GenParenting

Parenting resources for all who love and care for children

Embrace and Learn from Mistakes and Challenges

Embrace and Learn from Mistakes and Challenges

by Erik Youngman, Guest Blogger

Regardless of your children’s age and where you live, there are daily opportunities to help children embrace and learn from mistakes and challenges. Teachers and parents have an important shared responsibility and opportunity to model and empower critical skills to children. Children make progress when teachers and parents model and empower learning from mistakes and challenges with a growth mindset. Progress and change are dependent upon specific skills that are required and improved while learning with a growth mindset and become even more important as expectations and rigor increase. [Read more…]

College and Career Explorations

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.

Becoming a School Leader

Becoming a School Leader

Parents are their children’s first teachers. Many feel inadequate on how to become a school leader. Some parents may have had a negative experience in their own academic experiences. Others may have attended school in another country. By participating in their children’s classrooms, parents can learn how to help their children at home with their homework and school projects. Parents can share their own skills, hobbies, and cultural experiences with students in the classroom. Additionally, children will respect their parents’ presence at the school and feel important. Parent classroom volunteers can:

  • Provide food donations when requested and help prepare meals with the students.
  • Donate classroom supplies requested by the teacher and prep curricular projects at home for classroom use.
  • Serve as a classroom parent representative to provide added support for class parties, field trips, and grade-level events.
  • Share a talent or hobby in small group learning centers.
  • Mentor and shadow new classroom parent volunteers.
  • Provide interpretation and translation support for parent volunteers and students

Classroom Support

Classroom parent volunteers will be able to:

  • Gain insight in how their children are adjusting to the new school year with their classmates and the academic course work.
  • Observe how the teacher is coaching and interacting with various students when responding to diverse educational challenges.
  • Advocate effectively with teachers and staff because they have an established relationship and committed partnership with the school community.

School Leadership Roles 

As parents become experienced classroom volunteers, many will receive leadership training from teachers and parent mentors to expand their volunteer leadership at the school. Parents can become school leaders and support the school by:

  • Serving as a parent representative on school and district committees
  • Participating in the school’s Parent, Teacher, and Student Association (P.T.S.A.)
  • Supporting a school’s fundraising foundation with fundraising and sponsorship events
  • Soliciting and advocating for added community partnerships at the school site through community-based organizations and local businesses
  • Leveraging added instructional support services by organizing special events, field trips, and community service projects for students and their families
  • Creating a school-based performing arts program with local artists, museums, and community theaters
  • Expanding physical fitness and nutritional programs with community-based organizations and sports groups

As parents partner and expand their roles at school, they will become more confident in supporting their children’s academic needs and successes.

Academic Learning in Home-Based Activities

Academic Learning in Home-Based Activities

Children learn best by exploring their world at their own level of understanding with toys and projects that will facilitate learning in many different ways. Parents can select toys that reinforce social and emotional skill development through situational play, games, and books. These may include situational play activities when constructing houses and communities with building blocks, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, Magna Tiles, Lego, and other construction materials. Preschoolers and younger elementary age children love to play house, cook, be a fireman, respond to emergencies, play doctor, and create construction sites with various props and relevant toys. Older elementary school-age children and teens love to play Monopoly while they invest in properties, the game of Life as family members make life plans, and the game of Clue as they solve a murder mystery. There are a multitude of books that help children learn about how to manage feelings and challenging social/emotional situations at home and school. [Read more…]

Partner with Your Children’s School

Partner With Your Children’s School

Participating parents typically report more satisfaction with the school’s staff and their children’s academic success. Parents with little or no access to the school tend to become frustrated when their children are not successful at school. These parents may not know how to adequately partner with the school’s staff to access the resources required for their children’s success.

When parents reach out to other non-participating parents, all students benefit from these outreach efforts. Most teachers will visit with students’ parents several times a year. Other teachers will travel to students’ homes to meet with parents who have never attended a school meeting or event. Non-participating parents may be afraid of the school because of a previous bad experience. Some may fear they have a language barrier because they may not be able to adequately communicate with staff. Other parents may be afraid of the school’s staff because of cultural differences.

Regardless of the reasons for the lack of communications between parents and the school, effective partnerships can be formed. Through these school-parent partnerships, parents will gain insight on each child’s needs to ensure effective academic support at home and access to additional community resources.

How to Partner with the Teacher

Parents have learned that forming an effective partnership with their children’s classroom teachers can help when addressing questions and concerns that may arise throughout the school year. Some children will feel challenged with the classroom management procedures. Others will become challenged with the grade level work and homework assignments. Many children will struggle with how to socialize with new classmates and teachers.

Check-in discussions with your children and briefly meeting with their teachers can have lasting effects on their abilities to success during the school per the following examples:

  • Adjusting to classroom management procedures that can be reinforced at home to help your child’s success in the classroom
  • Arranging for added academic support services for a child experiencing learning challenges or requiring remedial tutoring in a basic subject.
  • Working with the teacher to help your child adapt to the teacher’s personality and classroom expectations
  • Helping your child learn how to socialize with classmates at school and with afterschool and weekend playdates

Becoming a Parent Volunteer

When parents are able to volunteer in their children’s classroom, they gain insight in how their children are adjusting to the new school year. Parents are able to network and meet other parents and students for added support and socialization. When parents work at their children’s school, they are able to advocate effectively with teachers and staff because they have an established relationship and committed partnership with the school community. Parents can become successful advocates and coaches in partnership with their children when they:

  • Meet with teachers formally and informally.
  • Discuss their children’s academic strengths and challenges.
  • Brainstorm solutions for academic growth.
  • Create a student success plan with teachers.
  • Check-in on a regular schedule as needed to resolve challenges.
  • Identify added consequences at home or school for misbehaviors.

Creating a Partnership Plan for Success

Here is a case study about how Kyle’s parents resolved troubling reports about their son’s performance in his 8th grade English class.

 

Case Study of Kyle’s Need for Added Writing Tutorial Support in Middle School

 

Kyle was a gifted student. He had mastered basic writing skills as a preschooler and during his early years in elementary school. From the time he was three, Kyle would take his journal and dictate stories to his grandmother about scary monsters, life with his twin sisters, and how he would become an industrious construction business owner when he became an adult. During his elementary school years, he would enter writing contests at school and would win awards for creative writing and writing research narratives. Now he is an 8th grade student attempting to learn how to write his first research paper using the American Psychology Association’s (APA) style of writing to prepare for 9th grade Honors English classes. The basic APA rules of formatting, citation documentation, and reference requirements have paralyzed Kyle’s writing skills. He has lost his passion to complete a 20-page manuscript for his final middle school English project. His parents have coached him, guided him, encouraged him, and resorted to threatening restrictions if he does not complete this mandatory paper.

 

Finally, Kyle’s mom contacts his English teacher to strategize how they will coach and motivate Kyle to complete this final course requirement. The teacher asks Kyle to come to school with his mom to construct a plan of action. When they meet, his teacher listens attentively to Kyle’s concerns about completing the research paper correctly. She and Kyle brainstorm solutions. After further discussion, they agree that Kyle can write his paper without worrying about the research citations and stylistic requirements. He will need to highlight and number any research-based literature that he uses in his paper. Then he will duplicate the copyright page in each book used for a citation and number the book’s documentation with the corresponding citation number. Once he completes his paper, he will partner with peers to help him format the paper per APA stylistic requirements.

 

This agreed upon solution represented a victory for all without any power struggles, helicopter parenting, or tiger mama challenges. It also allowed Kyle the freedom to problem-solve a workable solution with his mother serving as a coach and facilitative supporter. Kyle was elated about his accomplishment of completing a successful final English writing project.