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I don't have time to be on the Board often anymore, but I wanted to pop in quickly to offer a word of encouragement. My son used HOD from Bigger Hearts through US II (3rd through 12th). He graduated in May and is now attending a small Christian university. He only used HOD for writing through all the years. For those wondering if it is enough - IT IS!! My son decided to try to CLEP out of Freshman Comp so he took the test which had two timed essays graded by two professors - and he passed - so he didn't even need to take Freshman Comp and received credit for the class! In addition, he has received almost all perfect scores on all of his papers in his other classes. He says that all the written narrations through the years has made writing his papers a piece of cake. He can easily read his assignment and write a response and receive a good grade. He is very thankful for the years of practice that he had with HOD. He may not have always enjoyed the narrations - but they sure are paying off now! Hopefully you can encourage your students with the knowledge that all those narrations will make college work so much easier (if they choose to go that route). His professors consistently are impressed with his work and leave comments on his papers that note the depth of insight and detail that he provides in his writing. I believe that many college students aren't prepared at all for all of the writing - so that makes our HOD grads stand out even more!

Thank you, Carrie, for your very intentional, step-by-step writing instructions throughout the years. We couldn't have done it without you and it brings us so much joy to see Isaac doing so well at the college level!

Kudos to your son! That is wonderful. I am going to read this post to my son because he doesn't particularly enjoy written narrations.
Having said that,I want to add further encouragement because the improvement in his writing over the years has been nothing short of dramatic. My son absolutely could not write - it just wasn't in him. And adjectives or anything creative - forget it! In the earlier guides he literally just stared at the paper if it was a writing assignment (actually into the middle guides). He is now transitioning from MMTM into World Geography and he did a writing assignment for English the other day that blew me away. I so wish I would have saved more of his earlier work for the comparison. Stick with it, take one day at a time, do all of the assignments, and HOD will get you there!

This was just so fun to read! I'm so proud of your son, Tiffini! That is really exciting! Being able to write well is so helpful in all college courses, and in life after college as well. It's awesome he tested out of English Comp! Carrie's son, Shaw, did as well, having only done HOD's writing. Wyatt started with Dave Ramsey's college finance course and breezed through that - though he was SAD when it was done!!! (His major is Business with a cognate in Finance - probably partly because of his Finance credit in HOD's USII!) Now he's studying for his History I CLEP. He has remembered so much of it from HOD's U.S. History I. That has made it easy to study for so far! He's also thankful for the 'context' of history in HOD. Much more interesting than studying for the CLEP, and it brings even the CLEP studying to life, a little!!! He took the CLEP for Intro to Sociology and passed that already too. I thought that was funny, as he really didn't learn much about sociology in high school! I have learned HOD has made him a careful reader and a good guesser, even though HOD's assessments aren't often in a quiz/test format. CM's assessments teach students to read and to think and to write. That pretty much covers everything. So, so proud of your son!!! Give him a hug from our whole HOD family (or shake his hand, if he is not a hugger )! Thanks so much for sharing on our board!

In Christ,
Julie