Pharos Terminal · Grades 7–12
New lessons every day.Everything included.Open it and teach.
Daily lessons from real events, ready-to-teach packets and full courses, with more on the way. One subscription for your family, with each additional student at $399.
83 Nexus Points · 29 lesson packets · every course, inside Pharos Terminal now
Aligned to West Virginia Department of Education academic standards in English language arts, math, science and social studies.
Screens from Pharos Terminal, with a sample student and sample data.
One complete solution
Everything your student learns, in one place.
Three layers of lessons work together inside Pharos Terminal, and all three are included at one price.
Timely · every day
Nexus Points
Every day, a real event becomes a lesson ready to teach, with the sources attached and a Teaching Value score from 0 to 100. Each one is ready to teach, with a parent guide and student pages.
Deeper · aligned to WVDE academic standards
Lesson packets
Multi-day units with a parent guide, readings, activities, standards tags and a portfolio page, aligned to WVDE academic standards.
More intensive · built like high school and college courses
Courses
Full courses that run from a 12-week term to about 26 weeks, built like high school and college courses, with more on the way.
- Through the Fading Darkness
- Beyond the Fading Darkness
- Winter’s Ghosts
- Reality Writes!
- Pitch to Profit
All three, one Pharos Terminal subscription: $499 for two semesters for your first student. See pricing ›
The subjects
Every subject. One price.
One Pharos Terminal subscription covers all of it.
One price covers lessons in all of these subjects: $499 for two semesters for your first student.
- Reading
- English Language Arts
- History
- Math
- Science
- Trades
- Outdoor Activities
- Creative Writing
Lessons are aligned to WVDE academic standards.
For the parent · Pharos Terminal at work
It runs your school year, not just your lessons.
Pharos Terminal helps with the planning, record-keeping and year-end paperwork around the lessons. Pick a student. Today’s Nexus Point, the lessons you’ve assigned and the week at a glance are waiting on the Dashboard.
WatchPharos Terminal video
Lessons ready to teach
Each Nexus Point opens with what happened and why it matters, with its sources and a lesson packet: a parent guide and student pages.
Assigned to each student
Each student signs in to their own pages and does the work online. You sign off, and it logs to the tracker.
- The parent trackerLog a lesson in a tap. Hours and lessons add up by week and by subject for each student.
- Assign to each studentAssign a Nexus Point, a whole lesson packet, one session or a Reality Writes! module to one or more students, with an optional due date and note.
- Standards in the recordLessons carry their West Virginia academic standards codes into the tracker and the year-end portfolio.
- A portfolio that builds as you goA year-end record for your annual assessment: lessons with their standards codes, your work samples and a page per subject for the reviewer’s narrative.
- Every student in your familyEach student gets their own sign-in and pages. $399 for each additional student.
- Phone, iPad and laptopBrowse and assign from a phone or iPad, and teach from a laptop.
Watch · How Lessons Are MadeHow Pharos Terminal Lessons Are Made
Nexus Points · just added
New Nexus Points, every day
Built from the day’s real events, in nine subjects. This list updates automatically from the Pharos Terminal catalog.
Today’s Nexus Point
88TEACHING
VALUE
VALUE
Hold these ballots? Federal courts, 20,000 mail ballots and the rule against late changes
Politics & Elections · Civics & Government
92
Two Dan Sullivans on one ballot. Who decides when a candidate’s name is too confusing?
Politics & Elections · Oct 31
90
From the Strait of Hormuz to the gas pump. Reading the numbers behind $4.27 gas and $6.35 diesel
Economics & Personal Finance · Oct 31
88
When an offering is called fraud: a Beijing pastor is formally arrested
Classic Literature (pre-1965) · Oct 30
91
2,000 hours to a license: West Virginia’s HVAC ladder and what it pays
Trades & Skills · Oct 30
Included with Pharos Terminal Opening with the WWII series
The World War II Archive, inside Pharos Terminal
Photographs, posters, radio broadcasts, newsreels, maps and documents from the National Archives, the Library of Congress and other U.S. government collections.
5,000+items in the archive so farAs of Oct 31, 2026, and still growing
Public-domain items from U.S. government collections will be hosted inside Pharos Terminal for subscribers, opening with the World War II series. Copyrighted works, including many famous wartime photographs, won’t be hosted; Pharos Terminal will link out to the collections that hold them. Thumbnails above are public-domain items from the Library of Congress and the U.S. Military Academy.
Special projects · included with Pharos Terminal
Two series, built inside Pharos Terminal
Included with every subscription. Neither is open yet.
The War Series · Grades 9–12
World War II: Depression, War and the Peace That Followed
From the Crash of 1929 to the start of the Cold War. Every lesson opens with a primary source from the archive, and your student ends with a short documentary built from real footage.
First units coming soonIncluded
Special project
The Science Fiction Series
The real science behind major works of science fiction: what the stories get right, what they get wrong and what that tells us about our own world.
In developmentIncluded
Our accuracy test · Oct 31, 2026
Accuracy and Transparency
In our test, one popular AI chatbot had clearly more problems than Pharos Terminal: 11.4 per 100 statements to our 3.3.
Each Pharos Terminal item goes through two separate AI review steps, an Editor and a Fact Checker, before it’s published. To see how our published items compare, on Oct 31, 2026 we gave three popular AI chatbots, in their no-cost versions, the same lesson requests a parent might type, and checked their answers against the original sources by the same rules we used for ours.
Pharos Terminal
3.3problems per 100 statements
95% range 0.9 to 8.2
4 problems in 122 checkable statements from 20 randomly chosen items: 1 wrong date and 3 details a reviewer couldn’t confirm.
One popular AI chatbot (Chatbot B)
11.4problems per 100 statements
95% range 6.2 to 18.7
13 problems in 114 statements. Most were details a reviewer couldn’t confirm rather than outright errors.
Item by item, it had 8.1 more problems per 100 than we did (95% range 2.0 to 14.9).
Clearly more problems than Pharos Terminal in this test
The other two popular AI chatbots
Chatbot A
0.9
95% range 0.02 to 4.7
Chatbot C
6.0
95% range 2.6 to 11.5
Problems per 100 statements. In this test, neither difference from Pharos Terminal was large enough to be sure either way.
Not clearly different from Pharos Terminal
Pricing
One subscription. Every lesson. Every course.
$499
for two semesters for your first student
- $399 for each additional student
- First 100 families to subscribe: $100 off each additional student’s first-year price, then $399 at renewal
- Every course and the special projects included
Prices as of November 1, 2026.
Lessons are tagged to West Virginia Department of Education academic standards for planning and record-keeping; tagging is not an endorsement by the WV Board of Education.
From the blog
The latest from Zac
Meet Zac · Writer, Historian, Researcher
Writer, historian and researcher.
Experience over theory, for families who teach at home. Zac Northup writes and publishes curriculum for homeschoolers, micro-schools and learning pods. You teach; he provides the material.
- Publisher and managing editor of National Guard Review, 1996–2003.
- M.A., History, University of North Carolina Wilmington.
A guide for parents · Grades 7–12
Your First 30 Days of Homeschooling
A 20-page guide that takes you through the first month week by week. It’s nonpartisan, practical and sourced, and has a full section on the West Virginia Hope Scholarship.
What’s inside
- A week-by-week plan for month one: the legal steps, getting to know your learner, choosing materials and finding your rhythm.
- Sample schedules for grades 7–8 and 9–12, plus a printable planning worksheet and a learning log.
- The West Virginia Hope Scholarship, step by step: who qualifies, the 2026–27 award, how to apply, what the money covers, and how a Hope IIP differs from a traditional homeschool.
- West Virginia’s notice of intent and annual assessment, with sources from the West Virginia Code, the West Virginia Department of Education and the Hope Scholarship Board, checked October 25, 2026.
Get the guide
Download it right after you sign up.
You’ll get the download link on this page right away. We’ll also email you a link to confirm your address before sending anything else. See our privacy policy. Not legal or financial advice.
