For the Child Who is NOT College Bound, with Shawna Wingert | Homeschool Sisters Podcast
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Shawna: Hey sisters, on this week's episode, I am answering a question from a sister out there in the community, Elle writes, the homeschool sisters podcast has been such a help to me over the years. Thanks for all the support you bring to the community. I have an idea for an episode. When your child isn't on a college bound track, I was chatting with other homeschool moms in my local community, and it was the first time I heard someone voice out loud.
If my child wants to go to college. I don't know for sure, but it's very possible my child won't attend college and may be homeschooling a few extra years due to learning differences. Accepting this
has taken a lot of pressure off my back to keep my child on track. This other mom has neurotypical kiddos but is still open to the idea that college doesn't have to be forced on all students. How do we create a non college bound educational track for our kiddos, especially in high school? How do we help our kids feel prepared for adulthood without the transitional phase that college offers most kids?
How do we talk about this counter cultural choice with family and [00:01:00] friends, especially combined with the counter cultural choice to homeschool? How do we create opportunities for skill building that might lead to employment in adulthood? Thanks for your consideration, Elle.
I invited our homeschool cousin, Shauna Wingert, on to the podcast because she has experienced this very situation with two unique kiddos. Shauna, welcome. Thank you for having me, and I think this is such a thoughtful question, and I love the way that Elle really hit on the fact that it can be a little challenging when you've already made one countercultural decision to homeschool, and now you're Adding in the additional layer of Oh, yeah.
And by the way, that's not even what we think we're doing here. It can be a little stressful and there can definitely be a lot of feedback shared. Just put it that way from either well meaning family members or in our case outside therapists and that type of thing. So I am so happy to talk about this and to share just my own personal [00:02:00] experience having had one who's already graduated, who we actually thought was.
Thanks. Not college bound and had planned to not be college bound until senior year, the decision changed and all of a sudden we were scrambling to try and figure out how to get there. And then my youngest, who's actually going to graduate this summer in June is not college bound and has been really clear about the fact that's not something that, that he even sees as.
appropriate for his future and for what he wants to do with his life and all of that type of good stuff. But so I personally resonate with this a lot. I think the first thing I want to talk about before I get into the specifics of like how you do it, what do you do in terms of a learning plan? What do you do in terms of graduation requirements?
I want to start before we get to the specifics by speaking to the broader general pressure that exists. And what that means for a mom who is in a situation where she's considering how to [00:03:00] navigate the waters for her kid. For me, even as recent as this past holiday season, questions have come up of my kids about what they're doing for college, right?
Because one is graduating because one is already there. It's you're going to college, or when do you think you're going to graduate? I think culturally. That's the knee jerk question that kids are asked when they're 18, 19, 20, 21. And it's very comfortable to have that type of conversation.
It's like, when you have your first kid, everybody starts asking you about your second kid, or when you get married, people start asking you when you're going to have kids or, whatever. I think it's a knee jerk. So I want to start there because I think. I've come to see it that way, as opposed to feeling personally attacked, which is what I used to feel when that type of question would come up, I would feel like this therapist is asking about college because they're genuinely concerned that I didn't do the right thing for my kid, or whatever.
That we're not on the right track [00:04:00] and my kids aren't going to be okay, because we haven't planned for that. And as time has gone on as I've encountered more and more situations where it's come up, or I've had one child already in college now and still seen the questions popping up. I think I've learned to have some grace for how much that does come up because it really is just.
Sort of what people talk about when your kids are that age. It's not like homeschooling. When people talk about homeschooling, there's usually a reason why they're asking. There's usually some sort of opinion. Behind what they're stressing, and I think while that can be the case with college conversations, it's not always.
So I just want to throw that out there because it's helped me not feel the same level of pressure that I might've felt at one point. And it's also helped me to have grace, when those conversations come. I love that mindset shift because I do think. I'm imagining if we were in that situation, which I don't know if mine are, and I always say that it's, I think it's bananas that we're asking 18 year olds to decide what they want to do for the [00:05:00] rest of their life and we're playing, paying a heck of a lot of money or taking out a lot of debt for that.
But up to this point, for however long you've homeschooled, you have faced that judgment from people in the community or your family. And so your guard is already up, I would imagine when people start throwing the college question at you. So I like that mindset shift. Yeah. Now, having said that, my second point is there will be some people that are extremely concerned that you are willing to let go and be okay with either one.
I don't think that necessarily has to do with being a homeschooler. I think that's the case for parents in general. I think there's a lot of parents whose kids are in school who, say, no, my, my child's not planning on going to college after graduation that would receive the same level of concern.
And Feedback. I can give an example. We did a neuropsych evaluation for my youngest since he was getting to be 18. We wanted to have one fresh sort of going into adulthood situation [00:06:00] for him. And that particular professional really. Felt like we hadn't considered all the options that were available and wanted to make sure that I knew that there were colleges everywhere that would love to work with someone with learning differences or someone on the spectrum or someone that would like to do more creative work as opposed to academic work and that kind of thing.
And I really felt The pressure from that. And I also felt like I had to push back like pretty considerably and say first of all, thank you for sending us this. It costs 100, 000 a year for him to go there. So that's probably not going to be choice right now. And he doesn't want that. And he is an adult.
Like he did turn 18. It is his choice. It's not just mine. And there's some judgment that comes with that. So as much as I want to say, have grace, and sometimes it's just the conversation. I also want to acknowledge that in that situation, there was [00:07:00] most definitely judgment in terms of me limiting my child, right?
Essentially, because he's had learning differences. I think the assessment of this person was that I had somehow made choices that led. My kiddo to believe he's not going to be successful in college. And so he's just never imagined it for himself, which, I, maybe that's true on some level, but I feel like I've tried to be open handed throughout and have given them lots of options to explore different things and to figure out what works well for them.
And I. The perfect example of that is my oldest, right? My oldest, the trajectory was not to do college. And then we got about six months out and it was like, we're going to do college. And that was it, right? It wasn't my choice either way. In fact, if it had been my choice, we probably wouldn't have done college at that point.
I'm glad we did like it all worked out, but at that time, it was very scary to switch gears going through. So that's the big picture, like overarching. Let me just. I don't know if [00:08:00] it's just support anyone that's in this situation and feels like they're having to field a lot of that, because I think for me, that was more of the battle than the details, right?
The details actually like this, like Elle was saying, Feel a lot easier when you just let go of the pressure when you let go of the idea and the hard and fast rule that this is something that every kid needs to be working towards, it gets a lot easier to start to craft a learning plan and a learning environment that works really well for you and for your kids and allows your homeschool to progress in a way that's It's almost more in line with what you might have done when they were like in elementary school, and you were being interest led and you were thinking through, all the different things that they had available to them and what makes the most sense in terms of helping them learn.
I think when you take the college piece and set it aside and look at that for a high schooler, you bring back a little bit Of [00:09:00] that into the learning because it's not as defined by you need four years of math and you need four years of language arts and you need four years of, three years of science and three years of history and that kind of stuff.
So that is the setup. Does that make sense? And so now. As long as I'm not talking too much. I want to go ahead and move into like how to set it up and what it looks like because this has been, it's been one of the things that I've enjoyed learning about the most. And it's one of the things that I felt super confident in once I did figure it out.
And I'm thinking right now, Kate, I have a link to give you that's on my site on never Never report learning on different learning learning. It's fine. Where I literally break down how I created. A transcript for a not college bound kid because I wanted him to have a graduation transcript associated with the work that he's doing, but not within the confines of what a college would be looking for.[00:10:00]
Essentially the first place to start, I think for most of us, and it really is going to depend on the state that you live in. Most states have different high school paths. And I say most. probably all larger states have multiple high school paths. So they have a college bound graduation requirement for a high school diploma.
They have a basic high school diploma. And then many states also have a special education diploma. And each of those graduation requirements are different depending on. What the expectation is for this child once they graduate and go out into the world so I can use California as an example because that's where I live.
That's the one I'm most familiar with. But I've seen them for various other states too. It's not a California specific thing. So the college bound graduation requirements are aligned with California college expectations. And so they, they are very specific. You need four years of [00:11:00] language arts, you need four years of math, three of which must include algebra through algebra too.
Like that type of thing. They're very directive with the expectation that any. Child that's graduating from a high school in California is able to check those boxes so that they can be eligible for college enrollment in a California college. And based on their grades and based on, their overall.
I guess application that will determine which college they can get into. But in order to even start the beginning of the process, you've got to have those things in place. A basic high school diploma is I think what one would have considered in the past. To be like more of a track of someone who's not college bound, and so there are still expectations.
I think it goes, but they go down a bit, right? There's an expectation that you're going to be taking more of trade type or elective type of classes, and so it might be three [00:12:00] years of language arts. Two years of math and you only need to go through algebra. I'm trying to think what else there, there might be no physical education requirement or, fine arts electives or whatever it may be.
There's less foreign language. I know. Yeah, I was gonna say tricky. There's like a two year foreign language instead of three year. It's all just taken down a notch. Because again, the expectation is that you'll fill in, you're still taking the same number of classes in California, but what's getting filled in instead of more of the academically rigorous classes.
is more elective type options that would set you up for whatever you want to do post graduation because you're not going to college. The third one, and the one that I also like to mention, Elle mentioned she has a child with learning differences. She mentioned that she's thinking high school might last two or three years longer, which it did for us.
Like for my youngest, he's definitely going another year and a half past when he could have graduated. That one, you can do that by the way, with homeschooling, like what a gift it is. It's an, and [00:13:00] it takes the heat and pressure off of something that just in the long run, like when these kids are 22, 25, 30, it's not going to matter.
Like this is such a small moment in time. When you look at the course of their entire life as adults, It's wonderful that exists in our home, in our ability to homeschool. Yeah, and it gives them the chance of to master something versus Trying to finish before the end and like you said, it doesn't really matter.
It's like when you learn to read, nobody's out there asking you now, at what age should you learn to read? Nobody cares, right? And I should say this too, before I get into the special education type of diplomas, there are a lot of families whose kids graduate early. And aren't college bound, right?
The same thing works. They went the other way because their child knew that they wanted to start their own business or knew that they were going to work in the family business or whatever it may be. And so they hurried up and got done in quotation [00:14:00] marks with their high school. Program by 16 and graduated and then didn't worry about it.
Like it cuts both ways, which I think is the beauty of homeschool, right? Depending on your life circumstances, depending on your kiddo, you can speed it up, slow it down and do what you need to do. A special education diploma typically eliminates the need for like passing a class. And allows for a lot of discretion in terms of mere I guess participation in a class being in quotes allowed to count as credit for that class.
So instead of taking tests, instead of having to show that you met 80 percent of the requirements in a particular class, you can. have grace for being able to award credit versus not award credit. We get to do that as homeschoolers anyway, but I think it's [00:15:00] important for us as homeschooling moms who are really nervous about creating the transcript and giving a diploma to know that even in the school system, there is a place where credit is given for Engagement and not necessarily achievement and it is a real diploma.
It is something that a child can go out into the world with and say they graduated from high school and yet they didn't master algebra two or they didn't pass a science course on chemistry, right? They never did. There was no expectation that they did because there was a much more. Individualized approach to their education.
So having said all that, the reason why I say, I think that is a good place to start is because if you are a parent looking at your kid, no matter what their trajectory is college or otherwise. You can mix and match any of those options as a homeschooler and create a [00:16:00] graduation experience and a transcript that reflects what's appropriate for your child.
It's not different than what you would have done in middle school or what you would have done in elementary school. It just is something that Is now going to be put on paper, right? So you have to inform yourself about what it looks like in the world so that you can figure out how to apply it to your circumstances.
That's important when your kid is heading towards college, because you have to do the same thing for their transcripts, but it works the same way in response to Elle's question for the kid that's not college bound. And so it might look like, and in my instance, specifically, this is the choices that we made in terms of the.
Coursework that we were doing in high school, adding an extra year, it might look like having two years worth of consumer math and everyday math associated with understanding percentage rates on credit cards and coming up with a [00:17:00] budget for what their life could look like if they paid rent and they had to pay for their own gas and their insurance and something that is super reality based in terms of what you think they're gonna be doing in their life.
There was a whole semester, this past semester with my youngest, when our primary focus was continuing to practice to be able to pass a driving test and like literally daily skills, like how do you check out online with a credit card? What do those forms look like? What's a CVC code for a credit card, like basic principles that a.
A graduate is going to be exposed to on a daily basis. If you have a child who does have learning differences or just has never been exposed to it, there is nothing wrong with taking a semester or two and spending a ton of time there because you do want them to be working towards. a next step that's not college.
Why not prepare them for that [00:18:00] next step in some very concrete ways? I know there's a lot of families who start layering in part time employment so they can begin to have conversations about what that's like showing up on time, what your work schedule is. How do you fill out an I nine? What is an I nine?
Why does it matter like these? These are things really that even college bound the kids aren't necessarily exposed to, and they really, especially if you're living not at home, that it could be really helpful to have learned this before you arrive on campus. 100%. One of those stories I like to tell is when my oldest went to college that first semester, one of the things that was most surprising to me.
Because we hadn't been looking at college as the overall objective, we had spent a ton of time on that type of stuff. And because that's just naturally how we live our life. Oh, I'm doing something there with me. So let's learn how to do it. But mine was the one that knew what to do when the tire was flat.
Mine was the one that knew what to do when they didn't have service and they had to read a map. It wasn't [00:19:00] because mine was that much better. It was just, we'd spent time doing random stuff like that instead of Chemistry, right? Like I hate to say it, but it was part of our learning process because I was so focused on life skills.
It's much more so than academics when it came to college and that ended up the one that used dish liquid in the dishwasher and started a rave. I could still see that happening these days, but not because there hasn't been some conversation around it at I appreciate Elle's question about like, how do I do it? How do I prepare it? What I would say is that. The place to start is to give yourself the freedom to just do it, do what makes sense for your kid, do what makes sense for where they're at.
Think about what you might want them to know when they're 20 and allow yourself. I think that's the biggest thing. Allow yourself the freedom to make that part of the homeschool, [00:20:00] like part of the homeschool experiences, learning these things instead of feeling like you have to ascribe to that. Four year college bound requirement that I think most of us are accustomed to when we're thinking about high school and we're thinking about transcripts.
I just, I can't stress enough how little it matters once it's done. And I know that, it's hard to believe that when you've got a 14 year old and you're looking at a transcript, but now that I'm at the end. With both of mine, first of all, getting into college was like a shocker in terms of how easy it was to not easy to get into the college, but how easy it was for me to pull together something that made sense, even at the last minute, because we'd been learning all along, it was just putting it into a structure that made sense.
And when you're talking about that, I'm sorry, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking you and I have had conversations about this, and I don't know that we've ever. Discussed it on the [00:21:00] air, but about how Have we? About how transcripts, our experience of college, application, that whole process is entirely different.
Did we just, we, you know where it is, it's in the one that we did at the beginning of the school year where we talked about the five things that we wish we would have known. So let's link to it because that was one of the things that I mentioned was how much pressure I put on myself thinking they needed to know these things and we had to do them a certain way.
And then how. Completely not the case that was once college rolled around because the college that I was preparing, this is the summary of what we said in that one, the college that I was preparing my kiddo for was the one that I went to back in 1992 and not the college that exists out there right now, like the way that you apply to college, what the expectations are once you get to college, how much support there is from college, like It's outrageous.
They hold your hand and help you figure out your classes once you get there. It's not like when, in 1992, when I had to get a catalog book [00:22:00] and look through and figure out what my degree requirements were. As you were waiting in line with 500 other people. That does not exist. That's not how it works anymore.
I guess it's amazing. Times have changed, right? In 30 years. Go figure. It hasn't been that long. Technology. It's a whole thing. But I think it's. The same conversation is important and true if your child is not college bound, it's just even easier, like there's even less at stake, like you get to figure it out, you get to give the diploma, you get to create the transcript, and you get to lay the groundwork for whatever it is that you think your child needs to know as they head out, and when people question it, when people have concerns about it, where I always go back to is this is actually true for kids in public school as well.
There are college bound paths and more traditional basic graduation paths that exist. And we are just following our state's guidelines and choosing the right path for the [00:23:00] kid that I have and leave it at that. Like it doesn't need to be, there's and sometimes less is more when you have someone that just.
It's going to disagree with the choices that you're making for your kid. I think I think it's okay to just say we're following what the state guidelines are. And this is the path that we're on for graduation and leave it at that as opposed to trying to explain why I think sometimes it's not worth it.
Like you don't have to explain, like you get to choose just like you got to choose to make the decision to homeschool in the first place. You get to choose how you finish this out in the high school years. I love that. And the other thing I wanted to add is that we put such pressure on going to college at 18, but how many adults do you know that are just now in their 40s discovering what it is that they want to like really want to do with their life that go back and they can do it and they do great.
It's interesting too. I think with COVID. It changed at least the very sort of specific path for college bound kids because many of them did take a gap [00:24:00] year or their first year of college was at home, they just stayed in their room and did college from there. So it's a new time to be figuring this out as well.
Colleges have different expectations, but I think the world in general. Doesn't at least allows for there to be some time to figure stuff out because there had to be once everything shut down in 2020. I know that for both of mine, but really for my youngest, there's an expectation that he's thinking about his future to be sure.
As I said, there's people that are questioning if where he's going to college, like, where are you going to college next year? Like that kind of thing tends to be the obvious. Question, but there is more of an understanding of what a gap year is. That's not something that used to exist at all. There is more of an understanding of, I don't want to go into a ton of debt.
And so I want to wait to figure out what I'm going to do post secondary before I jump in and make a decision to take on an enormous amount of [00:25:00] debt for something that I don't even know is going to matter for me. I think there's. conversations that our kids can be empowered to have to help navigate that didn't used to exist.
And I have found that makes it a bit easier. Once they actually get to the 18 year old, I'm getting ready to graduate phase. I haven't noticed my kids getting a ton of pushback sometimes, but I haven't noticed them getting as much pushback as I might've gotten when they were 15 and I was having to defend and I was having to have the conversation.
So they're not, they're in good company, whether they homeschooled or not. I think their whole generation is starting to question or trying to figure out like, what is the right. Most appropriate place for college in the world and in my life and then what am I going to do with it? And it hasn't always been a must have But I feel like nowadays with all of the technology and all you know various online entrepreneurial type stuff There are things where [00:26:00] nobody's looking to see what your degree is
Oh, Shauna, it's always so fun to talk to you. When you asked me, I was like, I am just the person, . I know exactly who you should talk to. It's me because this has been my life, like really consistently for the past few years.
It's really been the only thing I've been about. So I'm thrilled to be able to jump on and talk about, what this particular piece looks like, because I don't know. Again, I I wish I would have heard someone say what I'm saying now. So that's the lens I always use as a homeschool cousin.
When I come on what do I wish them would have said six years ago, a hundred percent. I wish this was on homeschool sisters six years ago. But at that time we were talking about, what happens when your kids struggling to read and stuff like that. Yes. Circle of life. And it goes by so fast, even though the days can feel so slow sometimes.
They all told us that. And yet here we are. Here we are. So is there anything else that we missed that you wanted to add before? No, the only thing that I'll just throw out there again, and I'm not even really working on my [00:27:00] site that much. So I don't want anyone thinking that I'm trying to plug myself because I'm not that there's anything wrong with people plugging themselves when they're taking the time to be on a podcast.
It's just not what I'm about these days. But there is. For the past two years, a series of lesson plans that I shared specifically for my youngest, so that someone in my shoes could see. This is what high school looks like for us, and it's not traditional. It's not what we're talking about here. And as part of those lesson plans at the end of the quarter, at the end of the semester, and at the year, I pull them into a portfolio and pull them into a transcript.
So you can see literally from the day to the final result. What how the learning happens and then how it's recorded because I think that's where we get stressed is thinking about well, okay, I'm feeling good about just learning what we need to learn. I just have no idea how to prove that we learned it or put it in a format that would make sense for an external person, a college someone else that's looking in at us.[00:28:00]
Grades or anything like that. And so it is all there. If anyone would like to see more specific that's why I published it. I'll give you some links to make sure they're in the show notes. Definitely. We'll include them in the show notes. Shana, thank you so much for coming on. I think you are.
Still our top guest. Our homeschool cousin. I have to keep coming back on to make sure I maintain my status. Keep your title. That's right. That's right. I have to defend my title and come back on every once in a while. All right. I will include all of the links that you mentioned today and links to your site in the show notes.
And I'm sure you'll be on again at some point soon. I can't wait. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Bye.
