Homeschooling Middle School Your Way- Special Replay

This week on Homeschool Highschool Podcast: Homeschooling Middle School Your Way- Special Replay.

Homeschooling Middle School Your Way

We don’t often talk about middle school because we are so busy talking about high school. However, there are many, many homeschooling families that not only have high schoolers but middle schoolers as well. Not only that, but there are more and more families with middle schoolers who will be homeschooling all the way through graduation.

SO we get questions about the RIGHT way to homeschool middle school! (Can you guess what we are going to say? You are correct! There’s not ONE right way to homeschool middle school!)

However, parents of middle schoolers often feel a LOT of pressure to homeschool middle school correctly. They are told:

If your kids do not start working on high school material in middle school, they will not get into college when they graduate!
If you do not do serious academic work with your middle schoolers, they will not be ready for high school…and that means failure!
You must keep up with the educational Joneses!

Thus, middle school turns into a pressure-filled situation. Is that what your tweens need? Must middle school be filled with pressure?

SO, let’s talk about how seriously to take academics in homeschool middle school

Remember what we said: There’s not ONE right way to homeschool middle school.

With that in mind, let’s think about statistics: Most middle school students are average academians. That is because “average” is the statistic describing the middle of the population (usually the “bell” in the bell-shaped curve, if you like statistical graphs).

This means that some middle schoolers can start doing the higher-level maths (such as algebra or geometry) and enjoy them. This is especially true for the more academically bright tweens.

However, for many middle schoolers, these higher-level courses are not necessary. They will get to them in high school just fine and will not experience life failure as a result. They are not trying to compete for the most competitive colleges, such as Harvard. Rather, many homeschoolers will start out:

at local community colleges to save money
going to trade school
joining the military
or are aiming for less competitive colleges that have the best-fit for them

These middle schoolers are free to work on their academics at a more relaxed pace… in the right timing for them!