My 15-year-old is in Challenge 2 of Classical Conversations this year. CC is a classical Christian educational program available to anyone in the world, and they have just in the past year reached their 100,000th student. The program is set to do very well on into the future. While all homeschool families will tell you there is no one size fits all educational program, I will say that this program is perfect for my daughter, Krystal.
Krystal is an audio learner, loves the socialization of a conversation all day long once a week, with a few pull out programs on other days during the week besides what we call, “community day”. Basically, here’s her weekly schedule:
- Monday is her end of the week where she prepares her final work for community day,
- Tuesday is Community Day where her 9 student and one tutor classroom come together to celebrate and talk about all the things they learned that week.
- Wednesday, she works and learns for a full day on her own, and has an online math class in the evening along with cheerleading.
- Thursdays she meets online with her writing tutor and has another full work-day.
- Fridays are her favorite day this year where she and some friends take Microsoft Office, Algebra Club, and she is a teacher’s assistant for 3rd grade Math class. Fridays I’m the teacher and we host the classes in town so the teens can have lunch at Subway and hang out while they learn STEM classes.
This schedule is exactly how Krystal likes it for this year. Each year we reassess. We hope to continue on until graduation through CC for her because there’s a big shiny prize at the end if she does: a CC Graduation Cruise! Kids literally come together from all over the world to graduate together on a big cruise ship in either Texas or Florida. It’s quite remarkable and we’re praying that’s where we’re headed.
Since we’re on this path, I started researching the options for receiving college credits alongside CC. There are four possibilities: CLEP, AP, Dual Enrollment, or CC Plus. I’ll explain each of these briefly here.
- CLEP – College Level Examination Program offers 34 exams that cover introductory level college course material. With a passing score on one CLEP exam, you could earn three or more college credits at 2,900 U.S. colleges and universities. Exams cost only $89 plus your test center’s administration fee, compared to hundreds of dollars per course credit at a college.
- AP – Advanced Placement is a program run by the College Board (the makers of the SAT) that allows you to take special high school courses that can earn you college credit and/or qualify you for more advanced classes when you begin college. They are designed to give you the experience of an intro-level college class while you’re still in high school. Plus, you can get college credit for the class if you pass the AP exam.
- Dual Enrollment -also referred to as concurrent enrollment, or dual credit occurs when a student is enrolled at two academic institutions or schools at the same time. The credits you work toward during dual enrollment can often apply at both schools, often a high school and a college.
- CC Plus – Classical Conversations Plus utilizes the concurrent enrollment model for assessing Challenge coursework to gain regional college credit. In other words, your student can get college credit for the Challenge courses they’re already completing.
Here’s a list of helpful links! Feel free to start a conversation in the comments about what courses you did for your Challenge students! I’m happy to share more about mine. At the time of publishing this, Krystal is not graduated and a second-year university student studying engineering and Mercy is about to start her Senior year of high school. Krystal finished with around 30 college credits and chose to graduate after her junior year, while Mercy will have closer to 90 college credits and plans to finish all four years of high school.