Homeschooling a struggling learner through high school—that might sound pretty intimidating to you! Can you do it? Today on Home School Heartbeat, HSLDA Special Needs Coordinator Faith Berens joins Mike Smith with a rousing affirmative!
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Mike Smith:
My guest this week is Faith Berens, who is one of HSLDA’s special needs consultants. Faith, thanks for joining us this week!
Faith Berens:
Mike, thank you for having me—it’s a pleasure to be here.
Mike:
Faith, homeschooling provides a lot of flexibility and specialization for struggling learners to advance at their own rate and in the best way. But once a student gets to high school, the homeschooling parent may wonder, can I still use these teaching methods? Is the education I give my student really adequate for high school courses? What do you tell parents who are wondering about these things?
Faith:
Well, first of all, I like to remind parents that struggling students and children with cognitive delays and learning disabilities, as well as functionally disabled students, are given high school credit and graduate from public high schools all the time. So, parents who are homeschooling teens with special learning challenges can absolutely provide a wonderfully enriching high school program, specifically taking into consideration the child's areas of weakness as well as their strengths. Teaching struggling learners through high school at home gives parents the opportunity to pace instruction as needed, use alternative curriculum, as well as provide one-on-one remediation and guidance.
Mike:
Faith, this is great news! We’ll tackle more specific questions and issues for parents of struggling learners in high school as we continue this week. Until next time, I’m Mike Smith.
