Please tell me that I’m not the only one who starts to sweat when the topic of record-keeping comes up! It’s a huge responsibility, teaching your own children. Keeping records either provides evidence that you know what you’re doing or that you don’t know what you’re doing, or maybe that you think you know what you’re doing when in reality you don’t! It’s intimidating! Luckily I reside in a state with loose requirements for record-keeping. Records must be kept but in most cases aren’t turned in; the amount of detail included is left up to the parent.
Keeping records of your children’s work is a great way to track their progress. It will help you hone your organizational skills too! Check the legal requirements for your state to be sure that your record-keeping is in line with state law.
What follows are some record-keeping options that I have tried. By sharing my experience, I may help you find something you can use. Hopefully my story will give you hope that you will be able to conquer this paperwork nightmare and turn it into a dream!
It all started with kindergarten. I was a new and enthusiastic home schooler, anxious to do the "right" thing. It seemed to me that I needed to model my classroom after a traditional classroom, right down to the traditional lesson plans. I created a monthly calendar and set aside several hours of quiet time one weekend to fill in each day’s planned lessons for the entire month. It was an impressive piece of work and made it look like I knew exactly what I was doing!
That type of record-keeping might work for you, but it didn’t work for me. Within two weeks something threw a kink into my schedule, and we spent most of the day away from home at various appointments! My schedule was derailed, and that rattled me more than it should have. I tried for several months to make and follow my scheduled lesson plans, but it was no use. Our life was too unpredictable for that. I probably should have just checked off each item as it was covered and not worried about the date being wrong, but that felt like cheating to me – or at least not being totally honest. Another idea would be to only plan a week at a time, not the entire month.
What worked for me for the rest of the elementary and middle school years was the journal style of record-keeping. Older students can often handle this type of record-keeping. It’s simple, really. You record work as it is completed – like keeping a log. I kept a record of what my two students did each day and also listed any field trips, extracurricular activities, or community service that we participated in. Since our aim was always to complete all assignments in each subject, we just kept plugging away until the books were completed.
When my kids reached high school, I had to pull myself together and learn how to keep more detailed records for their portfolios and transcripts. This was a scary task, and I tackled it by attending several workshops on teaching high school and creating home school transcripts. I was helped by a workshop and resource packet called You Can Home School High School by Tandy Collier, as well as an audiotape and booklet by Inge P. Cannon of Education PLUS called Creating Transcripts and Issuing Diplomas – What Every Parent Should Know. Additionally, I used The Homeschooler’s High School Journal published by Ferg ’N Us Services to help me keep track of attendance and course work. By doing a little research, you can find resources to help you get ready for this type of record-keeping as well.
This was perhaps the most intimidating form of record-keeping in existence, but the end results are worth it. You keep track of all assignments, projects, quizzes, and tests and keep a sampling of them for the portfolio. You also include Course Description and Course Credit pages for each course. The course description can be used again if you have younger children who will use the same resources once they reach that level. The course credit page will be individualized; it summarizes the work completed and your evaluation of the student; it also includes the final grade and the credits earned. The entire portfolio can be maintained in a three-ring binder with dividers for each course.
You can buy journals and planning books created specifically for home schoolers, or you can create your own with plain notebooks. You can also find computer programs for tracking grades and progress. If you decide to do that, remember to print out or back up your records often. My brief experience with computer program tracking is that I get lazy, and then the computer crashes or the CD-rom is scratched, and my records are lost along with the work my children have done!
During the process of finding the record-keeping strategies that worked for me, my organizational skills definitely improved. I gained confidence in my ability to record my children’s progress. When I decided to enroll my son in a traditional high school, the credits he earned at home became part of his school record. That happened only because of those record-keeping skills that I worked so hard to develop!
You don’t know what the future holds for your family. The Boy Scout motto is to "be prepared." The sooner you tackle record-keeping, the better prepared you will be. And the bonus is that you will have something tangible to show the doubters in your world that you don’t just think you know what you’re doing, you truly do know and are fully capable! Now isn’t that a dream come true?
