GenParenting

Parenting resources for all who love and care for children

Author: Mary Ann Burke, Digital Education Expert

How You Can Support Student Success

How You Can Support Student Success


This post is first of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

Students Must Feel Safe and Secure

If children are to be successful, they must first feel safe and supported. Maslow taught us this in 1943 through his hierarchy of needs. Yet, for some learners, life is not safe. They may live in crime-ridden neighborhoods where it’s not safe to walk home from school. Others are chronically hungry. A student named Jake qualified for free/reduced lunches, but his mother was too proud to accept help. Jake would routinely show up at the learning lab, hoping there were some leftovers from the day’s snack. The teacher always put a little aside for him, and he was always appreciative in his own shy way.

By his junior year, he had taken and did well on ASVAB (the military aptitude test) and enrolled in the Delayed Entry Program. Two years after his high school graduation, he returned to his school to tell his story and thank his teachers, counselors, and especially the principal who mentored him through the process. He was proud of his promotion to Specialist and had already earned a service ribbon. Privately, he told me that he was glad to finally be able to pay his mother back for all the sacrifices she made for him. For Jake, building foundations of food, medical care, and stability in his life were essential foundations for success. [Read more…]

Nurturing Our Kids’ Health and Spiritual Growth

Nurturing Our Kids’ Health and Spiritual Growth

It is important to guide children in their healthy growth by helping them select a balanced diet of fruit, vegetables, grains, dairy products, and protein foods each day. Parents can model healthy meal preparations that can have a significant impact on children’s health, academic performance, and sense of well-being throughout life. Parents must take the time to ensure that their children have time for outside daily play for healthy growth and development. Children can play at parks and participate in afterschool sports, recreational activities, and performing arts activities. [Read more…]

Guiding Our Kids’ Decision Making Independence

Guiding Our Kids’ Decision Making Independence

As children gain the social and emotional skills to manage their daily responsibilities, they slowly learn how to become more independent in their decision-making skills at home and at school. Initially, they learn how to play responsibly in their home and in their backyard. They will eventually learn how to play in their front yard. Depending on traffic and the location of their neighborhood, primary grade students must learn how to cross busy streets to visit friends and travel to school. Independent decision making skills with predetermined consequences expand as children enter middle school and start socializing with their friends at public places while taking public transportation.

The path to becoming independent is slow and continuous. During children’s early years in school, parents can help their children identify how they can complete their daily responsibilities. Some parents and teachers create an expanded list of activities that must be completed daily. This “star chart” can help each child identify specific responsibilities that must be completed daily. The list can include how each child will manage their personal care, household chores, and school homework and preparations. [Read more…]

How to Parent Today’s Kids for Success

How to Parent Today’s  Kids for Success 

Parents become anxious when considering the negative effects of becoming a tiger mama or a helicopter parent with their children during these Covid pandemic times. Although they strive to protect their children from harm, parents also want to ensure that their children are successful in today’s world. For example, dozens of parents purchased their children’s acceptances into competitive colleges by sending funds to a fraudulent checking account managed by a corrupt college counselor. The counselor used these funds to bribe college sports coaches to accept unqualified students on a college team and paid corrupt test proctors to change students’ standardized testing results. Some prospective college students may have signed their college admissions packets without understanding the implications of their parents’ actions. Others believed that their parents were being morally responsible when helping them falsify their college application documentation. [Read more…]

How We Can Help Each Other in Our Community

How We Can Help Each Other in Our Community

We are only in our first weeks of school and students are already prepared to give back to their communities during the ongoing Covid health and wildfire challenges. Many of our students continue to educate each other on what they should do to stay safe during the ongoing pandemic. They are very careful in wearing their masks, sanitizing their hands, and staying a safe distance from each other in the classroom and while playing outside. Many of my students have made posters of safe health practices for their homes and communities. [Read more…]