How To Help Your Teen Get Their High School Diploma When They Fall Behind: What I Learned As A Parent
It was 10:17 pm on a Tuesday, and I was folding laundry in the living room when I heard the crinkle of notebook paper from the kitchen. Javi, my 17-year-old, had his head down on the table next to a half-eaten box of microwave mozzarella sticks, his credit recovery worksheet crumpled under his forearm. His soccer cleats were still propped by the back door, caked with mud from practice that afternoon. “I’m done,” he mumbled when I walked in. “Just tell me I don’t have to do this. I can get a GED or whatever.”
Javi missed 12 weeks of junior year when he got a brutal case of mono, ended up sleeping 16 hours a day for a month and couldn’t keep up with his classes. By the time he got his energy back, he was a full credit and a half behind on algebra and PE, and the school’s only suggestion was an asynchronous online credit recovery program he could do on his own time. We gave it a try, but six weeks in, he’d only finished 10% of the algebra work. Every time he got stuck on a problem, there was no one to ask, no office hours to go to, just an automated message that said “review the module and try again.” I kept nagging him to log in for 30 minutes a day, but that was just as useless as the automated message. I had no idea what to do next, and I’d never heard anyone talk about what actually happens when your kid falls behind on credits before graduation.
I called the PTA advocacy group I’m part of, and one of the other moms connected me to a former guidance counselor who told me the first unwritten rule: schools don’t volunteer all the options you have. You have to ask for them. So I emailed Javi’s guidance counselor and asked for a 30-minute meeting to go over every possible pathway he could take to get a full, accredited high school diploma, not just the online program they’d handed us. That meeting changed everything.
First, our district offered in-person credit recovery through the local community college, three nights a week, for $50 a credit, which was way cheaper than the private online programs I’d seen advertised. The classes are small, 10 to 15 kids, and there’s a certified teacher there the whole time to answer questions. Javi was embarrassed at first, thought he’d be the only kid his age there, but half the class was other 17 and 18-year-olds who’d fallen behind for one reason or another – one missed school for a family emergency, another had anxiety that kept him out for months. Second, we didn’t know we could apply for credit for work or volunteer experience toward required electives. Javi coaches 8-year-old rec soccer twice a week, and that counted for his missing PE credit, no extra work required. That knocked a full credit off what he needed right away. Third, I learned that if he needed more time, our district allows students to stay for a fifth year of high school for free, no extra tuition, instead of pushing them out early. We didn’t end up needing that, but it took a huge weight off knowing it was an option if things went wrong.
I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning, the biggest being assuming the school would give us all the information we needed automatically. A lot of schools push the fastest, cheapest option for them, which isn’t always the best option for your kid. If you’re in this spot, the first concrete thing to do is go into that meeting with a list of specific questions: Do you offer in-person credit recovery? Can my kid get credit for existing work or volunteer experience? Is an extra year of high school covered by the district if we need it? What accredited programs do you recommend outside of the school’s default option?
Another thing I learned the hard way: don’t leave your kid to do this alone, even if they say they want to. For Javi’s algebra class, I emailed the teacher at the community college and asked if we could set up a 15-minute check-in once a week, just to go over what he got stuck on that week. I also found a second-year math student at the college who tutors for $12 an hour, which is way less than the $60 an hour private tutors charge, and he meets Javi for an hour before class once a week. That small amount of regular support made all the difference – Javi went from not finishing any modules a month to finishing one a week, and now he’s almost done.
I also almost fell for a common scam, so I want to pass that warning along. When I was panicking at the beginning, I found a private online program that promised a full high school diploma in six months for $800. It turned out it wasn’t accredited by our state’s department of education, so the diploma wouldn’t have been accepted by the electrician apprenticeship Javi wants to do. If you’re looking at a private program, always check the accreditation through your state’s department of education website first, before you pay anything.
Right now, Javi’s on track to graduate this December, three months after his original graduating class. He taped his last algebra test – a B- he was really proud of – to the fridge last week, right next to his 2023 rec league championship medal. He’s already putting in his application for the apprenticeship, and everything lines up for a start next fall. There are still days he complains about the night classes, and there are still days I wonder if we should have pushed harder to get him done on time. But last week, as we were driving to class, he said that if we’d forced him to do the lonely online program, he would have quit halfway. He likes having a teacher he can ask, and kids in class who get what he’s going through. It’s not the straight four-year path I pictured when he started high school, but it’s his path. And right now, that’s working.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How To Help Your Teen Get Their High School Diploma When They Fall Behind: What I Learned As A Parent