I learned about Simon’s Rock “early college” even before I was very familiar with Canada’s open universities.  I think that’s why, although I always try to give personalized options and guidance to those who ask for my help, I’m just so keen on using our open universities as a way into Canada’s post-secondary system.

Bard College at Simon’s Rock doesn’t have an “open” admission system: students must apply and convince the admissions department of their suitability for the school.  But, there are no arbitrary admission standards.  You don’t need to write the SAT.  You don’t need a high school diploma.  (In fact, this school mostly accepts Gr. 10 and Gr. 11 students.) You don’t need to meet a certain GPA requirement. There isn’t a particular credential or indicator that all applicants must have.

Admission, for homeschooled and schooled alike, is based on academic information such as transcripts (official or otherwise), standardized test scores (if desired) and writing samples. The application also requests recommendations from anyone involved in the student’s education (home or otherwise), an interview with the student and anything the student wishes to share in support of their application (such as volunteer work, employment experiences, research).

Yes, I like that they’ve created a great example of a flexible admissions policy.  But even more so, I love that it’s specifically created for younger students and that it counters the tendency in today’s education system to hold students hostage in high school until a pre-defined, age-appropriate time for college or university studies.

Is every 16 year old ready for college? No. But, I bet a lot more of them are than we or even they realize.

I didn’t get much out of my partially-earned B.Ed., but one name I was exposed to was Lev Vygotsky. Although Vygotsky himself never used the current educational buzzword “scaffolding”, his concept of the zone of proximal development (the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help) informed the practice of instructional scaffolding: carefully constructed learning supports that are gradually removed when no longer needed.

With some thoughtful (as in, provided with thought) additional support, our students are capable of working at a higher level than their current abilities would suggest.  In order to promote academic development we should absolutely be providing challenges just beyond a student’s comfort zone, and it’s OK if a student needs a little help to meet those challenges.

Here’s where my background as a tutor kicks in, because of course, most of my time was spent simultaneously challenging and supporting my students. I’ve had to endure years of criticism that I was “doing the work for my students” or “creating dependencies” upon my services, but that’s simply not the way good tutoring works.  Traditional education models focus on the challenging but not the supporting.  If learning via support mechanisms were truly valued, then student assessments wouldn’t continue to over-emphasize “eyes on your own paper” test results. Yet, it’s often through support (from parents, teachers, mentors, and peers) that students become able to face and meet even greater challenges.

And let’s be clear on some of these nefarious, independence-killing strategies of support that I would employ:

• asking questions when a student is stymied (often as innocuous as: “What do you think you should do next?” or “What do you know how to do that you could do here?” or even just “What are you thinking?”)
• choosing for the student which question to attempt next (whether or not the teacher assigned it), maybe because it reinforces a concept just talked about or because it introduces a new idea or because it although it’s been dressed up to look different, it actually uses the same skill just mastered
• suggesting that a student write the question down in a different way to help with clarity and organization (for example, writing in “landscape” orientation for a certain notorious category of problems where students can never, ever fit one single line of math across the width of a page)

So what does this have to do with early college or open universities?

Kids can handle academic challenges, even really tough ones, if we’re smart about providing a support system.

This support system doesn’t have to be formal.  It doesn’t necessarily have to be anything more or wildly different than you’re already doing in your home education. It just has to be sufficient for the academic challenges at hand.

If simply turning a page sideways is enough to vastly improve one’s success rate in working with trigonometric identities, then we should seriously consider, really, how much (or how little!) it could take to support our 15, 16 and 17 year olds in an early college endeavour through one of Canada’s open universities.

Then, our kids could just be in university instead of worrying about how to get in. Instead of spending their “high school” years with curriculum packages, 12U credits, SAT scores, porfolios and home made transcripts, our kids could just be learning at the university level, receiving their university education and working towards a university degree if they so choose.  Or, they could use their university classes to transfer into a traditional college or university after a year or two and be no further behind than others their own age.

This won’t be everyone’s chosen path.  But, I think it should be one of the options that home educating families evaluate before making their post-secondary plans. What if your child really did decide that he or she wanted to start university right now? There are places, like Simon’s Rock, where this is happening in a formal setting. But you can make it happen right in your own home, whenever you want, without jumping through anyone’s admission hoops.

What if we rephrased our current thinking from, “How will my child get into university?” to “When and how will my child decide to take advantage of the guaranteed, immediate access s/he has to Canada’s post-secondary education system?” (If, of course, he or she chooses to make use of it at all.)

I look forward to discussing this at the Kitchener Waterloo Christian Home Educators’ Conference in a few weeks!

Apparently, graduating at the top of his class from Ryerson Engineering (his second degree, after the undergrad degree in Chemistry, of course) and landing a job in Ottawa designing microchips isn’t enough for Payam. . . he misses tutoring!

Just when I’m about to happily pass the one-year-retired mark, Payam has to resurface and make me nostalgic for the good old days. He asked me whether I’d be a reference for a tutoring job he’s applied to, but really, this guy is at the point where he doesn’t need to be working for someone else.  We had a nice long Skype chat about how to get started with his own clientele (after I made sure he couldn’t be talked into returning to Mostly Math in Toronto, of course!) and how to let people know that this math/science tutoring guru is available.

Payam is one of the tutors who was with me from the very beginning of Mostly Math, and he, like Julia who also dates from way back, has always humbled me as an employer.  I can remember how difficult it felt back then to let go and give up control to other tutors. (Would they explain it right?  Would they be able to handle the tough questions?  Could they establish a rapport?)

If it weren’t for them, I would have never been able to fully accept that yes, there are other tutors out there who know what they’re doing and who can be trusted to work with my beloved clients.  I think had I not worked with Payam and Julia so early on in my days with Mostly Math, I would have had a heart attack or mental breakdown feeling that I needed to be intimately involved in everyone’s tutoring experience.

That’s one reason why I believe so strongly in homeschooling: it’s the quality of the people that matter most, and what they choose to do, not what they’ve been trained to do.  None of us back then were certified teachers, but we were the best tutors you could find in the city.  Still to this day I see tutoring websites advertising positions available that require a teaching certificate, but say that tutoring experience is optional. (If you haven’t read this advice from me before, then heed it now:  if you’re evaluating a tutoring company, don’t look at “About our Tutors” — look at the “Employment Opportunities” page, or any of their job advertisements.  That will really tell you what kind of tutor you can expect!)

That’s also why I’m passionate about tutoring as a profession: tutors have made a conscious choice not to be “teachers” (in the school system) and to me tutors symbolize all that is right about teaching and learning: voluntary, individualized interaction on an as needed basis.  No “mandatory attendance” laws.  No minimum number of required hours of “instructional time.”  No obligation to come back if you no longer need or want the help. No confusion over who is the “client” or “stakeholder” in a family-tutor relationship.

For a trip down memory lane (and the best darn “About our Tutors” page I’ve ever seen on a company website, if I do say so myself!  Take that, “All our tutors are certified teachers” generic company BS!) visit the old MMEC “Tutors” page.  And, if you’re in the Ottawa area and need a top math or science tutor for high school, university, IB or AP, let me know and I’ll hook you up with Payam.  You guys are so lucky he’s moved to your area!