If you love personalizing learning opportunities, you and your teen may enjoy developing some elective courses yourselves. Here are four steps to help you organize your thoughts and efforts, along with sample course ideas to ignite your creativity!

1. Brainstorm possible courses with your teen.

Electives can be used to investigate interests, introduce or hone skills, or clarify career goals. So a key first step is to carve out some brainstorming time with your teen and ask: “What are you interested in learning?” Or ask yourself, “What do I want my teen to learn?”

As part of this first step, you might also brainstorm who will design and teach each elective. Maybe you’ll find that you have the skills to develop and teach a particular elective your teen would love—but if not, you can reach out to friends, neighbors, family members, co-ops, associates, and referrals to help identify people with the skills, time, and willingness to contribute to your teen’s education in this way. (Lots of people welcome the opportunity to pass their expertise along!)

When designing an elective, it’s helpful to distinguish the course’s skill level. For example, will your teen learn beginning, intermediate, or advanced skills? This will give both instructor and student reasonable expectations for what will be learned—resulting in patience with gradually developing skills and more satisfaction by the end of the course.

2. Research materials and resources to build into the elective.

You can find elective course study materials and supplies through various sources, including some pretty unconventional ones. For example, you might try collecting supplies for a sewing elective at your local craft store, or you could talk to your craftsman neighbor about borrowing tools for a carpentry elective.

You can also look for materials and resources through the public library, building suppliers, training videos, community centers, hospitals, fire departments, local businesses, tradesmen, co-ops, or online.