Thank you to HS4CC parent Jennifer C. from Iowa for sending in her son Brian’s HS4CC Happy Story. Brain’s story is so encouraging! He graduated high school and college with his Associate in General Studies degree, along with two welding certificates from Des Moines Area Community College.
I never expected to homeschool. I also never expected that it would be the best decision I could have made for my child. My son, Brian Jr, lives with several health challenges that make his life harder, his spirit stronger, and his faith deeper. Due to contact and airborne anaphylactic food allergies, school quickly became a clear impossibility. So, I dove headfirst into what became our only option-homeschool. I was overwhelmed by the vast array of choices in curriculum and style. After some trial and error, I settled on an eclectic educational style for our homeschool.
Brian devoured facts and information and picked up concepts quickly, but ADD made his interest in those facts and concepts wane pretty quickly, too. He was never a perfectionist, which was a challenge for me to accept (why would you NOT do extra credit if it would bring your grade from a B to an A?!), and he was not the type to put in any more work than was required, unless it was a subject that he loved.
Homeschooling became the perfect environment for him because in many areas, we moved quickly through work, but when he struggled to grasp something, I was grateful for the opportunity to take extra time so that he could learn each concept to mastery.
Moving quickly through material led to him being on a path to graduating high school at 16. This was a relief because we had some built-in extra time in case his medical challenges caused us to fall behind. As more diagnoses were added to his medical history, it became clear that he would need to find a career that would not only allow him the flexibility to keep himself safe and healthy, but one that would provide a steady enough income for him to be able to afford the additional things needed to care for himself as an adult. Thus began my search for anything that would help him with this feat.
Thankfully, I found Homeschooling for College Credit (HS4CC) and was thrilled at the opportunities I was learning about. If he could save money and graduate college early and without (much, if any) debt, then he would be able to begin a career early and hopefully provide himself with a financial safety net. I spent his 9th grade year gathering as much information as I could from HS4CC, and felt ready to introduce him to earning college credit in 10th grade. We started with CLEP testing (free is best!), but it turned out that he was not quite ready for that format as we had not done much testing in our homeschool, and the pressure of a big test was too much for him. I decided to switch gears and have him try Studycom. He was able to complete 2 courses and earn 6 college credits in the first semester of 10th grade, in addition to his other high school courses. We focused on just those 2 courses for one month, which allowed me to pay for only one month of the service. This was so exciting! More for me than for him, because he did not yet understand the significance of being able to do this.
Next, we decided to try Sophia because they were having a sale, which is my love language. He liked this platform much better because he was able to move more quickly through the courses and earned 28 credits in the second semester of 10th grade. In 11th grade, he participated in the Campus program that offered one free course to HS4CC members and he took the CSM Learn math course. In our state, this was also the year that high schoolers were eligible to take free college credits from the community college, so I jumped on that opportunity. This was challenging because the public school district was not well-informed on the policies for homeschoolers, but after a lot of communication, he was able to register for one online course and an on-campus program where he was able to earn 12 credits in CAD. This was the first time he actually “went” to school. For me, it was weird to not be in control and hard to lose that time with him. He, however, thrived in that environment and earned the top grade both semesters in a group of adult students. Yes, I am proud and bragging that my 15-year-old represented the homeschool community well and outperformed students much older than him.
He fell in love with CAD, so we thought this would be his career path as it suited his skills and interests perfectly. However, he decided that in 12th grade he wanted to try welding. He enrolled in 10 welding credits and again fell in love, this time finding his (for now, at least), dream career path. Again, he excelled in these courses, so he decided that he would complete the welding diploma program after graduating high school, and is currently registered for the 2024-2025 school year. Having a child with an ever-changing interest profile meant that choosing college credits to fit a specific degree was not possible, so we just accumulated as many as possible in areas of interest to him, resulting in a total of 94 college credits earned during high school. My plan was for him to use these to complete a Bachelors at one of the Big Three schools, but for now, he has other plans.
This May, we celebrated graduation. Not just high school, but college as well. He was able to use 60 of those credits to earn an Associates in General Studies degree, along with two welding certificates from Des Moines Area Community College, where he was on the Dean’s List and graduated with honors at the age of 16. High school graduation was the following week for our Christian homeschool association, and we presented him with a diploma that was hard-earned by all of us. While he was not allowed to wear any cords during the ceremony, we proudly displayed the cords he earned, including one for high honors and the HS4CC cord for earning college credit in high school, in our pictures. This is a bittersweet time for me as this period of life has ended, and I am unsure of what lies ahead for me, though I know God has a plan. While I don’t know exactly what lies ahead for Brian either (those ever-changing interests, you know), I do know that, because of the invaluable knowledge I gained with the help of HS4CC, he is heading out into this world with a huge head start.
