The following comments were collected from the AHA@home-ed-magazine.com email list

Teenage homeschoolers volunteer in many areas. Most of us are familiar with the volunteer programs in libraries and hospitals and museums. Homeschoolers are wise to look beyond established programs, however. I have known homeschooled teenagers who volunteered with veterinarians, drama groups, political campaigns, radio stations, bookstores, etc. The possibilities are limited only, perhaps, by your location. Why is volunteering important with respect to a future job? Volunteering allows teenagers to experience a wide variety of work environments and occupations, while contributing to the community. And the volunteer experience sometimes rules specific future employment in or out.

~Cafi Cohen, Older Kids, Home Education Magazine, Nov/Dec, 1996

There is another cultural myth of maturity that has taken hold in the last fifty years or so that says one must leave the family and go far away to be properly grown up. This myth denies the natural family structural design of human life and supports isolation from family communities, which in turn supports a social plan for the state to become the family substitute, developing the individual's allegiance to and dependence on the state, which serves the state1s best interest, not the individual1s or the family1s best interest.

~Eileen Yoder, The Challenge of Older Children, Home Education Magazine, May/June, 1996

The most useful way of informing young children about the world of work is to draw cultural parallels between the material you are studying and the world in which we live. For instance, if you are practicing simple arithmetic, you might discuss typical work settings in which the skills would be useful. As the work becomes more complex, you might ask them to research careers in which advanced math is used and what those careers entail. History provides many examples of careers that are no longer a part of our culture or have changed dramatically over the years. Asking children to trace the evolution of a particular career and comment on its changes would encourage them to see careers on a continuum related to the larger world. It helps them see patterns in the changes, rather than viewing change as a series of random acts that spring from nowhere.

~Susan M. Johnston, Starting Point, Home Education Magazine, March/April, 1997