Once the enrollment fees and application are submitted, we mail a welcome packet that includes a student skills assessment for each of your students. This is a set of very informal tests addressing reading, grammar, composition and math, and we advise you to take two or three days at your kitchen table at an easy pace to complete them.
When we receive your completed assessments, we sketch out written remarks about each child’s academic strengths and weaknesses and basic learning style and make recommendations for starting points in subject areas. We send our written remarks to you in a personalized Academic Packet which includes our recommendations for organizing your year, records and daily routines, weekly pacing, weekly course plans*, and a simple questionnaire to help you start focusing on academic goals for each child in general and the coming year in particular.
Next, we work with you over the phone to personalize our program to your family, then to each of your students. We move skill levels up or down per subject, organize the whole family into the same science, history and religion cycle, combine the students into the same or compatible texts, help you find central focuses for each of the students in each of the subjects according to their academic needs and styles, make recommendations and comments on alternative choices, and the like.
After the telephone appointment, you will be ready to order your books, using the ordering worksheet attached to the course plans in the Academic Packet that lists the easiest to use source for each book or program, its estimated price and order code. Books take two to eight weeks to arrive, depending on the time of year and—voila!—you are ready to school, with confidence and competence (or at the least with a firm starting point, a clear set of goals and a friend to help you along the way!)
Following the planning appointment you are welcome to set appointments with your advisor throughout the year, using first the advisor support sessions included with your student's enrollment and then purchasing as many additional appointments as you desire throughout the school year. Between appointments advisors answer quick questions by email and general questions through the Member Family forums.
*The Academic Packet includes simple, weekly course outlines for some courses for Grades 7-8 and most courses for Grades 9-12. The full, detailed weekly lesson plans for high school courses are found in the STAA Study Guides.