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Flowers of Spring Fever

Finish Strong and Fight Spring Fever

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Teachers all over the country are experiencing a similar phenomenon in their classrooms – spring fever. Just about the time spring break rolls around kids begin to think about summer and stop thinking about school. Unfortunately, this is the time of year when standardized testing and final assessments take place, so it’s no time to mail it in. In this post we’ll discuss strategies for keeping your child focused to finish the school year strong.

At home you’re probably feeling this as well. It gets harder to get your children up in the morning and to get them to focus on doing their homework. Now imagine the frustrations that the teachers are facing when they have 20 or more kids all struggling to focus. By April, it has been a long school year and kids are tired of schoolwork, but in most systems there is still a lot of work to be done. It is a particularly frustrating time for schools because their biggest academic assessment each year for No Child Left Behind happens in the spring. Here are a few tips to help keep your child focused and finish strong:

  1. Keep your routines. We are all creatures of habit and sticking to a well-established routine is one key to a smooth-running household.
  2. Send your child to school. Things can come up in the spring and it can be tempting to let your child lay out of school here and there. The more you do this, the more your kids will want to stay out, and a vicious cycle ensues. Send them to school and you send a strong message to your children about keeping their obligations.
  3. Remember bedtime. With the days getting longer, the evening can sneak up on you pretty quickly and it might seem earlier than it really is. In concert with routines, keep an eye on the clock and make sure your kids get their normal night of sleep.
  4. Get your kids outside. Playing in the yard or with the neighborhood kids is a way to burn off that energy and buy you some peace and quiet in the afternoons. Use the warm weather and longer days to your advantage. Join them for some family fun and fitness.
  5. Openly plan your summer vacations and fun. If your children have something to look forward to upon completion of the school year, it could sustain them through the rest of the year and give them something to work towards.
  6. Be supportive of your teachers and school. Teachers are most effective when they have the full support and backing of parents, and this time of year is even more critical to have that cooperation. Have your child do their homework and study for upcoming tests. Keep the lines of communication open and be involved whenever you can as a parent.
  7. Use praise, rewards and incentives liberally. Children respond very favorably when appropriate levels of incentive are given for doing the right things. When you catch your child doing something good, or getting compliments from their teacher, or bringing home good grades, let them know you appreciate it.

Keeping up the intensity can have more than just psychological benefits. Perhaps a grade moves from a “B” to an “A” or, going the opposite direction, a class is failed by coasting at the end of the year. For high schoolers, this can be significant. In the case of my oldest son, his act of finishing strong his senior year moved him from #2 to #1 in class ranking and earned him an additional scholarship. With active, intentional parenting, you can help your child finish strong and fight spring fever.

Question – Is your case of spring fever rubbing off on your child?

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Homework – A Necessary Evil

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Let’s all admit it – when your child comes home with a load of homework it can be draining. Between everything else we have to do after a hard day at work, there is little time left for this. Much debate has taken place over the value of homework, the right amount to be assigned, and the level of parental involvement required. However, one thing is for sure – homework that relates directly to the learning effort is necessary. We’ll explore why and ways to effectively manage the homework burden in your home.

I just met with a few of my son’s teachers yesterday. He is a great kid but simply is not motivated about school. One of the concerns is that he does not do classwork or homework if he does not enjoy the class. Consequently, his grades suffer. Our school system changed their grading criteria this year so that homework and classwork account for only 25% of their grade and assessments make up the other 75%. So, his thought is that all he has to do is excel on the tests and quizzes and he can pass. Mathematically, that is correct, but in reality it’s wrong.

The reality is that classwork and homework prepare you to do well on the assessments. Just like working out, training, and practicing conditions you to excel in your chosen sport, homework and classwork have the same effect. Whether it’s reading and studying for an exam, completing worksheets with practice questions, working out math problems or diagramming a sentence, these activities all constitute training for the associated test or quiz. Plus, teachers are already compressed for time and may not be able to cover the worksheet or reading in class, so they send it home. In that sense, I believe that homework is a necessity.

Homework gives you a chance to connect with your child. Instead of looking at it as a drudgery make it fun. Your child might hear your explanation of a problem and understand it better than they did in class. Or, they might get excited when you talk about the different possibilities for their project. Being involved in the completion of your child’s homework gives you a glimpse into their world and what your child is being taught.

What we’ve found is that the more intentional we are about homework the better our kids perform at home and in school. Some homework strategies that have worked for us, and that you might employ in your home are:

  • Create a place where homework is always done at home.
  • Work with them to identify a place in their notebook or binder to put completed homework.
  • Develop a routine for the afternoon (maybe snack, clothes change, homework then play or vice-versa) and stick with it.
  • Plan a time in the evening to help your child complete their homework, or if they’re the self-motivated type, review it with them and talk about their day.
  • Hold them accountable when things are missed and make them complete those tasks.
  • Praise, reward and compliment your child as they become more self-sufficient in this area.
  • If you have a complaint about the amount or appropriateness of the homework, consult your child’s teacher in private.

When your child knows what to expect, and what you expect from them, things tend to go a lot more smoothly. For some children, the homework burden will be greater on you than it is for others because all children are different. Support your child’s teachers and ensure that your children do their homework. In the long run, their grades will benefit and they will learn some life skills in addition to the knowledge they gain through the process.

Application Question – What one step can you take to tame the homework monster in your home?

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Teacher and Parent Communication – Don’t Wait Till It’s Too Late

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I’ve written several posts on the parent/teacher/student relationship. This unique triangle is rather specific to the K-12 learning environment. Without proper care and feeding of that relationship, things can get off track rather quickly with your child. I’m speaking from experience here, so read on for my story and what to do about it.

By virtue of not being present in the school, the parent is in a position where they are on the outside looking in. We expect our children to accurately share what is happening in their classrooms, and we expect timely updates from their teachers. For busy teachers and children who are struggling this might not be the case. The kids may not want to share bad news, and the teachers expect that the kids share everything at home. Here is where the parent gets lost.

One of my kids is that struggling child. He struggles because he would rather socialize with his friends in school instead of doing the work. We know this because he brings home little to no homework and his online grade reports show several zeroes (By the way parents, zero on homework or classwork indicates no effort, which is not the teacher’s fault). Consequently, we seem to get to the end of a grading period and make a mad scramble to get his grades to an acceptable level.

So, needless to say we haven’t had the best luck with this, which tells me that I need to do a better job with the teachers. As I wrote in a previous post, “trust but verify” is the right approach to take when you have a kid that might not be forthcoming with his schoolwork. When we have been successful, there are a few common themes that seem to recur, and those are listed below.

We have been the most successful when we’re able to get the teacher’s email address and their phone number who will cooperate in an ongoing dialog. By having direct access to the teacher, any communications that might be lost  between the classroom and the living room can be confirmed. The information that parents get from direct communication tend to settle any disputes over assignments that are due or performance in the classroom.

Ask for a conference with your child’s teachers. This gives you a more in-depth chance to talk about what might be going on in the classroom. If your child has multiple teachers and you begin to hear the same things from each of them, you might begin to zero in on some underlying behavior or problem common to all classes.

The next most effective approach is to have the website where the teacher posts any coursework or information. By having the website, we can gain access at home to the most recent assignments and ask to see that the work has been completed. If your teacher will post homework on the day that it is assigned, then you can encourage your child to do that work before it is past due. On the other hand, a teacher’s website is only reliable if it is regularly updated.

We have used an agenda for an older child. In our experience these have been limited to use in elementary school and junior high, then the teachers expect the high school students to write down their own assignments. We’ve even had our son’s teachers sign his agenda to verify that they have seen it and that the written assignments are correct. It might be a little embarrassing to your child, but maybe that’s the spark they need to take some responsibility.

Most schools have another website where the actual grades are posted. These can be good to have as well, but our experience has been that some teachers wait till the end of the grading period to put in grades. By then, it is too late to help your child recover.

In summary, building those relationships with your child’s teachers through ongoing communication is the most likely avenue to success. What you don’t know about you cannot fix, but you also cannot ignore the problems. Teachers are much more likely to work with parents who pay attention and get involved than those who do not. You owe it to your child to know what is going on in their classroom and to help them through their struggles.

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Rewards and punishments – it’s all a PIC/NIC

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Yesterday we talked about the A-B-C model of behavior management.  To review, Antecedents are the triggers to Behaviors which are followed by Consequences.  One way to think about effective consequences is to do what the folks at Aubrey Daniels International call a PIC/NIC analysis.  Consequences that have the greatest impact on the child are the most effective.  Doing this analysis will allow you to identify those consequences and may also reveal to you why a child might behave in a certain way, even if there are negative consequences involved.  The best part about this is that you don’t have to be trained in order to be effective at doing this – it just takes common sense and intentionality.

To do this analysis, think from the point of view of the child.  Consequences can be classified by their type, their timing, and the probability that the consequence will occur.  Think about type in terms of whether the consequence is positive or negative (P or N) to the child.  Timing has to do with immediacy – does the consequence happen immediately or is there any delay (I or F) of more than a few seconds.  Probability has to do with the likelihood of the consequence occurring – is it certain or uncertain (C or U) that the consequence follows the behavior.

Armed with this information, there are eight different classifications that a consequence can take.  These classifications take the form of a three-letter acronym that contains the type, timing, and probability.  Those types are as follows:

  • PIC – the consequence is Positive, it happens Immediately, and it is Certain
  • NIC – the consequence is Negative, it happens Immediately, and it is Certain
  • PIU – the consequence is Positive, it happens Immediately, and it is Uncertain
  • NIU – the consequence is Negative, it happens Immediately, and it is Uncertain
  • PFC – the consequence is Positive, it happens in the Future, and it is Certain
  • NFC – the consequence is Negative, it happens in the Future, and it is Certain
  • PFU – the consequence is Positive, it happens in the Future, and it is Uncertain
  • NFU – the consequence is Negative, it happens in the Future, and it is Uncertain

The order of the classifications listed above are shown from most powerful to least powerful.  In general, positive consequences outweigh negative ones; immediate consequences outweigh future consequences; certain consequences outweigh uncertain ones.  As an example, this is what reinforces the behavior of lying.  If a child (or adult) thinks that they can lie, then the know consequence will be negative if they are caught, it will certainly happen in the future, and it is uncertain to occur because they may never be caught in the first place.  On the other hand, we tell our children that telling the truth is always better than lying.  The only way to get that behavior is that the consequence for telling the truth has to be on the other end of the spectrum – that is, it needs to be Positive, Immediate, and Certain.  Sometimes, though, this is easier said than done.

Poor consequences spell the end of good school performance.  If a child is having homework problems, come up with the PICs that will reinforce the act of doing the homework and turning it in.  Whatever PICs you put in place must outweigh the PICs that come from not doing the homework, because they do exist.  Remember that the consequence must be as seen through the eyes of the child, not through your eyes.  This is why it is so important to figure out what things make them tick and where their likes, affinities, and desires truly lie. 

A quick story.  When my oldest child was about eight, he had a toy that he didn’t want to share with his younger brother.  Every time he played with that toy, his brother wanted it as well (that’s a scarcity mentality – more on that later) because it was obviously the only toy worth playing with.  We used this principle to break that habit.  Whenever my oldest didn’t want to share, we gave him the option of sharing with his brother; if he did not, we made him continue to play with that toy without putting it down for up to 30 minutes.  As you can imagine, at first this sounded good to my oldest because he didn’t have to share.  But since the attention span of an eight-year old is about seven minutes, it didn’t take long for that to grow old with him.  Within a week or so, the selfishness problem was fixed.  What at first seemed like a PIC for him turned out to be a more powerful NIC.  By sharing, he could move on to other toys and do what he wanted to do instead of what he was told to do.  Sneaky, huh?

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Teach them organization

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That transition to middle school is maybe the toughest that any student will face.  When they leave the comfort of one classroom and one teacher the whole day and have to adjust to several teachers, different classrooms, bells that relentlessly mark their tardiness, lockers and hauling books to and from class, dressing out for PE, and so forth, that’s just a lot for a twelve year-old to take in.  There are just a whole slew of challenges in going to middle school, some of which they (nor you) can fix.  One thing you can do to help them make this transition is to teach them organizational skills.

Organization is one of the things that my middle child struggles with most.  There is just something about it that he doesn’t do well.  Some of us will always be that way no matter how hard we try.  But even if you aren’t good at it, there are some habits that you can help develop in your child.

  1. If one isn’t required, buy them an agenda or planner.
  2. Require that they write their assignments for each class in it every day.
  3. Decide if your child does better with one notebook or several and outfit them accordingly.
  4. Create a place where homework is always done at home.
  5. Put things on and in their desk in a consistent place and expect them to keep it the same.
  6. Work with them to identify a place in their notebook or binder to put completed homework.
  7. Have them regularly clean out their backpack and notebooks.
  8. Set a time where you review their day with them and check their agenda to see that they are using it.
  9. Develop a routine for the afternoon (maybe snack, clothes change, homework then play or vice-versa) and stick with it.
  10. If they dress out for PE, set a routine for them to bring home their clothes (and take others in the next day).
  11. Create an evening routine where they pack their items for the next day.
  12. If they participate in extracurricular activities, begin to make them responsible for remembering things like practice, games, etc.
  13. Hold them accountable when things are missed and make them complete those tasks.

It’s not very hard to do these things, and you probably do most of them to some extent.  The key is to create consistency and accountability.  Your child should know where their homework is for each class that they walk into.  They should also be able to tell you what’s going on in their classes, and if they forget then they have the agenda to back them up.  At this age, children are more than capable of managing an organized process.  Help teach them how and make them stick to it – habits (good and bad) are built by repetition.  Well-developed organizational skills will serve them well for the rest of their lives.

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Counselor, critic, or something better?

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As parents of students we tend to fall into one of the roles listed above.  Unfortunately, it’s very easy to be the critic.  We see a grade or behavior that isn’t up to our standards and we immediately want to know what went wrong.  We criticize their handwriting, we criticize their organization, we criticize that they never bring home books for homework, and we criticize how the solved the problem.  The problem with criticism is that the recipient shuts down and a wall goes up between the critic and the recipient.  Generally no productive language comes from the pure critic.  Sometimes, we fall into the counselor trap.  If you think of a counselor, they deal with events mostly of the past and lend a sympathetic ear.  This happens when we begin to agree with our children’s excuses, allow them to complain about their teachers, make statements like “that’s just the way you are”, and somehow make it okay that they continue to have problems in school.  If you agree with your child’s excuses, you are robbing them of an opportunity to get better.  If you lay blame on others, you take away any accountability they might otherwise assume.

There is a third option.  What if, instead, we adopt the role of coach?  Think about the coaches that you know or most admire.  What qualities come to mind?  They hold you accountable for your actions.  They are tough; excuses don’t go a long way with a good coach.  They help you figure out ways to get better without telling you exactly how to do it.  What happened in the past is only a lesson for how to get better in the future.  For you to remain in the same place isn’t an option for your coach.  They evaluate and measure performance so that they find areas for additional improvement.  They push you to be better for a greater purpose.  They inspire you.  They get more out of you than you would might expect from yourself.  They make you proud when you accomplish good things.  They invest time in you because they want you to succeed.  And, perhaps most of all, they care.

What if we became our child’s educational coach?  What difference might it make in their lives?

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Challenge them!

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When a bodybuilder wants to grow their muscles, they pick up the heavy weights.  Their muscles need to be challenged in order to be strengthened.  Likewise, a student of any age needs to be challenged.  Taking a class where you already know all of the information, or only have to put forth minimal effort to get the job done, does little to develop your intellect and expertise in that area.  I believe that programs like No Child Left Behind puts the majority of students at a disadvantage because the very premise of the program is that all children meet the same standard.  I understand the goal – the children that are furthest behind get the assistance that they need.  I’m all for that, but in my opinion this assistance should come outside of class time, or the students should be sorted into classes based on their learning ability.  School systems are incented by their performance, and to show their progress will game the system by lowering standards, manipulating numbers, and so forth in order to receive federal funds.  Is that really what you want for your children?  I think that this act is better titled “No Child Gets Ahead”.  In my child’s elementary school this fall, they were required to take on 90 students from schools in the system that failed to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).  This caused them to lose some classroom space and increase student-to-teacher ratios in many classes.  Again, while I’m all for each student getting the best possible education, it should not come at the expense of the majority of the student population.

Opinions aside, here are some things you can do to ensure that your student is stretched and challenged:

  1. Turn off the television and have them read at home, beyond what is required for school.  This will open up a whole new world to them.
  2. Give them complex problems, proportional to their age, to solve.  For instance, if they have been doing addition and subtraction for some time, they are ready to be introduced to multiplication.  Start teaching them some facts.
  3. Encourage creative writing.  Young children especially are natural storytellers, so give them paper, pencil, and crayons to write their own stories and books.  These also make great keepsakes.
  4. When you do watch television, seek out educational and cross-cultural programming on channels like Discovery, The History Channel, PBS, National Geographic, and others.
  5. One of the games we play in the car is trivia.  For years, our children want us to ask questions proportional to their skills.  We’ll ask history, spelling, math, science, current events, and other questions off the top of our head.  A great way to pass the time while you travel.
  6. Keep a list of their spelling words on the refrigerator and call them out several times during the week.

Remember, you have very little control over what is taught in the classroom.  If you want to take charge of your child’s education, and ensure that they get every possible advantage, then get involved.  You are ultimately responsible for your child’s education.

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Making the leap

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This post is for parents of newly-minted sixth graders. Across the US, the vast majority of school systems make the transition to middle school as students go into sixth grade. In the next month, your child will enter this strange new world. This is a critical time for the students and parents alike. For students, this often means the merging of two or more elementary schools, which means that there will be a lot of new kids in their classes that they may not know. Sixth graders are notoriously smaller than their eighth-grade counterparts, which can create a lot of stress for the younger kids. Where they were the big kids just last year, now they are just the new set of victims for the older kids. Sixth graders also have their first daily experience of changing classes and teachers which brings about its own challenges. There are new clubs, sports, and activities for the kids to get involved in so their social network will begin to expand rapidly. They will experience things, good and bad, that they would not have heard in elementary school. We want to shelter and protect them. I have a third grade daughter and my wife and I are already talking about what we’re going to do when she reaches middle school. Although I have two boys who have already navigated middle school successfully, I can’t help but worry about my daughter.

So, what can you do to help your kids have the best experience possible? Here are a few ideas; I’ll attempt to expand on these in future posts.
1) Take every opportunity that you can to be at school. During open house, meet-the-teacher, volunteer opportunities, fundraisers and other events requiring a parent or chaperone, you can be there to show your child and their teachers that you care.
2) Get contact information for each of your child’s teachers and establish a communication schedule. This is extremely important for ensuring that you are fully aware of what’s going on and where your child may be struggling.
3) Do more than the minimum required. Times may be tough in your home, but things are especially hard in public schools around the nation with limited budgets and overworked, underpaid teachers.
4) Know your child’s friends. Get to know their parents. Be the house that all the kids want to come to and you’ll always know what your child is up to. Ask questions.
5) Monitor, limit, or better yet do not allow online social networking activities.
6) Be on the lookout for changes in demeanor, personality, and behavior. If grades begin to slip, dig in to find the root cause immediately.
7) Allow your child to make more choices but always keep the final say-so.
8) Remember that your child is still a kid. They need time for play and unstructured activities. Don’t over-commit them or yourself.
9) Stand up for your child for when they are right, but also hold them accountable when they are wrong. Teachers aren’t evil and they aren’t picking on your child; they simply don’t have time to do so.
10) Don’t talk badly about your child’s teachers in front of your child. Some are better than others, admittedly so. However, to talk bad about the teacher gives the child the green-light to make excuses, disobey, or otherwise disrupt the teacher’s classroom.
11) Hang in there, even when all hope seems lost. Let your child know that you believe in them.
12) Don’t give in just to be the cool parent. You’ll repeatedly hear that so-and-so gets a cell phone, gets to stay out till 11, gets to be on Facebook, blah, blah, blah. Set and maintain your own boundaries and do not let someone else do it for you.
13) Most importantly, be there for your child. Give them your time. Talk about their day, help them with their homework, really take time to listen.

You might ask how all of this plays into getting money for college. The answer is plenty. If your child is successful and learns winning habits and behaviors in middle school, then that will translate into high school when the grades really count. What you do now is extremely important – so please do it for the sake of your child.

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Preparations and procrastination

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I have another real-world experience to share with you. My 11th grader signed up for AP English this coming year. AP English has summer reading and assignments because of the heavy course load and limited time during the year. Well, guess who found out about the assignments just last night – me. School starts in two weeks and in that time he has to read two books, four non-fiction excerpts, answer questions and complete a worksheet and write three essays. All of the assignments are due the first day of class. I wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t been looking on the school website for registration information, but at least I found it. This information was handed out in the spring to all registered students, which my son can’t find now. Needless to say this has caused a spirited discussion both last night and today in our home.

So, I have several lessons learned from this experience:

1) You can never have too much communication with your students and teachers. I would have liked to have seen some direct-to-parent communication from the school back in the spring in addition to whatever might have happened for the students, but that didn’t happen. I should have asked more questions at the time too. This is a three-way partnership of student, teacher, and parents, and often it’s on the parents to keep that partnership alive.
2) Trust but verify. In this case, verification won out.
3) Be sure that your student (and you) understands what they’re getting into. This is a heavy workload and I don’t think he would have signed up for it had he been fully aware. He’s not a passionate reader anyway so this might be a challenge.
4) Get involved – don’t leave it all to your student. Had I not looked, we would have never known till it was too late.
5) Better late than never. At least he has time to get the work done.
6) However, procrastination just doesn’t pay. Even though he has time to finish, it will consume all of his last two weeks of summer to finish the work.

He has 16 days to get this complete, which I think he can do. I just regret that we’re starting so late, but the pain is (mostly) on him. AP classes are supposed to be college-level, so he may as well learn now what that means exactly. Had he started this early in the summer, it would be a much different situation right now. Please, don’t procrastinate, and don’t let your kids do it. When they have a paper or a project due in two weeks, start now instead of waiting. The quality of work will be much higher and there will be much less stress in your household. I guess the same could be said for us adults as well; how often do we put off doing a task because it seems unpleasant? Remember that kids learn most from their parents and mimic what they see, so always be a good role model for them, even in this category.

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Parenting the Middle Schooler

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In my last posting, I talked about starting early on the road to college planning.  I believe that parents of middle-school students should begin planning for their student’s journey to college.  It may seem like years away, but those years will pass quickly.

In middle school, students often get their first taste of multiple teachers and changing classes.  No longer do they stay with one teacher and one classroom full of students all day; middle-schoolers must begin to learn how to manage the changes and pressures of a schedule, along with all of the other challenges of adolescence.

It is during these three years that middle-schoolers prepare for the transition to high school.  They must learn to study effectively, to organize their time, to manage relationships with multiple teachers, and to begin to keep track of due dates for projects, tests, and homework.  The degree to which they are prepared during the middle school years most often determines the academic success that they will ultimately enjoy in high school and college.

Parents play a vital role in a student’s transition to high school during these two or three years.  The best things that a parent can do are:

Ask your children questions.
Communicate with their teachers.
Help them with their homework – you can’t just tell them it’s important to you, they have to see it as well.
Trust but verify – follow up on what your student tells you.
Get involved in their life – know who their friends are.
Enlist the help of other parents and clergy to help a wayward child.
Talk to them about the importance of discipline and good grades.
Limit their time engaged in social media, video games, and other technologies.
Hold them accountable – don’t make excuses for them or their teachers.
Reward good behaviors and activities.
Treat all or your children as individuals; don’t compare them to one another.
Love them unconditionally.

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