Three Simple Steps to School Success

       Every parent wants their child to do well in school.  When kids are in elementary school, parental influence and assistance is usually plentiful.  Parents generally understand the content well enough to help their children during homework time.  And elementary children are more likely to do as they're told to do, and to respect the authority of adults in the school.  They generally want to please their parents and their teachers.  When elementary students struggle academically, public schools provide lots of help and assistance in a caring and nurturing way.

       As children move on to middle school and then to high school some of those attributes that helped students to be successful in elementary school tend to lessen.  The school work is more rigorous, children are more concerned with pleasing their friends, and parents who may feel that their children should be more responsible for their school work may take a step back when it comes to reminding them of due dates.  Also, parents may find that they can no longer help their children with homework due to the level of the content.

       Still, all students can do well in school and here are five simple steps that can help:

1.  Do your best

       I know this sounds trite and cliche, but I'm going to define "doing your best" in a way that may sound different from what most would think.  It doesn't mean getting an "A" or even necessarily striving for an "A" all of the time.  In fact, "doing your best" has little to do with the way your child's school assesses students.  Instead, it has everything to do with your child looking into the mirror at the end of the unit or a marking period or the school year and being able to say that he/she did everything they could to be successful.  Sometimes students really, honestly don't have time to everything that are asked to do.  Sometimes they ask for help and stay up late to study and take on the responsibility for their learning and end up with a "C".  That's OK.  But if the child feels that he/she didn't do their best, then this is the time for self-reflection about what can be done differently the next time.  Everyone (including adults) fall short of doing their best sometimes.  Striving to do better is part of what we want students to learn in school.

2.   Adult support outside of school

       Middle and high school students are not too old to need support from a caring adult outside of the school building.  Students today have lots of distractions and when given the choice between school work and social media it can be hard to plan time for both unless someone is there to help.  In 2006 there was a study of high school dropouts.  Many high school dropouts in this study said that they would have tried harder if someone insisted that they try harder.

"Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (69 percent) said they were not motivated or inspired to work hard, 80 percent did one hour or less of homework each day in high school, two-thirds would have worked harder if more was demanded of them (higher academic standards and more studying and homework), ..."

3.  Get involved

       Students that are involved clubs and sports and other school activities discover that "school" is more than a place with teachers and homework.  Involvement in activities helps students to connect with other students who have similar interests and these connections can be positive in and out of the classroom.

       School success should not be all about grades.  We want students to graduate with lots of skills that can be hard to measure with the standard "grade".  These include:  communication skills, computer and technological literary, adaptability, research skills, problem solving skills, strong work ethic, and conflict resolution skills--to name a few.

       Our public schools along with home support help our students to succeed.

Building the Academic Strength of Our Weakest Students

       School is about learning.  And most students do fine when it comes to learning what they need to learn in school.  For most students, its not a matter of passing or failing; its more a matter of learning very well or not learning so well.  But for some of our students, keeping up-to-speed in their reading, writing, and mathematics skills as they go through their middle and high school years is difficult.  As a public school system, a lot of effort is focused on helping these students to improve their skills.  This is an important mandate in every public school.

       We know from research that students who are below grade level in reading by the end of third grade often struggle with their reading skills throughout the rest of their P-12 schooling experience.  (link to study)  They are also more likely to leave school without a high school diploma.  Difficulties in learning mathematics have been similarly well documented.  Students with weak math skills also struggle in high school mathematics and are less likely to graduate from college (see here; go to chapter 3 on page 45).  It is because of these known consequences that schools make every effort to raise the skills, abilities, and understandings of students who are weak in reading, writing, and mathematics.

       At the heart of this effort is the struggle of understanding how these students think and how they learn.  Clearly, the "usual way" of teaching and learning is not working; and so schools look to other resources and teaching strategies to reach these students.  Understanding the best ways to motivate students to do their best in school (especially when they have experienced only failure in the past) is an important task for schools and teachers.  One excellent resource is the book Mindsets by Carol Dweck.  In it Dr. Dweck explains the psychology of how people perceive their abilities to learn.

       There is no shortage of intervention programs that are available to schools (at a cost) for the purpose of helping students to regain "grade-level" status.  Schools invest in these programs and train their teachers.  Some students show excellent improvement while others do not.  It is a constant challenge to find the best way to help our weakest students.  But it is a challenge that our public schools eagerly accept every day.

       Learning is for everyone and everyone can learn.  Building the skills of our weakest students is an important responsibility of our public schools--one that we take very seriously.

How Much Help is the Right Amount of Help for High School Students?

       Parents and teachers want school-age children to be responsible--at least, "responsible" given their age.  But what is the right amount of responsibility for a high school student--or for a new college student?  How much "help" do 16 year olds (or 18 year olds, or 20 year olds) need to navigate the rigors of high school courses, college courses, and college life?

       Some high school students seem to breeze through high school with very little guidance from adults while others struggle--same for college.  These students make some teachers say, "See!  They can do it, so anyone of you can do it."  But is this just a "sink or swim" mentality?  Does this viewpoint help students learn responsibility, or does it prevent them from succeeding.

       On the other end of the spectrum, some say that we help student too much in high school and (so) they aren't prepared for the independence of college courses.  (Is it true that college teachers don't help their students?  I hope not.)  High schools help students to remember deadlines and they offer after-school help.  Is that "too much" help?  What is the proper balance of teaching responsibility and helping students to successfully navigate courses and school programs?

       I believe that their is value in allowing students to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes.  I also believe that we should not be so extreme in our "caring" at the high school level that we (as teachers) do too much for students to the point that they only doing-what-they-are-told and are not learning anything.  But should we allow them to fail a course if they know the content but struggle to meet deadlines?

       Should we really expect 14 year old 9th graders to hear a long, long, long list of directions and rules on the first day of school and then penalize them for not following rule # 56 on the 23rd day of school?  Should we have to remind 11th graders of the term paper deadline everyday for three weeks?  How much help is the right amount of help?

       I think my main concern is for students who capable of learning what they need to learn at a satisfactory level (or higher), but they struggle with skills such as organization, planning ahead, learning school procedures (such as college course sequences), and meeting deadlines.  I know that these skills are important and (certainly) we want these future employees to have these skills.  But is high school and college the right place for penalizing teenagers and young adults who are still developing these skills?  I am particularly concerned about students who drop out of high school or college due to a lack of organization and not due to a lack of academic ability.

       As public schools, we should do everything we can to help our students to succeed.  But how much "help" is too much help, and how much "help" is too little help?