Balancing Out-of-the-Home Classes

This year I am homeschooling one middle school student and a high school student. Their out-of-the-home classes are more than extracurricular. They are classes that support their future career hopes.

My daughter (13) is a very serious dancer and wants a career in dance. She will be in Junior Company, which is a semi-professional company for serious teens. She will be taking classes in ballet, Limon, hip-hop (1 semester), modern, choreography, Butoh, and partnering. She will be at this dance studio eight hours a week (not including rehearsals for performances). Anne loves ballet foremost and doesn't get nearly enough at her Junior Company studio, so last spring she started studying an Italian form of ballet, Cecchetti, at a different dance studio. She loves it and is studying for the Level 4 Cecchetti exam in the spring. She will be doing about four hours of ballet and pointe at the Cecchetti dance studio. That puts her up to a minimum of 12 hours of dance a week. She is delighted. I am a bit apprehensive, so I keep reminding her that she has a heavy academic schedule and must maintain at least a B average. She is young, driven, focused and excited. We shall see how it goes. 

My son (15) decided to give up dance for now. This has been a major part of his life since he was about 7 years old. In recent years, the pressure to dance to a particular standard really stressed him out. So this year he is pursuing other interests. He will be taking one hour of guitar, two hours of art classes, and two hours of Boffing (which will be part of his physical education credit) each week. In addition, he will attend a two hour teen art lab once a month and a literature movie club once a month. That will be a total of five hours a week some weeks and more than seven hours a week on other weeks. We may add something else as time goes on. However, he needs to get used to his full high school academic schedule. He just completed 34 hours of volunteer work at the nature center that will count for his Career and Technology credit.

It is going to be a busy year!

Blessings, Dawn