Choosing the Right School For Your Student

There are many important decisions parents make on a daily basis. What movies and television are appropriate? When should curfew be? What schools will give them the best opportunities? Lucky for parents, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati helps you answer the last one with ease.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati Catholic Schools provide the highest quality education. These Catholic Elementary Schools and Catholic High Schools give students all the necessary tools to succeed. Students in Catholic Schools continually rank higher on standardized tests. These high scores contribute to other significant numbers. Catholic schools have a 98% graduation rate; and 98% of students pursue higher education.

Catholic high schools rely on their values-added education for their high graduation rates and high numbers of students who pursue higher education. Unique to Catholic schools is the opportunity to nurture spiritual and moral values within the students. This is constantly reinforced not only in classes of religious instruction but throughout the curriculum and extracurricular activities. The Gospel's message is taught in our classrooms every day.

The importance of extracurricular activities is central to the excellence exhibited by these schools as well. Extracurricular activities include countless sports programs, social skill building and the arts. Eighty percent of students in Greater Cincinnati Catholic Schools and Greater Dayton Catholic Schools participate in extracurricular activities. All students are also required to participate in community service projects. This is just one of the many ways these Catholic schools give back to their communities.

Each school is a true reflection of its community. Approximately 16% of students are from other faiths and 16% are minorities. In Cincinnati, 66% of inner city students are from other faiths while 64% are minorities. In Dayton, 55% of inner city students are from other faiths while 60% are minorities. Research shows that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have a far greater chance to succeed in Catholic schools than anywhere else.

At each school, the personnel play another pivotal role in the students' success. All 100% of the teachers in the Catholic schools are certified. In the 92 area Catholic elementary schools, 23% of teachers and administrators have a Master's degree or higher. In the 22 area Catholic high schools, 68% of the teachers and administrators have a Master's degree or higher. The Archdiocese of Cincinnati employs the highest skilled staff to instill excellence in their students.

Each school encourages parental involvement. It is vital that parents are involved in the schools their children attend. This opens the lines of communication between all parties: students, teachers, and parents. When all three work in unison students are in the best possible environment for success, and that is at the heart of what the Archdiocese wants and expects of their students.

The Archdiocese of Cincinnati wants your child to succeed. Each school is dedicated to the individual student as well as the communities where they are located. They will instill values for a lifetime in your child that will go far beyond their elementary and high school years.

We encourage you to visit our schools online, and then visit them in person. All schools welcome parent tours and visits at any time; simply contact the school(s) of your choice to arrange a tour. For more information go to http://www.valuesforalifetime.com.

Laurie Cornett Cross is the Marketing Liaison for Archdiocese of Cincinnati Schools.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laurie_Cornett_Cross

New to Homeschooling

If you are new to homeschooling you need to read this article. Here are a few key things you should know about homeschooling. Keep reading for information on first steps for those new to homeschooling such as, homeschool schedule, books, supplies, and more.

If you’re not only new to homeschooling but to the idea of homeschooling, you may be wondering where to focus your attention first and what the most important elements are. This article will help you know where to look.

First Things First

Because our public school systems are local, one might assume that parents who want to school would take up their desire to homeschool with the same local organizations. But, as it turns out, it is your home state that sets the requirements for homeschooling within its borders. So among the first things you need to do is learn the homeschooling requirements of your state. Contact your state’s department of education, either through the state website or by phone or mail in order to learn what guidance they might have for homeschoolers as well as any mandates that might shape your curriculum. The section of the state department of education which deals with these mattes may be called something like “home school,” “home education,” or “home study.”

Locations

Although homeschooling does not need to take place entirely in the home, it is a good idea to consider early on where the primary location for daily work will be. This could be an area that you’ve converted especially for the purpose of homeschooling, such as a portion of a room, garage, basement, spare bedroom, or attic. On the other hand, it could be an area shared with other uses, such as the kitchen table or a portion of a home office. Alternatively, it could be a newly created area, created particularly for homeschooling purposes.

Also consider community resources that you can use, both to vary the school day and to expand possibilities. Local libraries, parks, park and recreation departments, schools, and museums may all have areas in which homeschooling can take place on a regular basis.

Whichever type of location you choose to use, it should be well lit, have a place for storing school supplies, and allow a quiet atmosphere conducive to reading and study when that is required. At the same time, think about being able to do any other tasks you need to do while supervising your child. Your choices about location need to interact well with other demands on your time as well as with your child’s requirements.

Schedule

So, consider your schedule. Perhaps you have other children, work part-time from home, or will need to double up with doing other household chores while running your homeschool. Also consider your child’s attention span, and how you might break up the school day with variety and movement interspersed with study and sitting quietly.

Books, Supplies, and Other Materials

Although in some cases you may be able to borrow textbooks from a local school, in most cases home schoolers need to find, and in many cases purchase, their own supplies. This both requires that you budget for these expenditures and, often, that you locate and choose the items that will meet your needs. In most cases, you will have a wide range of choices, and may wish to review items, when possible, before making a purchase. Some free materials may be found for homeschooling, particularly on the Internet, but it is up to you to decide whether they meet the needs of your child and the requirements of your state. With published programs, you may have some more assurances that your requirements will be met. Online education is another area that you may wish to consider.

Locating What You Need

If you wish to have further assistance in any of these areas, please review the other articles in this series, which cover a wide range of homeschool topics from curriculum to setting up a homeschool to scheduling to locating and choosing suitable materials and texts.

Source: http://www.letshomeschool.com/articles22.html

Homeschool Schedule

One thing to consider when homeschooling is a homeschool schedule. This article has information on where to begin when organizing a homeschool schedule, including your curriculum and family schedule. Keep reading for more on homeschool scheduling.

Setting up a homeschool schedule, especially for the first time, requires some thought: there are a number of requirements to take into account, and more detailed and long-term planning about who will be where and when than you may be used to doing - at least in the context of your home. Making the adjustment to having your home on a schedule will be easier, though, if you take the time and thought to do this planning in advance, while also allowing yourself the flexibility to change your schedule if it doesn’t turn out to work as you’d anticipated.

Where to Begin?

The first place to begin is with any requirements that your state’s education department might have for determining attendance and completion of a grade of schooling. Check for requirements in days and hours. For example, New York State requires a homeschool to operate the equivalent of 180 days and 900 hours a year for students in grades 1-6, with 990 hours being required per years for students in grades 7-12. You can see that requirements such as these are important to know about as they are going to give a broad shape to your homeschooling.

Your Curriculum

How you want to work 180 days (or 900-1000 hours) of schooling into a 365-day year still leaves a good deal up to you. But part of the shaping of this time is likely to come from the required curriculum. Some subjects may benefit from being treated bit by bit, in frequent, short bursts. Others work best in long time blocks. And alternating between different modes of engagement - reading, paper-and-pencil work, hands-on activities, movement, and interactive computer work, to name a few - will help keep boredom away.

Frequency is another variable to consider. Not every subject needs to be taught every day, but it might be valuable on certain days to let a single subject take over the entire schedule (for a field trip, a major project, or some other activity that requires a lot of time. The point is that you don’t have to think in hour blocks of time, unless doing so seems to you to be the best choice.

Your Family Schedule

Now is a good time to look at your family’s schedule and identify any plans or habits that will work to further shape your choices. This is the time to consider other family member’s work, school, and activity schedules, as well as important appointments such as those for medical procedures and physical therapy and family rituals involving such matters as prayer, housecleaning, socializing, vacationing, and meals.

Nine hundred divided by 180 is 5, meaning you could schedule 180 5-hour days. But before you do that, consider other possibilities. How about 225 4-hour days? Alternating long and short days? More three-day weekends and fewer week-long vacations? Or a month away with ten days of it spent on schooling and the rest on vacationing?

Also consider schooling times. Do you have an early riser? Schooling from 7 a.m. to noon leaves a great deal of day free for other things. Alternatively, you could leave morning’s free and have school from noon to 5 p.m. Or consider 10 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Schedule adaptations such as these can accommodate a child who does best when sleeping in or who needs a longish break around lunchtime to be able to focus after lunch.

You can also schedule around your toddler’s naptime, and the time you need to make and/or receive business calls for your part-time work. Music lessons, educational broadcasts on radio or television that you intend to work into your curriculum, and parks and recreation programs that you will use in conjunction with other physical education all can become part of your overarching plan.

Another consideration to take into account is the schedules of your child’s friends. Planning can help you avoid having homeschooling come between them through a schedule that maximizes their time together outside of school. If you have multiple children, plan how you will be able to provide each of them with one-on-one time for instruction or assistance. For this purpose, you might wish to have your children on slightly different schedules. Or you can work it out spontaneously, as need arises.

Of course, an advantage of homeschool is that you can adapt and change if and when you find it would be helpful. But if you’re not really sure on how to get started, you might wish to search on the Internet for schedules that have worked for other homeschooling families.

Source: http://www.letshomeschool.com/articles23.html