

My partner and I have very strong personal values, ethics and morals, and those form the foundation for our relationship with each other and our kids. I seek to use my values to guide *me*, but I also believe that morality is something kids learn without being taught. They need to see it in action to value it.

One of the things my partner and I were chagrinned to discover, early in our unschooling journey, was how much we ignored our own morality where our kids were involved. Sadly, that's part and parcel of conventional "because I'm the mom!" parenting. I'm not saying you should let your kids walk all over you - not in the least - but I am asking you to think about how you would feel if you kids treated you, or each other, *exactly* the way you treat them. Seen from that angle, does the behavior hold up to your Own standards or morality?