Disney Teacher of the Year and WWC alumnus David Vixie offers advice to parents with kids struggling in school.
It is encouraging that the child is struggling. A desire exists and effort is being expended. Children need to experience some success while being challenged with new content. That may come with an adjustment of curriculum quantity or difficulty. To accept this change means accepting the harsh reality that nobody really lives in Lake Wobegon where all the children are above average. This does not lessen your child’s value in this world.
1. Celebrate their strengths. School is an unnatural environment that emphasizes particular human endeavors with the exclusion of many others. We collect people of the same age and put them into a room to sit in uncomfortable desks for hours. The physical, mental, and emotional maturity differences are enormous. The focus is on a limited collection of tasks that relate to only portions of the human experience.
2. Show them that in a community, your gift may not be reading, but whatever it is it will be needed and valued.
3. Assure your child you will love them
no matter how long it takes them to finish eighth grade.
4. Understand that grades and tests often measure what matters least. Though
the acquisition of a database of facts is useful, school is not about memorizing;
it’s about thinking, problem solving, and social training. Education
started in America for the purpose of making better citizens. That focus seems
to have shifted to making better test scores. But if parents put a large focus
on the grade card it will drive out the natural curiosity of learning. Students
will be afraid to take learning risks for fear of missing a point or failing.
5. Allow your child the privilege of making mistakes. While it seems to be in the nature of parents to clear obstacles from the trail of their child’s life, it’s in the nature of teachers to roll in a few more.
In the evening of the fourth day of a particular wagon journey we rolled up to a tree across the trail. I had sent all the parents a different way to park some vehicles so they weren’t in the mix. The students jumped out of the wagon, assessed the obstacle then carried the tree from the trail as the entire class yelled “teamwork.” The next morning we came to another large tree across the trail. The parents, who were with me now, jumped out to move the 70-foot-long tree while the students remained in their places. They were accustomed to parental intervention, which had them paralyzed. The parents’ goal was the destination. My goal was the journey. Where the adults could have cleared the trail in less than an hour, it took the students four. But they would have been robbed of the joy of discovering, observing, testing, and triumphing over obstacles. One student turned to me and said, “You put that tree there didn’t you?”
6. Seek the professional help that is available to identify any medical problems or learning differences that make school difficult.
7. Evaluate your personal life to see what affect that is having on your child’s world.
8. Find out if your child feels safe.
9. Provide home supervision.
10. Explore and engage your child in stimulating adventures and activities they can relate to.
11. Have discussions with your child at home.
12. Have your child help someone else with age-appropriate learning or provide service to the community.
13. Improve your school communication and participation. Give the teacher a stack of self-addressed, stamped envelopes to mail a prearranged communication home every day. Make e-mail communication arrangements with the teacher.
14. Offer to reduce the administrative duties of the teacher. Do not be offended if your offer is turned down. Many children take better risks with education when their parents are not present.
15. Be sensitive that whatever arrangements
you make with the teacher, you have increased their already taxing workload.
They may not be able to invest as much one-on-one time as you can because
for them your student is one of 30.
16. Assist on field trips to understand the social dynamics of your child’s
world.
17. Give your child some necessary chores. Children need to feel they are important, needed, and appreciated.