What? What is this new ODE Academy? Why do students have to apply? Will you be turning students down? Does my child have to apply even if he or she has been at ODE for a long time?
Lots of questions are rolling in so we thought we’d try to address some of them in this post.
Our overall purpose is to help and encourage homeschooling families, to support and fortify, bring resources, community, and respite. We all want our children to grow up to be compassionate, well-adjusted, caring, disciplined, hard-working, competent adults. In order to be those people, they must be confident in their own worth, know their own value as individuals, know that they are deeply loved and cared for, and from there they can take on challenges and adversity that they will inevitably encounter as they face the world. We believe that each and every child is uniquely equipped with skills, talents, and many different areas of strength and intelligence.
ODE provides classes and programming for children beginning at age 3 all the way through high school graduation at 18. While our purpose remains the same for the entire program, our implementation does, out of necessity, adjust. Children in elementary learn at such widely different rates and in so many different ways, and do not have the independence to make their educational choices for themselves. Young adults in high school, although they may attack their workloads in different manners, need to function independently, and work within the perimeters laid out for them, taking the responsibility on for themselves. This is why we want the STUDENT to apply - just filling out the application and submitting is a great way to begin. This is a way for teachers to get to know a little bit about them as well.
To sum up, yes, ALL students need to apply - even those who have been at ODE previously. Please encourage your student to take the time to think through the questions. Encourage them to take this opportunity to tell us (their prospective teachers and admin) about themselves. We would love to know them better, and we are so very willing and eager to work WITH them! We are all on the same team. And for those new 7th graders who are just now transitioning from our enrichment program to our ODE Academy - please do not worry! We will walk the bridge with them. We know the 7th graders are not at a place of independent motivation. It is a wonderful and exhilarating thing to see the students bloom in those bridge (7th and 8th grade) years.
Our Bridge classes will look great on a transcript if you are thinking of putting your child in high school. But you do need to make sure you are aware of the requirements to get into high school because ODE only provides a handful of classes. If you are homeschooling for high school, you will not need a formal transcript for those years. A high school transcript will just be for the classes taken during the high school years.