Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel. I am excited about today's video
because I have been getting so many questions about this topic and I am
excited to share some things that many of you homeschool parents may or may
not have thought about. So I guess I'll just start by saying you know for those
of you who are new to my channel my name is Marla and
I was homeschooled my entire life, so my parents homeschooled me from JK all the way through.
I then completed my homeschool, my elementary and my high school, and went to university.
I got my Bachelor's of Science degree.
From there I continued my education. I am now a homeopath and a holistic nutritionist as well.
I'm certified in immunology so I've just been doing lots of education after homeschooling.
And the biggest question that I get frequently through this channel or through Instagram
is how can we ensure that our kids have a good chance of getting to post-secondary education?
like a university or a college if we are homeschooling.
And there has been the biggest shift towards homeschooling,
you know, compared to.
all of the previous years due to COVID.
Obviously schools force kids to stay at home
and do school online.
A lot of parents have made the permanent shift,
which I think is great to homeschool permanently
as online schooling isn't that fun.
So I have a lot of stuff to share with you
and I'm going to just jump on in.
Now, the first thing that I wanna stress
before I go into anything else is that
Now, more than ever, and you can only imagine, especially if your kids are in elementary school like mine are,
I have a grade 3, a grade 1, and an SK so far, they have a long way to go before they get to post-secondary education,
so 10 years away or more.
And what I have seen and believe, and again it's going to be probably more so over the next decade,
is that...
Post-secondary education is not necessarily needed. Of course, if you want to be a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, something that does require that university or college degree or diploma, you'll have to go to school, but I see so many people starting businesses at a younger age.
So many people starting trades and all kinds of other things that again don't require the college or university.
That being said, you don't know the direction your child is going to go in and for myself, my husband and I have talked about this.
We are encouraging our children to
do whatever they believe is best for their future in terms of education.
So we are homeschooling them throughout elementary and high school.
Once they've completed their elementary and high school,
we are not forcing them to go to college.
or university. It costs a lot of money and to be fair you usually don't end up getting a job
afterwards. It's very hard so if our kids want to start their own business and bypass post-secondary
education I am not opposed to that.
But what if my child changes their mind five years down the road and says,
you know what, I do want to go to post-secondary education.
they're not able to because they were not homeschooled properly. So this is what I
want to talk about today. If you whether or not you want your child or they want
to go to post-secondary education you want to make sure that if you are
homeschooling from home you have that thought in your mind about the future
and are making sure that you're doing everything you can as a parent or an
educator to ensure that your child has a great chance of
you know getting accepted into a great you know college or university.
So how do we ensure this? Well, I really want to start by talking about the
unschooled homeschooling approach. I do know so many friends of mine, so many
relatives and strangers or acquaintances through YouTube, Instagram, who use this
approach to homeschooling. Now, as a person who's homeschooled her whole life,
all my siblings have homeschooled, I have six siblings, my mom homeschooled all of
us, we are all homeschooling our children. I
I personally am not a firm believer in this approach.
The reason is because, and I do want to maybe put a disclaimer,
I am not condemning or trying to make anyone feel bad about the approach to homeschooling that they have taken.
At the end of the day, whatever way you feel is best in educating your child,
that is your right and go for it.
You as a parent have the right to educate your child
however you see fit.
So for you, if that's the unschooled approach,
please do so.
I think your child is still better off learning at home
than in the school because there is no focused approach
in school and there are a lot of other issues
that I've talked about in previous videos.
So regardless, if your child is at home
and you're educating them, good on you.
It is not easy.
But in particular with the unschooled approach,
what I see an issue with is trying to get your child
to post-secondary education because strictly speaking,
and again, I've seen this through all my siblings
applying to university or colleges and relatives.
The first thing the college or university will ask you for
is,
transcripts and proof of work. My mom would send every book we've ever done literally
to the universities or colleges to prove that we have not only done the work but have met all of
the requirements and then some. We have a harder time getting into colleges and universities than
someone coming out of the school board because we are a minority, homeschoolers are a minority,
even though there's so many of us, whether people realize it or not,
The schools are going to look and trust more somebody who's coming from a school board because that's just the way it is, that's what's been going on for so long.
So to really get yourself into a competitive school or have that chance to stand out, you not only have to meet the minimum requirements but much more.
And so most colleges and universities will ask for proof.
that you were not just wasting your days away that you genuinely did the work. Now with the
unschooled approach and I do incorporate one day a week of this approach into our our learning and
I'll touch on that briefly but with the unschooled approach if this is what you're using it is hard
to give concrete proof that your child has met every single requirement necessary.
So, when you are planning a curriculum for your child, if it's, you know, we wake up
in the morning and my kids kind of do what they feel like in terms of education, we do
a lot of outdoor education, as amazing as that is, in terms of concrete proof that yes,
we have done the chemistry, the biologies, the maths, potentially the physics and
the English and every other subject, the histories,
and everything that you need to say,
I have met each course for each grade year.
Here is the work to prove it,
and the tests and assessments to prove it,
and the report card.
You need all of that.
And to get that went through the unschooled approach
is difficult.
Now, I know a lot of parents who are doing
the unschooled approach just for the early years
of education, and then they switch to something
a little bit stricter.
One thing to think about, if your child has grown up with that unschooled homeschool approach,
and then you say all right now we got to really get down and be serious because you need to get
to a post-secondary education. It is a lot more challenging for your child to do that because
to be honest a discipline is not there as much. If your child is used to just kind of doing the
subject that they feel they want to do that day or they want to learn outside so they go outside
When it comes down to sit down, you need to write this test, you need to get this and this and this and this and this done, it might be a lot harder for your child to do that.
Now, this might not be the case for everyone, but I'm just putting these thoughts in your mind for something to think about.
So what should we be doing?
Well, in my opinion, the thing that I have personally cherished about homeschooling and really...
I'm so grateful to my mom about is that she did not take homeschooling as a means to just
do whatever we want.
We didn't just do our subjects that the school board does.
We did like an extra.
five or ten subjects on top of that to get every single thing. My mom made us do rhetoric and
theology and every other subject you could think of including Latin and Spanish and French and all
the languages just because she wanted us to...
to be up here, not down here in terms of education.
She wanted us to be above the school board
and have so many opportunities in our life.
And I'm so grateful for that.
Now, it's not that you have to go ahead
and do that with your children, but.
What you do need to do, in my personal opinion with the experience that I have,
you want to make sure that throughout every grade you are incorporating that discipline.
The biggest challenge that I see from children who are homeschooled and then go to post-secondary education,
if they are not doing what I'm about to share with you, is the discipline.
They have a hard time meeting deadlines.
When you're in university, it is study at your own pace.
No one's there to force you to submit assignments or attend an exam.
You have to have that will and that drive to show up at school every day and do the work.
High school is different. Your parents are pushing you to do that. You'll flunk a grade. You'll do all these things.
But with university, the only thing that happens is you just have to retake a course again if you fail and you have to pay for it.
So it's not something that you have to do.
that a lot of people succeed at if they don't have the discipline. So how do we
get this discipline? What I think you need to be doing with your child starting
at the very youngest ages is have a set schedule of routine and have a rigorous
workload. As challenging as it is, homeschool in my opinion is not an
excuse to just let your kids run free and
you know, go print a random page off of Google of work
and have them do a little bit of homeschool
and then outside work the rest of the time
because as fun as that is and as beautiful as that is.
That's not going to give them, again, in my opinion.
the strong foundation of education that they need.
So you need to get a prop,
first of all, there are so many companies out there,
homeschool companies that you can use
to educate your child.
We personally, growing up, because we are Catholic,
we use Seton, Seton Press for most of our subjects,
but we also use MCP math.
MCP math and physics and their sciences are,
in.
incredibly rigorous and challenging in a good way. We have taken those books to the school board
and compared them with teachers to the books they're using in schools at the same grade levels
and MCP math was far surpassed. It is university level compared to the high school books.
It's absolutely amazing. So MCP and Seton Press, those are what we used and they are
incredible. But find a program that sits with you, you know, whether it's an online
program, a Christian program, a non-religious program, there are so many
to choose from. But purchase the books, get all of the subjects, you know, spelling,
your phonics, your English, your math, your potentially religion, your language,
history, everything that they would need for each grade. Have them sit down in the
morning after breakfast for a couple hours, just like they would in school.
Get that discipline for them to be able to sit down for that long.
Do the school, write the tests that come with the book, don't skip pages.
Have them do the work every single day and show up for it and then make a report card.
There are so many different ways you can do that and I might make another video on that.
But having the work in the books and then you keep those books for all of elementary
and then once they start high school, keep all the books for high school.
and once they have completed it, the work is there, the report cards are there, the proof that
they did that work. When your child potentially gets to a point where they do want to apply to
a post-secondary institute, you can say here's the proof that we met the requirements and then some
We can get in and you know, you'll find it so much easier to get in we see a lot of homeschool people get rejected
Who did not do the work?
I know a good friend of mine who was homeschooled and her parents kind of let her do work when she felt like it didn't
Do work when she didn't feel like it
They didn't enforce the sciences and she wanted to be a nurse and she got rejected from multiple
institutions because she just did not have the proof of the science background that you know
she should have gotten had she even been in school they would have made her take
chemistry biology math etc she just unfortunately did not do that.
So this is not something to stress anybody out. This video is just a purely an educational thing.
If homeschooling is new to you, if you've never been homeschooled or don't know anyone who's been homeschooled,
I am sharing this video for you to just give you things to think about as your child is growing.
You want them to have opportunity. If you are sure that your child will not tend to post-secondary
institute then you might not need to worry as much but if you think you know my child might
and I don't know what my child is doing in the future you want to give them all of the options
and not have them.
have any regrets as they move forward. So again I'm not pushing my children for post-secondary
education. I attended post-secondary. It did not do me any good. It left me with a lot of debt and
I applied to jobs after jobs and there was nothing available. So I then went and started my own
business which is extremely successful thank God and it did not involve my
crazy expensive university degree. That being said I'm grateful for the
experience and the education that I did achieve from that but it is not
necessary in our world today. There are so many opportunities for our children
to earn a living and you know do something that they enjoy without all
of that debt and pressure. So I am not pushing my children to that but I want
them to have that opportunity. If my child chooses to be a doctor or a lawyer
or something that they have to
to school for they can do that. So the unschooled approach we do this one day a week where every
single day except Friday we sit down after breakfast for a couple hours and go through
every single subject until we are done for the day usually only to
takes two to three hours. It's not long at all, especially in the higher grades,
it's really not that long. Once it is done, they can go outside, play, do
whatever they want. On Fridays, we do not do any written work. We go outside, we do
scavenger hunts, we do field trips, we do
outdoor learning we teach our children life skills like how to build a fence or how to
plant your own food so we're teaching them physical things that they might not get in a school.
We also on Wednesdays during the school year we will do some school in the morning but then
it is a co-op day where our kids are again learning something else that's not sitting down and
studying.
they also are in sports there's over 34 of their closest friends who are homeschooled
so we have days where they're together all day we do hikes we do sports like skiing trips
snowboarding trips so they get all of the extracurricular and they get the unschooled
approach on Fridays where it's outdoor learning and kind of at their own pace whatever they wish
it is sitting down getting that written work done. We take into account our child's strength and
weaknesses. So my son, John, who is fantastic at math and does not need to spend as much time
in math, but who is much poorer in phonics and in English, we spend much more time in that area.
So we'll kind of go through his math quickly and then I say, all right, we're taking a little
extra time and we're going to make sure you understand the concepts.
If my child's a visual learner or an auditory learner, we take that into account and use those
methods to teach. But at the end of the day, they are still getting the work done and they're
still getting that education. So I have proof that my children did that work. And we keep track of
every test, every assignment, we grade everything. And again, we're keeping track for that.
proof. So this is just something to think about. It's not again to shame parents or
you know discourage one way of learning over another. It's just something to think about
if you are planning to homeschool long-term and planning on giving your kids the opportunity.
to post-secondary education. If you're getting your child back into school next year and you're
just taking one year to homeschool, the un-schooled approach could work well for you. It's just
again about that potential for post-secondary education. Now again, depending where you live,
here in Canada, at least in my area, kids that are homeschooled, when they do apply to go back to
school if the parents choose to do that.
The school does require proof that they completed the previous grade. If you cannot
provide enough proof that your child has successfully and sufficiently completed
that grade, they will make that child redo that grade. So I have again relatives and some friends
kids who were homeschooling for a couple years and then went back
school. They were applying to school to go and say grade six, and they could not prove that they
did all of the work necessary to complete grade five, so they were put back a year in school, which
does make kids feel a little bit more embarrassed if they're older and they're put back in grade.
So think about that as well. These children, they still need to learn all of the things. They need
that education as it develops their brain. So in my opinion, don't just take this time time.
home school to do whatever you feel like. Do try to have some sort of structure. It will
make a world of a difference in the long run. So I hope that you enjoyed this video. If there
are any questions, please reach out. I'm happy to help as much as I can. And again, this is not
to shame or make you feel frustrated. It's just purely to give you some information to think about.
And at the end of the day, you still think, you know what?
The unschooled approach is the best way.
Please do that.
This is your child.
You educate them any way you see fit.
Have a beautiful day and I will talk to you in my next video.
Bye.