GenParenting

Parenting resources for all who love and care for children

Parenting an Athlete

Parenting an Athlete

by P J Caposey, Guest Blogger

I have a confession to make . . .

My oldest son was in fourth grade. I was a Superintendent of Schools in the neighboring district to where he was being raised and I previously served as principal in the district he was attending and in the same building as his youth basketball game was taking place. [Read more…]

Purposeful Parenting and Ovecoming Challenges

Purposeful Parenting and Overcoming Challenges

Guest blogger Erik Youngman’s blogs on purposeful parenting and learning from challenges embrace the following ten practical approaches to parenting:

  1. Through positive, patient, and purposeful problem-solving, parents can model effective limit setting for their children. This includes clearly defined boundaries and goals for daily living.
  2. Parents incorporate play in project-based learning activities at home. These may include messy art projects, science explorations, performing arts, creative writing, and sports.
  3. Children are encouraged to ponder and creatively reflect on their various learning activities for continuous improvement and growth.
  4. Kids learn to pivot and respond resiliently to life’s great adventures and challenges.
  5. Parents encourage their children to embrace and learn from mistakes and challenges.
  6. Children effectively manage daily challenges through time management and understanding their family’s clearly defined boundaries.
  7. Parents help their children overcome difficulties by modeling effective problem-solving skills and encouraging new skill development.
  8. When students own their learning challenges, they identify how they can overcome learning and skill development difficulties and ask for help for added guidance.
  9. Children are inspired to do their best through resourceful goal setting and self-self-assessments.
  10. When parents collaborate with their children’s teachers, they can help their children ask deliberate questions, model through example, and encourage classmate support.

[Read more…]

Parent Support of Student Assessments

Parent Support of Student Assessments

This blog is a parallel commentary from the parent perspective on Mary Ann Burke’s January 11, 2022 post “How Students Own Their Learning Assessments” from her series Student Engagement Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners.

What Do Student Learning Assessments Look Like?

When a classroom teacher includes student choice for learning assessments, it can take on many different forms. Often times, they will tend to be project-based assessments where students have full control over demonstrating and evaluating their learning. Here are some examples of learning assessments that might be assigned by your child’s teacher:

  • A history research project using both primary and secondary sources to learn more about the immigration story in the family.
  • A science project that demonstrates the effective application of the scientific method.
  • A cross-curricular Language Arts and Physical Education project to develop scripts for a PSA (Public Service Announcement) campaign regarding physical health or mental health issues.
  • A smart-water garden design that employs the mathematical computations to find area of landscaping, find plants and other organic materials needed in cubic feet, and calculate the cost of materials to stay within a budget.

[Read more…]

How Parents Can Support Student Learning

How Parents Can Support Student Learning

This blog is a parallel commentary from the parent perspective on Mary Ann Burke’s November 2, 2021 post “What teachers and parents can do to increase student learning” from her series Student Engagement Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners.

Most second-generation Asian Americans were prodded by parents to achieve the “American Dream” by becoming a doctor, engineer, or lawyer, my parents gave me the freedom of choice. My Asian American idea of achieving the “American Dream” was not so much defined by a career, but that a successful life was one in which I had every opportunity to fulfill my destiny. When I was young, my parents encouraged me to pursue my passions, to develop my talents, and to follow the sense of calling in my life. During this season of Thanksgiving, I am eternally grateful for the gift of freedom my parents have bestowed on me. [Read more…]

Engaged Student Assessments

Engaged Student Assessments

This post is fifth 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.

What Do Engaged Students Look Like?

Teachers have observed that engaged learners:

  • Find motivation and personal meaning in learning and assessing.
  • Rely on verified practices and routines for practical and participatory assessment.
  • Display indicators of engagement including interest, purpose, and resolve.

Engagement is at the heart of motivation. This applies to preschoolers playing tee ball as well as to adults in the workplace and teachers in the classroom. When 3rd grader Torrance says he is not interested in playing ball but wants to ride a horse, his father says they can’t afford riding so he has to play ball. As a result, he’s disengaged and wanders around the outfield without purpose.

After reading about “boring” poets and traditional poetry forms in English class, Keenan hastily decides he loathes poetry, so he writes an original rap to describe DNA. When his teacher returns his “poem,” the note says that it doesn’t align with the school’s writing standards for supporting claims with evidence. Here’s a small segment of Keenan’s poem in which he explains deoxyribonucleic acid, it’s structure, and purpose.

Listen to a story that I’m going to tell.

How DNA is found inside all your cells.

In your hair, blood, skin, and lungs as well;

Even got some DNA to help me smell.

My DNA is not for your replication.

Use your own nucleic a’ for your mutation.

 Keenan’s wants no part of your creation.

I need my DNA for life’s duration.

[Read more…]