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Why and How to Get Involved in Your Child’s School
Getting involved in your child’s school activities is an excellent way to further develop a bond with your child. Getting involved also helps your child to see that you are interested in their activities and will likely foster a higher academic success rate.
There are several ways that you can get involved in your child’s school such as joining the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), volunteering on field trips and being an active presence within the school itself.
Summer School: When to Consider It
Sometimes extra time in the classroom may be needed for your teen. Deciding whether that time is best served during school or during the summer is a decision that many parents have to make. Here are a few considerations to make when investigating summer school for your child.
What Is Summer School?
Summer school is an accelerated program for students. Classes are taken for credit and kids attend class for three or four weeks at about four hours a day. How long you stay in class depends on the number of classes you are taking. There is usually two sessions of summer school and your child has the option of taking one or the other or both depending on the classes that they need.
Reasons to Attend Summer School
All reasons to attend summer school are not good ones. And, even though your teen might think they are all bad reasons, you as a parent have to decide to help your child secure their future.
They won’t graduate with their class – This is one of the biggest reasons to attend. No teen wants to come down to the wire and realize that they are short of credits to graduate on time. Summer school can be an option to receive their diploma with their classmates.
They need extra help – Before going to summer school, consider tutoring. When a child falls behind in class, tutoring one-on-one may be the solution. If this solution still doesn’t help, then a summer school session with a smaller class size and less pressure could be an answer.
The counselor recommends it – A guidance counselor is there to help your child complete their high school requirements and prepare for life after that. They may be familiar with your child’s records. Talk to them to see if they feel summer school is a viable idea that can help them. Counselors will also know that grade problems due to disciplinary issues and truancy are not going to get better through summer school attendance.
Raise grade point average – College is quite competitive these days. One or two percentage points can make the difference between admittance in the school of their choice and their second or third choice. Adding a class through summer school can raise that average for them.
Teachers feel it will serve them well – Teachers work with your child all year. They know when problems in class can be resolved by a session in summer school. Many of them teach summer school classes as well. If your child is on the verge of grasping the information but didn’t have enough time to bring up their grade, a summer school session can reinforce what they have been learning during the year for a solid foundation.
Language Immersion Programs – Is It Right for My Child?
For those parents who live in an area where language immersion programs are offered, it may be difficult to make the choice as to whether or not their kids will benefit. Here is a list of some questions to consider, and some pros and cons based on the experiences of others and the nature of immersion programs themselves.
First of all, just what is a language immersion program? This refers to a type of learning that involves total immersion in a foreign language. A variety of subjects are taught in the language, rather than teaching the language as a separate subject. In other words, your child won’t have Spanish, French, German, etc. class; he or she will have math, social studies, etc. class taught in the foreign language. The language being learned is spoken almost all the time during the program.
Helping Your Children Thrive in School
Even though it’s the child who is going to school, there is so much you can do as a parent to help your children thrive in school. Here are some of the top ideas. Look over them and see which ones you can use with your child or children.
When your child is first starting school, the best thing you can do is read to them daily. Reading to your child will allow you to spend quality time with them and you’ll also be familiarizing them with the written word. You may be surprised how quickly they’ll pick up words if you point at them as you read aloud. Children truly are like little sponges, absorbing what they are shown.
How to Protect Your Child during Outdoor School Sports
Children love to spend time outdoors when the temperatures get warmer. Some children play outdoor school sports while others simply spend time outdoors at home. If your child is an athlete, here’s how to protect them during outdoor school sports.
Be sure your child always wears sun block. Sun block can protect your child’s tender skin and help them avoid developing skin cancer in the future. Try to find a sun block which will remain active when they sweat. The higher sun block number used, the better the protection for your child’s skin.
Pay attention to the UV Index for the day. Knowing the UV Index will help you determine what type of sun block is needed or how long they can be outside without sun protection. The local news should tell what the UV Index is expected to be for each day so you can plan accordingly.
Nothing is more important than staying hydrated during summer outdoor sports. Ensure the coach provides cool water or sports drinks for each child. If they aren’t providing enough liquids, you may want to bring drinks for the team so the children don’t develop heat exhaustion.
Even though the weather is warm during the summer, you’ll want to ensure your child is wearing summer protective clothing. Lightweight, loose-fitting natural fabrics are best. It may not seem like it makes sense, but long sleeves can actually help your child stay cooler when the temperatures soar.
Be sure their jackets fit properly. Springtime weather can be cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon or vice versa. Having a jacket which fits properly will ensure that your child is able to stay warm when needed. You’ll also want the jacket to be made of lightweight material, have a soft inner lining and a hood.
Know what signs to look for if something goes wrong with your child. Heat exhaustion is a dangerous situation and can turn deadly if not handled promptly. Symptoms include feeling cold, having cold or clammy skin, nausea and throwing up. They may also stop sweating. If the heat exhaustion gets bad enough your child could pass out.
To combat heat exhaustion, you’ll want to ensure that your child is hydrated properly, not active during the hottest part of the day and is able to get out of the direct sunlight. Your child’s sports coach should know the signs of heat exhaustion and act accordingly to ensure your child (or any other child, for that matter) is treated immediately if they exhibit heat exhaustion symptoms.
You may not be able to be with your child during each of their sports practices, but you may want to be available for as many as possible. Do what you can to protect your child as they enjoy being a part of a sports team.
The Positive Influence of Being Involved in your Child’s Education
It has been shown many times over in research studies that a parent who is involved in their child’s education has a positive impact. It’s reflected in improved grades and test scores, strong attendance, a higher rate of homework completion, higher graduation rates, improved attitudes and behaviors in the child, as well as the child being more likely to become involved in positive extra-curricular activities. Send out the message early in your child’s education that your home is an involved and active supporter of their learning.
Increasing Empathy for Children with Learning Problems
I have just returned from a trip to Europe that gave me a lot of insights as to how it must feel to be a child with learning difficulties.
Just as many children with learning difficulties have problems communicating in their native tongue because of understanding or expressing themselves with language, I had the same problems when attempting to speak to someone in French or Italian, as I do not speak their language.
Everyday social interactions become highly challenging and frustrating. I almost gave up several times in attempting to ask for a certain meal or directions because I simply could not make myself understood to the person I was trying to communicate with, or I could not understand what they were trying to say to me.
Remember, Mistakes are for Learning
It’s not easy to catch a baseball. Ask any four-year old. You have to keep your eyes tracking this small object hurtling at you through space, constantly separating the shape and color of the ball from other distracting colors and shapes, meanwhile, moving your hands and arms to match the ball’s arc across the sky until hand and ball hopefully meet. It is an amazing feat, and demonstrates the way that all children learn; by making mistakes and then correcting them.
The brain, especially the child’s brain, works wonderfully in this way. And remember the idiom, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?” When a parent of a four-year old throws the ball without an “okay, ready?” and the ball hits a forehead or nose causing a stream of tears, the parent will learn by his or her mistake too, and change the warning before the ball is thrown. It’s a wonderful system, each of us making our mistakes, the student learning from his or her mistake and then becoming the teacher and helping the adult learn how to be a better teacher. Just think how far our children would get if we could stay out of the way of this amazing system.
What happens when we focus all of our energy and effort toward the goal of a single set of test scores at the end of the year, and cause our teachers to do the same by linking their income and livelihood to the end scores?
The result is that we not only sabotage the natural process of learning by mistake, but we also convince children that learning about things in life is an end point and not a process. People who argue that “tests in real life have pass or fail consequences,” are misinterpreting the history of math, science, or any university discipline. All of these subjects progressed and advanced because individual thinkers tried and failed, tried again and failed, and then came up with an answer. Let’s face it, if we are interested in developing a population of educated youth who at their best are good memorizers then we should keep the current focus on assessment and testing as it is. But if we want a population of problem solvers and thinkers, then let’s consider something different. Maybe a different kind of test, since we need to measure accountability in our education system, but this time a test where kids are actually given points for making mistakes as long as they come up with two or three more plausible solutions, or a test where we measure how persistent a youth is in applying him or herself to a single problem rather than giving up. These would be real tests of thinking and measures of how well our education system really disciplines the mind of our children.
If you are interested in reading further into different views on education and education reform, the following books are worth reading:
- John Bransford, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School
- Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future
Nearly One Million Kindergarten Children Per Year Misdiagnosed With ADHD
According to a recent study by a Michigan State University economist, nearly one million children in kindergarten in the United States are misdiagnosed with ADHD. The study attributes this to the disparity of ages in a kindergarten classroom. Most kindergarten classrooms have children who are either 5 or 6 years old. The study shows that the younger children are more likely to be rated by their teacher as being inattentive and hyperactive. However, these ratings may more likely reflect the immaturity of these children rather than a mental disorder.
ADHD is considered a developmental disorder. There is always a disparity in when children within the same age range reach a given developmental milestone and this of course is more pronounced when there is also a disparity in age as well. Actually most children do not develop selective attention until 6 or 7 years of age. For years, studies have shown that teachers will rate 50% of the children in the class with scores indicating possible ADHD when the prevalence is known to be no more than 10%.
Children are starting kindergarten later due to increased academic demands. It make sense that a class of kindergarten children are able to do first grade work since many of them are 6 years old. Imagine the stress of a five year old who may be somewhat on the late side of developing selective attention being required to achieve at least one grade level above his age level. The pressure from teachers and parents and peers can lead to acting out behavior that might be expected under the circumstances but could lead to a professional evaluation.
Parents, teachers, and physicians should be careful to consider not only the chronological age of the child but also the developmental age when considering a possible diagnosis of ADHD. Perhaps the child should be placed in a pre-K class where he or she is truly with peers and the work is more appropriate to the child’s development. This would be a far more appropriate intervention than medication. Unfortunately, I have found that school districts may not want to put a 5 year old in preschool or pre-K because they may not receive funding for the child when state guidelines say a child of 5 must be in kindergarten.
For now, hopefully, this study will evoke caution in all concerned so that decisions will be made based on all of the factors that should be considered. In the future, the whole issue of the mismatch between child development and academic expectations needs to be re-evaluated but that is another blog post.
What to Do When Your Teenager Wants to Drop Out
Hearing your teenager tell you that they want to drop out of school can be frustrating and nerve-racking at the same time. You may be feeling many different emotions such as anger, helplessness and anxiety. However, ignore the instinct to yell and instead rationally talk to your teen and find out the underlying reason for wanting to drop out of school. Sometimes there is a simple underlying cause that can be solved, while others may need a bit more work.
Discuss the situation with your teen. Do they want to drop out because they do not feel as if they are succeeding or is it something more serious, like a bully? Teens are not known for being rational in their thinking; rather they are very impulsive and make spur-of-the-moment decisions.
You should discuss your teen’s situation with a counselor at the high school to determine what options are available as possible alternatives to full-time school as well as to understand any possible legal consequences for dropping out. You should also have your teen see their primary care physician for a check-up to determine if there are any underlying physical or mental conditions which may be affecting your teen’s attitude about school.
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