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Janice Campbell
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Articles:
Business-Based Learning: A Fifteen-Year-Old Girl's Plan What is one way that a highschool-aged homeschooler can fit learning around starting a business? Every child's interests and abilities differ. In modern education, public or private, it's mostly one size fits all. Home school gives us the chance to do something different. Don't be fooled by the claim that a home school high school course has to match what is done in modern education so that the home schooled child will be prepared for "real" life. The truth is, the graduates of modern schooling are hardly prepared for "real" life at all. To get different results we must leave their box entirely. Preparation for "real" life takes place in the heart much more than in the mind. A high schooler who pursues his or her own interests with vigor, who creates value and sees other people desire that value for themselves, is learning heart lessons that modern schooling cannot teach. So, that being said, how do I fit the interests of my fifteen-year-old daughter around a business-based program of learning? She loves to read and is mentally capable of comprehending the great themes of literature. She is artistically and musically gifted. And she can work wonders with her hands in crafting. My daughter started a piano teaching business this summer. She already has 8 students and is making more per hour of actual work than many adults. She finds that she loves teaching little children to play the piano. When I can persuade her that "school" has started, she will start my course, Micro-Business for HighSchoolers. This will give her the pathway to make her piano teaching a real business, one that she can leverage onto the internet for an increase beyond hourly wages. She has wanted to learn world history. I will give her a regimen of reading that will take her through a fascinating and controversial approach to both world history and world literature. She will not read a history text book or a literature anthology. She will construct a history timeline and weave in the pieces through fascinating historical works like Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico" or Iggulden's "Genghis Khan." She will read "The Iliad" and portions of "War and Peace." She will watch Armand Assante's "Oddyseus," again. My daughter wants to learn a language; I will buy her a Rosetta Stone language program. She is accomplished with the piano, but wants to learn the cello. She will rent a cello using her business earnings and receive cello lessons. Since reading and writing are high priorities with both her and me, I will have her do a series of "Vocabulary from Classical Roots" workbooks. She will participate in the family devotionals on learning the Old Testament. - And she is threatening me with the need for a driver's ed program! What is missing from this plan is a Mathematical/Logic exercise for her. I have never been persuaded that algebra and text book geometry develop spatial/logical thinking. I have a spatial/logical mind; I have designed and built many buildings in many unusual situations, having remembered almost nothing from high school math. Designing and making things with your hands is what develops this kind of mental ability. A mathematical mind is developed by going back and forth between figuring and building, between imagining with the mind and crafting with the fingers; it does not come by doing endless math problems in a work book. But, in developing her business, my daughter will learn bookkeeping and keeping accounts. She will write a business plan that includes financial thinking. She will figure taxes. Math for her will be real world and needed right now. Along with the business, however, my thought is to have her schedule a set time to play mathematical/logical games, including chess, with her 9-year-old brother, who needs those activities far more than the excruciating pain of endless math problems he does not understand. I would be more than happy to assist you in developing a custom high school program for your teen around the core of starting his or her own business. Just contact me through the sites below. Help your teen build his or her own business with Micro-Business for HighSchoolers, a nine month course that guides step-by-step in the creation of a real-world business, while learning a whole lot. This course could easily become a central part of your child's high school education. Check it out at http://www.YguideAcademy.com/MicroBusiness.html If you have any questions about applying business-based learning to your teenager's education, please contact us through http://www.YGuideAcademy.com We would be happy to help you to devise what will work for your own family. Copyright 2009 by YGuide Publishing, Inc. Freely use without changes, including links. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Yordy
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