Why Do We Lose Our Minds?

Two conversations this week made me question why it is as parents that we sometimes lose our collective minds. One conversation was with the parents of a 9th grader and the other was with the parents of a 6th grader. While on different topics, there was a clear tie that interlinked these two talks.

9^th Grade Student’s Academic Progress Concerns

The conversation with the 9th-grade parents was about the academic progress of their child. Their child received perfect grades in the first semester of their high school career. The parents were not excited about this, however. They were upset because when they started to plan out the courses their son would take in the 10th-grade year, their student did not want to take all Advanced or Honors classes. The parents shared that this had already led to three conversations ending in tears. I asked a direct question of the parents to understand their frustration. “Why are you upset by this?” Their answer was that their child would never receive Valedictorian or the best scholarships if they did not take the hardest courses.

6^th Grade Student’s Basketball Team Challenges

The conversation with the 6th-grade parents was about their child’s playing time on the school basketball team. The parents were seeking support in their frustration with the coaches and the way they were running their program. As former coaches, they did not receive much support.

Again, I asked a question. “Do you think the coaches dislike your child enough that they are willing to lose or negatively impact the rest of the team just to make them unhappy?” They agreed this was not the case. So, we found some common ground in understanding that the coaches were probably doing the best they could and with the best intentions. The conversation eventually ended.

How Parents Can Model Respect for School Leadership

The worst part of the experience was that this conversation was taking place IN FRONT OF THEIR CHILD. As the parents belittled and criticized the coaches for not showcasing their daughter’s talents more, they were unwittingly empowering their child to show the same level of disrespect for the coaches and future coaches, leaders, and bosses.

If these two conversations were outliers, I would not feel compelled to write this blog. The issue is that conversations such as these seem to be more of the norm instead of the exception. And to be clear, I have been as guilty as anyone for losing my mind in this manner on an issue or two in the past.

When thinking of how I wanted to address this issue, I was fortunate enough to read a great reflection by Paul Assaiante. His reflection prompted me to consider how to best help parents when they lose sight of what is actually important. He encouraged supporting parents to reframe their thinking by asking them about their “Big Three”.

First, ask them to write down the three most important things they WANTED for their child when they were born. They will likely respond with them being happy, healthy, cared for, prepared for the world, or some other altruistic end.

Next, ask them to write down the three most important things they WANTED for their child when it comes to whatever activity they have seemed to lose perspective regarding. For instance, if it is academics, the question would be what do you want for your child as a result of their schooling experience. If the issue pertains to athletics, the prompt is what did you want your child to get out of the experience of playing competitive sports.

Then ask them to analyze their current behaviors and to evaluate whether how they are conducting themselves would likely result in any of those six areas being actualized. This also clearly works for other scenarios outside of academics and athletics.

A Win – Win for Students, Parents, and School Leadership

In the case of academics, parents would likely answer that they want their child to learn how to learn, find their voice, become a lifelong learner, develop critical thinking skills, create friendships, become a better communicator, and/or learn how to operate in society.

In the case of athletics, parents would likely answer that they want their child to become a good teammate, learn how to push themselves, respect authority, put the good of the group ahead of their individual interests, sportsmanship, and/or learn how to lead a group of their peers.

The issue is in the midst of the moment, as parents we somehow collectively lose our minds and all focus on the things WE say are important to us. We become consumed with things like class rank, playing time, and social status.

The trick in breaking this trend and not losing our mind is simple, but hard to hear (and read). TYPICALLY, when we lose focus on what we originally wanted for our children and do not act in accordance with what WE originally said was important, it is when we are operating based on OUR EGO and not what is best for our children. Even if you can rationalize that this is not about your ego and you are just protecting your child, please remember that if we never allow our kids to experience failure we are setting them up for catastrophic consequences when the ‘real world’ inevitably punches them in the face.

I cannot overstate the importance of taking the time to consider the WHY behind your interactions with your children. The ability to take a step back and evaluate our behaviors and their alignment with what we actually want for our children may be the difference between your child growing to love academics or athletics or them hating it as they grow older. More importantly, this may also be the difference between a healthy relationship with your kids or a toxic relationship.

Whenever we lose sight of what we want for our kids and start acting in accordance with what we want for ourselves, we must actively take a second to put our own egos in check and remind ourselves that protecting our children from all struggles and failures is a recipe for disaster.

Ten Strategies to Ensure Student Success

Our staff met these past few weeks to reflect on the many successes that we have achieved with our students this school year.

Student Engagement in Learning and Their School Communities

Here are our top ten strategies for student success:

1. Our high school students are fully engaged once again in their daily school activities after distance learning. They use their talents, skills, and voice to produce creative projects through media art classes that include film and photography projects.
2. The leadership team creates monthly social activities that include group movie nights, lunch time rallies, a twin day, a pajama day, and a pie in the face of an administrator day. The all-time favorite was when the students dyed the hair of an administrator.
3. The students’ ongoing academic growth is impressive at the 8^th and 12^th grade levels because these students lost 18 months of face-to-face learning without social interactions with their teachers and peers.
4. All students are achieving significant milestone growth at each reporting period.
5. Our afterschool study hall provides students with academic teacher support by using supplemental materials for acceleration.
6. The student clubs are supported by teachers and support our English learners in their language development. Favorite student clubs include the chess club, film, volleyball, an adventure club with science and nature activities, and a cooking club that focuses on cooking culturally diverse recipes.
7. The teachers collaboratively support each other at the many academic activities to foster cooperation and team work.
8. We have a larger pool of students in our senior class who are eligible to attend four-year universities and colleges.
9. Teachers and parents can now attend student sporting events since the COVID restrictions have been lifted for attendance.
10. Our major event for the year was a “trunk or treat event” in October. Nearly 25 cars were decorated by the students with open trunks full of candy for students and their families. The high school media arts class decorated cars along with the advisory groups. The community attendees voted on the best decorated car. Community agencies provided community services. A community vendor provided reduced cost foods as a donation for the event. And staff members performed in a folklorico dance group. This celebration of our school community truly showcased the vibrance of our students and their many achievements.

Much success as your school’s staff creates spring and summer activities to celebrate your school’s families and their children’s many achievements this past school year.

College and Career Explorations

When children are preschoolers, they love to think about what they want to be when they grow up. Some want to be garbage collectors, doctors, princesses, and athletes. Whatever career passions children relish, it is important to reinforce these interests with relevant play activities and enrichment outings to learn more about various careers. Parents can help children visualize a plan for a career opportunity by encouraging their children to:

• Communicate with folks in specific professions.
• Research the educational and job requirements for potential careers.
• Participate in field trips and community activities to learn more about specific careers.
• Attend parents’ work activities and shadow parents, colleagues, and friends to explore various careers
• Encourage children to help at work with duplications, mailings, and computer inputting if permitted by the company.
• Secure community service volunteer responsibilities, internships, and paid jobs.

As children enter middle school and explore various careers, they must learn how to research various college and career academic requirements to ensure that they are taking the proper courses for a specific career. They can attend career exploration days, meet with college counselors, and attend college tours to learn more about academic preparations. The more children understand the requirements for specific careers, the greater their successes will be to prepare and plan for appropriate course selections.

Early College Options

Early college, or the ability to take college courses in high school, can save thousands of dollars in educational preparations and tuition costs later. Middle school and high school students can learn more about early college by contacting their local school district to determine which high school campuses offer community college courses at the high school site. Parents and students can also contact their local community college to learn which courses high school students can register for during and after the school day. Additionally, many state and private colleges offer summer and vacation break intra-sessions on different careers including computer coding, science and math academics, performing arts, and writing workshops.

Community Service Leadership Opportunities

As part of their high school graduation requirements, most high school students are required to participate in community service activities. Some students use this time to explore careers and provide community services at elementary schools, for youth sports teams, and at various social service agencies. During summer breaks, students may participate in an international business program or cultural exchange program in another country. Other students work at summer jobs or internships to learn about merchandising, computer coding, and legislative support services for a local legislator.

Much success supporting your children’s school leadership and career planning options.

Consider Your Children’s Needs for School Choice

When considering different school options, you can ask yourself the following questions about your child or collectively about your children:

• What is my child’s personality type?
• Does she prefer playing or socializing in small groups, large groups, or by herself?
• Does she like to lead a group in various activities?
• Would she prefer to watch others and then follow in small group play and socialization activities?
• Is she easily frustrated when playing and socializing with others?
• Does she get angry when things do not go her way?
• What are her favorite activities?
• Does she prefer outside or thinking types of activities?
• Does she prefer paper and pencil activities or large muscle and interactive activities?
• Would she learn best by reading with you, listening, or watching others?
• What are her academic experiences?
• Does she recognize letters and letter combination sounds?
• Has she exhibited other pre-reading or reading skills?
• How does she apply number sense in everyday activities?
• What has the teacher said about her social, emotional, and learning skill development?
• What concerns do you have about her academic success and learning challenges?

Middle and High School Considerations

Added considerations for middle and high school students may include:

• Is there a specific college and career path that your child is interested in exploring?
• What types of classes, experiences, or internships do prospective schools offer to support your child’s learning interests?
• Does the preferred school provide sufficient extra-curricular activities, sports teams, and academic support programs to accommodate your child’s interests and preparation for college?
• Does the preferred school’s course sequence include options for your child to attend competitive colleges in her area of interest?
• What else do you need to discuss with the prospective school to ensure that it will provide adequate counseling and support services to ensure your child’s success?

Conducting School Site Visits

Once you answer these questions and have completed a conference for added information from your child’s teacher, you may choose to visit schools in your school district, charter schools, private schools, and parent participation schools to learn more about various learning philosophies. You can review appropriate teaching strategies by visiting your state’s department of education website and by researching different teaching philosophies.

It is important to select a school for your child that reinforces your family’s values and how you plan to support your child’s learning. If you have more than one child starting the school, you should consider the overall school climate that best aligns with your parenting style and your children’s diverse needs. This ensures an effective transition into an elementary school or transfer into a middle or high school. After visiting several different schools in your community, consider the following when selecting an appropriate school for your family:

• The various school options and choices for learning in your neighborhood
• How your child will travel to school each day
• The locations of various schools in proximity to your home, office, or access to afterschool childcare
• The school’s expectations for parent participation, homework philosophies, and expectations for parents’ support
• How you and your family can mange each day in regards to parent participation and homework support
• How much stress your family can manage when considering a selected school’s location, teaching philosophy, and homework expectations

A Sample Case Study

The following case study illustrates how parents must align their preference and values when considering a school’s expectations.

When considering this case study, it is important that parents work in partnership with the school to successfully complete the registration process that may include:

• Reviewing various school options relevant to the family’s values and learning needs
• Registering for a selected school with backup options
• Following-up with the selected school’s confirmation and document completion process
• Compiling all mandatory vacinations and medical check-up documentation

Sometimes, parents are not offered any of the schools they selected for their children through a lottery system or when selected schools are over-enrolled. Many parents will then appeal to the school district’s student placement office to have their child transferred to another school. Options can include a school that is closer to a student’s home or that has a higher student performance ranking in the district. The anxiety of registering for schools can be frustrating, confusing, and challenging. For example, urban parents may feel desperate in their attempts to challenge a school assignment. They may feel forced to wait another year for reassignment while their child attends an alternative program. It is important to reassure your children that they will have a successful school year and that you will be there to support them in this process.

Sample School Selection Worksheet

The sample worksheet below was completed by Tracey and Mark when they decided to send their child to a high performing parent participation elementary school in the neighborhood.

Much success identifying your family’s learning preferences at specific schools.

What Does an Engaged Classroom Look Like?

This post is sixth 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.

How to Create Learning Goals from Academic Standards

In the classroom, clear and actionable goals are a good start to supporting student learning. Students can then deconstruct standards and big picture goals into their own individual learning aims and intentions. The level of challenge must be feasible for the students. If the goals are too easy, students will get bored and complete their assignment quickly. If the goals are too hard, students become discouraged leading to low-quality outcomes, or none at all.

Students’ Feedback Ensures Realistic Learning Goals

Feedback is also an essential element of flow. This can be personal feedback through reflection on progress and outcomes, a self-scored rubric, and feedback from a peer or from a teacher. Students’ statements of engagement include:

• “I understand the learning intentions and I’m supposed to…”

• “Now I know where and why we are heading there.”

• “I know what I will do to reach them: read, highlight, and color code the categories.”

• “I will start with this first step and see how it works out.”

• “I can make progress. I’ll take my time reading to see if I can understand the main ideas.”

• “OK, the first step is done and I checked it against the criteria. I just need to adjust the tone.”

• “This sounds interesting AND possible. I have strong feelings on this topic and will try to curb my emotions.”

• “OK, I’ll give it another try. Now that I can see where I’m headed.”

Engaging learners in assessment reduces the stress of learning something new. A little cortisol, the stress hormone, can whet the brain in anticipation of an assessment, but we don’t want to raise it to a red flag level. Finding the balance between attentiveness and anxiety differs from student to student. In any setting, there should be no assessment surprises. For example, asking students to apply learning in a somewhat different scenario than the one learned in class can raise anxiety and students should be reassured that the process is the same. Stress from notetaking can be reduced by giving students empty outlines where they are picking out the appropriate word or phrase. Confidence in public speaking can be developed through the use of students’ choice of a technology for electronic presentations.

Student Engagement Ensures Informative Feedback

Engagement is infrequently an element of traditional assessment as tests are typically a solo activity. But when the roots of assessment are considered, the connections become clearer. Assessment comes from the Latin word “assidere” which means “to sit beside as an assistant or advisor.” These routine check-ins, informative feedback, and opportunities for improvement are the engaging and relationship-based elements of assessment.

Sarine prefers predictability in assessment and Seiji sees himself as an assessment warrior. Sarine has learned the skills she needs to purposefully and diligently prepare for an upcoming test. She summarizes the main ideas, reviews what she was taught about its meaning and relevance, and how it was used in class. She confidently digs into the example on the test. Seiji has a momentary panic attack before realizing that they did a similar problem in class and the flow of cortisol activates his brain enabling him to do his best work.

What Is a SMART GOAL?

There are numerous goal setting models. The SMART goal model shown is a reliable and achievable strategy for students. It is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based.  The model is relevant for all learners by adjusting the language levels. For example, “What are my specific goals?” is simplified to “This is what I will learn. What actions and steps will I take?” translates to “My first step will be.”

Personalization of goals makes them more relevant, authentic, and interesting to learners. It begins when students evaluate their incoming knowledge and skills in relation to learning purposes and intentions and in due course, to assess their learning outcomes. Here is a summary of steps students must consider in creating SMART goals:

1. Students must consider what they need to learn to establish specific and strategic
2. They must identify any qualitative or quantitative data that is required to create measurable and motivational
3. Goals must realistic with steps and a timeline to be actionable and achievable.
4. Students can monitor the steps to achieve time-based and tangible

Our December 14th blog will provide an example and explain how students assess their learning outcomes. For more charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to own their learning, you can purchase Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020) from Roman and Littlefield