Supporting Your Child's High School Education
How can I get involved in my child's high school education?
The most important thing when supporting your child's high school education is to start getting involved and supporting them early. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize that this involvement and support starts at birth. From the time that you start reading, to the time that you start engaging with them in active conversations and being involved in their life in general. High school education is more than just the classes to go to, it's the extracurricular activities, all those types of things. You can specifically get involved with supporting your child high school education by most importantly being in contact with the student's school, the counselors and the vice principals. If you have questions, ask if you are not aware of things. Then, have a goal for your child, if the family with your child has a goal; make sure you stay on track to accomplish that goal. Please don't think that a high school diploma or high school staff will give everything that your child needs. You may have specific desires for your child that you need to communicate with to all staff members, or what we say is, with all stakeholders. If that means you need to communicate with the child's teacher, do that. If that means go making sure that you go to "back to school night," do that. If that's making sure that every teacher, counselor, administrative staff or support staff has your e-mail, they will have access to you both during the daytime whether it's cell phone or business phone. You want to make sure that if there is a problem, staff has easy access to you. Teachers are dealing with many students throughout the day, this is usually the parent that comes in, asks questions, showing they are actively supporting their child's high school education. This way of getting involved will get questions answered quickly and will utilize the available resources.
How can I help my child with homework I don't understand?
High schools' assignments are getting more and more difficult, and many times parents do not understand the material that's being handed out. The first thing you want to do is make sure that your child has a daily log of their assignments. You want to make sure that your teacher has explained the assignment to the child, and both verbally and written, if possible, so that if you don't understand the assignment, you can refer back to - at least understand what the assignment is. So you want to make sure that both verbally and written in some way that you understand what the assignment is. Also, if you don't understand the assignment, you can go to the school for help. You can always ask the teacher to explain what the assignment is. You want to make sure that you have access to the child's textbook. Usually, the information comes from the child's textbook, and there will be some background knowledge that can help you understand, at least well enough to be able to help them with a specific assignment. Also, you can ask the teacher for the correct answers to that material. Oftentimes, your child's textbook - there may be a teacher's guide or a teacher's edition available at your school library, or as other community resources, where you, without giving your child the answer, can at least familiarize yourself with some of the answers, and you can help work backwards that way with your child.
How can I engage my high school student if she is a reluctant learner?
Reluctant learners are everywhere. Sometimes people think only children who come from poverty or low-income backgrounds are reluctant learners. Most of the time a reluctant learner does not feel they are actively involved, interested or engaged in the material. If your child is a reluctant learner, it does not mean that they are not bright, or that your child is lazy. And we should never use words like "you're lazy", "you just don't like it" with reluctant learners. It usually means that the reluctant learner does not feel that there is an immediate reward in learning this material. So I want to make the material engaging for the reluctant learner. I want to make it so there's an immediate pay-off. Sometimes we do things that we don't like, but we may nevertheless do them for the immediate reward. Bribery has never hurt anyone. We go to our jobs because we want our paychecks. We do other things because we know that there's a monetary pay-off or some type of reward. A lot of times for the reluctant learner, we want to associate learning with something that they like. Does this have to mean that it has to be monetary? No. It might be extra time on the television, it might be extra time with a friend, it might be buying a new book. It may be something that the reluctant learner can immediately tap into for their reward.
How can I encourage my high school student to be interested in science?
If I want to make my child more interested in science, I want to look at the things around me. I want to encourage my child to ask questions about things that we sometimes take for granted. Perhaps when I'm cooking, I may want to talk to my child and I may want to engage them in that actual lesson; when we're looking at the chicken or things when they are not cooked versus what happens to them when they change for cooking. I may want to look at household chemicals and smells and reactions; please don't blow anything up in your house, but I may want to just engage them in simple things around the house that make us look for questions and answers. How do we get rubber? What is atmosphere? We just want to ask the basic questions around the house, and then we say "You know that's science." I want to engage my learner with just some of the things right around my daily environment.
How can I encourage my high school student to be interested in Math?
When we are encouraging interest in math, it is really great when parents can allow their children to work with money. Kids really like to learn the value of money; how it can be spent, how they can earn money. Also, kids love shapes; they love to use geometry, perhaps through doing a family building of a doghouse. They can do adding on, measuring a room. A lot of times kids love to learn about liquid measures, things like that. When it comes down to learning about math, or encouraging your student to learn math, always feel free to use things in their home that you can turn into a math project.
How can I encourage my high school student to be interested in English?
With regards to supporting your child's high school English education, if you talk, you're into English. A lot of times we can start with just making sure that our students are using good communication. That might be when they are chit chatting with their friends on the cell phone or reading the newspaper. We can encourage them to read the full article for details and then ask them questions about it. Students love to read novels which they are interested in. So, maybe go with your child to the library and pick out novels, or even just come to the racks. A lot of times just taking your child to an environment that is pro-English really starts to stimulate them, maybe by just going to the library, even if it's just looking at the books, shapes, colors or the environment. A lot of times you want to encourage your child just to be in the quiet environment. Another big issue with English is to getting the home quiet; in our homes we come in, sit with the TV on and have the radio on in the car. This is not an environment which encourages reading. As parents, to support your child's high school English education we want to have books, verses magazines, novels that we want to read with our children. As a teacher, the most important thing that I can do in the classroom to encourage reading is for them to read. When it is time to read in my classroom, my students walk through the door and they see me with a book. When I am reading they understand that I am in a quiet spot, concentrating on my material. They in turn lower their voice level, get their books out and read. So, in relation to encouraging your child's English at high school, if you're a reader, your child will be a reader too.
How can I encourage interest in history and civics?
We always want to encourage history and civics with our children because if we don't understand the past, and we've all heard it, we're bound to repeat it. To encourage my child to learn history and civics, especially for our young, inquisitive students who want to make change, we want to have them create questions about our government, civic society, things that happen, but we also want to encourage them to answer those questions by looking at the history of how we've answered them in the past. Is it something we've seen before? Look at patterns and trends in history so that if they want to change with something in the future, we can encourage them by having them look to history and the past.
How much academic pressure should I be putting on my child?
So often, our standards for our children are so low. We don't appreciate our children. We don't appreciate their individuality. Children can program MP3 players, can hack into computers, but yet, we don't think that we should put academic pressure on them to read a novel. We're going to have to make sure that we're pushing our kids as far as we push them in some areas to be a well-rounded person, as well as exerting academic pressure.
