How to Turn Interests into Electives on the Transcript

Make the most of your teens’ interests! Here’s how to turn interests into electives on the transcript.

How to Turn Interests into Electives on the Transcript

We 7Sisters graduated twenty-five of our teens through homeschooling high school, we also helped advise hundreds of local homeschooling teens through graduation. So, we have had lots of time to figure out the ups and downs of teens, transcripts and high school education.

One of the most meaningful positives of homeschooling high school that we have found is the fact that we can create electives for the transcript that reflect our teens interests! Teens in traditional school settings can develop interests also, but to a much more limited degree. By homeschooling these pivotal years, teens could spend lots of time exploring and developing interests. Then they could capture them to create a powerful transcript!

In other words, interests can become excellent electives for the homeschool transcript! Let’s talk about it.

What kinds of interests can count as electives on the transcript?

Just about anything! After all, there’s not ONE right way to homeschool high school and there’s not ONE right way to choose electives. For instance:

If your teen has a talent they love to pursue, that can become an elective

Here are some talents that our friends’ teens have developed into electives:

• Gardening
• Swimming
• Soccer (and other NCAA sports)
• Filmmaking
  • Here’s a post about ways to turn this a cinematography interest into an elective credit
• Acting and Directing
• Photography
• Painting (and other Fine Arts)
• Quilting
• Early Childhood Education
• Leading Worship (theory and practice)
  • BTW- a creative way to handle this kind of elective is to combine credits. Here’s how:
• Lyric Writing
• Vocal performance and choir
• Woodworking
• Culinary Arts
• HTML
• Basic coding

If your teen is not sure if they have a talent, but they just enjoy a subject or hobby, these can be counted as electives also

Many times, teens have a special interest in an academic subject that they do not actually need for graduation. Perhaps they have already fulfilled the basic graduation requirements in a subject but want to learn more. Or on the other hand, their state does not require a certain subject but your teen would like to learn about it. These may all be counted as electives on the transcript.

Here are some courses that our teens completed for elective credit:

• Apologetics
• Philosophy in Four Questions
• Introduction to Psychology
• Human Development
• Public Speaking
• Creative Writing
• CS Lewis Studies
• Shakespeare
• Philosophy (here’s why you should teach Philosophy with your teens)
• Financial Literacy
• Career Exploration
  • BTW: Here’s a great post on Career Exploration electives by our friend, Marcy, at BenAndMe.com.
• For a complete list of 7Sisters’ elective courses, check this post

What if your teens do not have any particular interests yet?

Often, teens who cannot tell you what they are interested in, simply have not discovered their interests yet. One way to help teens discover their interests it to try a number of new experiences. Here are some ideas:

• Do new things.
  • Take a field trip to any kind of new place.

    

  • Do some new crafts, models or artwork
  • Learn new home maintenance skills.
  • Take on new cooking or housekeeping skills.
  • Sign up for an online course on something they have never even thought about before. Look at EdX for some free courses, or at Code Apprentice a program by a homeschool graduate.
  • Interview relatives and friends about what they like and don’t like about their hobbies, volunteer work, jobs and careers.
  • Increase volunteer activity. Pick some new areas at church and outside of church and volunteer their several times.
  • For even more ideas, check out:
    • these ways our friend, Sue Sobczak, developed her teens’ unique interests
    • This post on choosing electives from our friends at FundaFunda Academy

How can teens earn those interest-based elective credits?

• Use a textbook
  • Textbooks make it easy, as long as they do not bore the interest out of the interest! A good guideline for an interest-based elective is to find shorter texts that give an overview without killing the subject (such as 7Sisters’ texts). Save the high-powered text for a second, deeper dive.
• Take a course in your local homeschool co-op
  • Sometimes, teens discover interests when they take a course with peers. Experiencing a new topic with friends can open up their mind to subjects they did not realized they like!

    

• Log hours for a Carnegie credit
  • One way to earn credit in homeschool high school is to log hours of educational experiences. You simply keep a sheet of paper where you record:
    • What was done
    • The date and times
    • Running tally of amount of time spent until you meet the requirement for a credit in your state
  • Remember, though, if it is not logged, it did not happen. Keep those log sheets! (We usually kept our log sheets on the refrigerator door so that we could remind each other- hopefully your teen- to get those hours recorded.)
• Take an online course.
  • For instance, 7Sisters’ asynchronous course to accompany our textbook: Introduction to Psychology
  • Collegiate Learning
  • Homeschool Spanish
  • FundaFunda Academy

You and your teens can explore and develop interests for a useful electives on the homeschool transcript. Need more ideas? Here’s are two helps:

• 7Sisters’ big list of electives for homeschool transcripts
• BJ’s Homeschool 100 electives

Have fun trying some out!

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