Graduation time has arrived for home-schooled teens, too

Tonight, 15 students clad in black gowns will forgo the crowds and bleachers and will mark the end of their high school careers at a small and personalized ceremony that will include their prerecorded farewells and slide shows of images dating to infancy.

Some students will sing or play piano. Their parents will perform a blessing.

"It's very different from most graduations — not that I've been to that many," said Hannah Braun, 17. "It's just a really sweet time. It's very intimate."

One would be forgiven for wondering if the transition to college will be hard for the students. The graduates in this group, however, reflect a new era of home-schooling in which students can cherry-pick from a menu of options.

They've gathered in a park for group physical education sessions with home-schooled peers. In addition to their home studies, some have sat in regular school district classrooms and have taken part in district extracurricular activities. Many have learned in college classrooms.

Even though Braun, for example, has been educated at home since kindergarten, she has attended Pima Community College since the second semester of her sophomore year of high school. Graduating with 48 college credits, she'll enter college as a sophomore.

Lauren Hall, 18, also home-schooled since kindergarten, had an even more varied experience. She attended a few classes each year at Mountain View High School, where she was on the varsity volleyball team. She also attended Pima College and has 24 credits.

As with Braun, there was some adjustment. "It was weird at first," she said. "I could eat or go to the bathroom whenever I wanted at home, but it was different when I went to school. It wasn't as comfortable."

But she noted that she adjusted quickly and was grateful for the time to prepare for her upcoming university experience.

Hall, who will major in elementary education at Northern Arizona University in the fall, said it would be fun to walk with her peers, but she's also looking forward to the smaller ceremony, saying it's more personal.

"High school was a ton of fun, but college is going to be that much better," she said. "I'm really excited to take that next step."

Both teens said home-schooling worked for their families.

"I think it did help to make sure we didn't change for other people," Hall said. "I was only there (at Mountain View) for two periods a day, so that wasn't enough time to really get caught up in all the drama."

Graduation also is a significant time for parents, who will see their lesson planning and grading ease up.

Darleen Hall, 52, was a public-school teacher in the Marana Unified School District for 19 years. She chose home-schooling because she was qualified, she could teach at a faster pace than she would in a public school and she wanted to model appropriate behavior rather than have her four kids pick it up from their peers.

As her children got older, however, she decided to introduce the world in smaller doses, because she didn't need as much control, and she jokes that she couldn't teach chemistry.

"I knew that if she was kept in her own little bubble, it wouldn't stop the real world from coming and knocking," Darleen Hall said.

She finds her daughter's graduation bittersweet. "She's grown up to be a fine young lady, so there's pleasure in that. And yet it's the end of an era, too."

Braun, who hopes to become a trauma nurse, called her graduation "a bit surreal."

"When I was young, I thought about graduating and it seemed so far away. Now that it's here, it's going to be really hard to grasp that. It's something I've looked forward to my whole life, and in a flash, it will be over."

learn more

Arizona Families for Home Education is a statewide organization that serves home-schooling families. Go to www.afhe.org for more information.

The Christian Home Educators of Tucson also has three local support branches, including a Northwest branch, which is staging the graduation tonight. Go to www.homeschool-life.com/ az/chetnw to learn more. The statewide organization defines a secondary student as a home-schooler even if enrolled in community college classes, as long as the parents remain the primary instructors and retain complete responsibility for the child's education.