Welcome! My name is Joanne and I, like many of you, have been homeschooling for many years – in fact we started over 25 years ago. I began homeschooling my children back in the ‘80s, right after the homeschool law came into effect in Florida. (Shout out to Craig and Brenda Dickinson and then-Representative Daniel Webster.) That was back in the day when you ordered your entire curriculum from catalogs, sight unseen. The first book fair that I attended was in a Sunday School classroom and the books were in tomato crates. What a long way we have come! In those days, most homeschooling families joined a correspondence school when it came time to earn high school credits. Homeschooling in high school just seemed too complicated.
Fast forward a decade or two and not only are we homeschooling our students through high school – we’re doing it with excellence. I have taken all three of my children through their high school years and because each of my children are different (and I mean, completely different!) we had to walk three different paths; but they made it! My oldest went on to obtain her Master’s Degree in Nutrition and is now running a business out west; my second daughter actually earned two degrees – one in Cosmetology and one in Art History and she now owns a quaint little salon downtown. My son, even though he started college, decided he enjoyed making money more, so he’s currently running event set-up crews for a local firm and doing very well (and meeting famous people).
During the course of my children’s high school years, I also had the privilege of serving with a local non-traditional private school as their high school administrator. I went to lots of guidance counselor meetings for public school counselors, I connected myself to as many experts and resources as possible and I began to take in and organize all of that information to make it easily available to our school, and of course, my friends outside the school, and then ultimately to the homeschooling community at large. This resulted in my publishing the original Piecing Together the High School Puzzle in 2004.
I now travel around the state and speak at conferences or with local homeschooling groups. I also do individualized guidance counseling for families – either in person or via Skype. (We get very creative on making a meeting happen.) I see my role as first and foremost an encourager. Without exception, every homeschooling family that I meet is doing an excellent job of educating their children – they just want to check in to be sure it looks good on paper and that they have a workable plan for reaching their goal.
Through the encouragement of many, especially one very persistent ally who is an expert in blogging – I am now entering the online world in an endeavor to give you access to all the puzzle pieces you need to complete your student’s high school puzzle.
This blog will grow over the next months and years but we are starting out with the basics. Here you will find general information on homeschooling the high school student, ways to get started in the college application process, a connection to my book and for those who want more individualized attention – a link to set up guidance counseling sessions or speaking engagements for your local group.
My goal will be to publish new information about homeschooling in high school on a weekly basis, bringing in more and more pieces, so bookmark us and check back often, put us in your RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook – you know – all those things! I’m excited to be here – can’t wait to see where we’re heading.
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