Keeping Up With Homeschool Paperwork, Interview with Ann Karako

This week on HSHSP Ep 192: Keeping Up With Homeschool Paperwork, Interview with Ann Karako. Keeping Up With Homeschool Paperwork, Interview with Ann Karako We are joined again this week by our friend, Ann Karako, of Annie and Everything. We are talking about PAPERWORK! Who LOVES paperwork...Crickets...crickets...That's right. Most homeschool moms do not love paperwork. Ever felt overwhelmed with the tons of paperwork in your homeschool? It is a necessary part of education, but not much fun to keep up with! Vicki shares that during her years of being homeschool advisor, she sometimes found overwhelmed moms bringing in boxes of unsorted paperwork to their mid-year reviews because they got overwhelmed and gave up. Vicki and the mom would sort and grade, then develop a system that would hopefully work for that mom to help her keep up! Ann encourages us that she's felt been there, done that. For instance, her daughter needed a GPA for sports recently. There was some scrambling to pull it together but it got done. Ann handled the event by saying to herself: * Life happens * I won't place a boatload of guilt on myself * I don't need to be a perfect mom or a perfect grader Did you hear that? Maybe I'll share it again: * Life happens * I won't place a boatload of guilt on myself * I don't need to be a perfect mom or a perfect grader Photo used with permission Want Ann's advice? She encourages homeschool moms to decide: * What really must be graded * You do not need to grade EVERY single thing! * Anne does not grade daily work. She feels like daily work is simply learning activity and is not fair to be grading that. Daily work is practice! They need to make mistakes and learn and correct, not be graded. * If teens are allowed to learn and not have perfection on first try, they won't be frozen by fear of failure. * When moms try to grade daily work, they often get bogged down. * Instead, grade these assignments: * Things that show mastery, (things usually done at the end of a textbook chapter) * tests (because that requires review and practice and shows they learned) * papers * projects * lab reports Ann reminds mom, though, that big piles of paperwork are bad news. When you have a huge pile, you might find things get lost along the way. That is not helpful when concepts build on one another (such as math). You do not want this to happen! * Own up to your failures when you get behind * Adjust grades if you made a mistake in instruction (or you got behind on grading which cost your teens some accurate learning) * Be honest but you don't have to be rigid * You can drop lowest grade, then average the rest of the test * You can give extra credit assignments: * reading a book * writing a paper * doing test retakes for partial score * When grading look for growth and redemption. If there is a problem due to instruction, you can help. But remember this key principle! In high school, teens need to come to you when they need help on academics. They need to learn to advocate for themselves. * Their diligence is a factor in their grade, if they did not ask for help when they needed it, you do not need to adjust grades! * Better to fail and bounce back by asking for help at home than waiting to learn that resilience when they are at college. Teach your teens each day (and remember it yourself): * Start fresh. * This is the day that the Lord has made.