Second term ended this week. It always gets intense that last week, getting assignments turned in and taking tests, trying to inch grades up and do the best you can. It's been a learning curve for me figuring out how much to be invested in the girls' grades and how much to stay out of it. What I've come up with is to be involved as far as checking grades online often and discussing them with the girls, but trying to divest myself from the angst of the battle.
We expect straight A's, but sometimes after all you can do, it doesn't happen. So at the end of the term, I have to accept the offering, whatever it was. Along the way, though, it's a different story. I haven't figured out quite what to do about a bad grade. I took Golda's phone away this term when a bad test score dropped her geometry grade way below acceptable. The next day, my friend Michelle wanted to give Golda a ride home from a concert, but we couldn't reach her. I had to drive down and get her. Ironic, huh? We gave the phone back right away, and the grade went up anyway. For some kids, a parent's disapproval is enough of a punishment.
Here's what I've learned so far in junior high, to go along with the Tiger Cub's Harvard study tips:
1. Stay on top of grades. I check the computer before I pick up the girls after school so that we can talk about missing assignments, etc. in the car on the way home. (Another reason I love not carpooling!)
2. If there is a discrepancy or a problem with a grade or assignment, the teacher would rather deal with the student than the parent. I have learned not to email the teacher, but to have Golda or Ruby do it. It's less confrontational.
3. I have the girls email their teacher through my email account so I can see the exchange. I have talked to them about always staying positive and opening with, "Thank you for..," ending with "I love your class..." and including things like, "It's probably my fault..." They have gotten good responses from their teachers by being polite.
4. There was in "incident" at school with a teacher and I blazed down to the counselor's office immediately, tearfully demanding a class change. (Blame it on hormones.) Later, Golda worked it all out with the teacher and I looked like an irrational, crazy person. You have to know when you're backing up your kid and when you're making a fool of yourself. In jr. high, kids have to learn to navigate without you, and they will. But don't let them blame the teacher. Life is not fair, some teachers are bad, some things don't make sense. That will never change, so learn to deal with it now so you don't spend your life placing blame on someone else when things don't go your way.
5. Always do all the extra credit you can, whether you think you need it or not.
6. It never hurts to ask for credit, as long as you're polite. Golda was getting a B in science the last day of the term because she was absent for three worksheets and didn't follow up. She emailed the teacher and said she loved his class and wanted to do everything she could to get an A. He said she could drop off the worksheets on teacher prep day as teachers were doing grades and maybe it would help. I drove her to the school, she taped the worksheets to the teacher's door and her grade went to 99%. Good example of a teacher basically saying, "What the heck. Give her the credit." It made a huge difference for her permanent GPA.
Those are my ideas. They might be wrong, and I can always use more ideas. How do YOU help your jr. high/high school kids develop good study habits and get good grades? What do we need to be prepared for in high school? My mom, the former sophomore Honors English teacher, says it gets a lot harder once you hit high school.
We expect straight A's, but sometimes after all you can do, it doesn't happen. So at the end of the term, I have to accept the offering, whatever it was. Along the way, though, it's a different story. I haven't figured out quite what to do about a bad grade. I took Golda's phone away this term when a bad test score dropped her geometry grade way below acceptable. The next day, my friend Michelle wanted to give Golda a ride home from a concert, but we couldn't reach her. I had to drive down and get her. Ironic, huh? We gave the phone back right away, and the grade went up anyway. For some kids, a parent's disapproval is enough of a punishment.
Here's what I've learned so far in junior high, to go along with the Tiger Cub's Harvard study tips:
1. Stay on top of grades. I check the computer before I pick up the girls after school so that we can talk about missing assignments, etc. in the car on the way home. (Another reason I love not carpooling!)
2. If there is a discrepancy or a problem with a grade or assignment, the teacher would rather deal with the student than the parent. I have learned not to email the teacher, but to have Golda or Ruby do it. It's less confrontational.
3. I have the girls email their teacher through my email account so I can see the exchange. I have talked to them about always staying positive and opening with, "Thank you for..," ending with "I love your class..." and including things like, "It's probably my fault..." They have gotten good responses from their teachers by being polite.
4. There was in "incident" at school with a teacher and I blazed down to the counselor's office immediately, tearfully demanding a class change. (Blame it on hormones.) Later, Golda worked it all out with the teacher and I looked like an irrational, crazy person. You have to know when you're backing up your kid and when you're making a fool of yourself. In jr. high, kids have to learn to navigate without you, and they will. But don't let them blame the teacher. Life is not fair, some teachers are bad, some things don't make sense. That will never change, so learn to deal with it now so you don't spend your life placing blame on someone else when things don't go your way.
5. Always do all the extra credit you can, whether you think you need it or not.
6. It never hurts to ask for credit, as long as you're polite. Golda was getting a B in science the last day of the term because she was absent for three worksheets and didn't follow up. She emailed the teacher and said she loved his class and wanted to do everything she could to get an A. He said she could drop off the worksheets on teacher prep day as teachers were doing grades and maybe it would help. I drove her to the school, she taped the worksheets to the teacher's door and her grade went to 99%. Good example of a teacher basically saying, "What the heck. Give her the credit." It made a huge difference for her permanent GPA.
Those are my ideas. They might be wrong, and I can always use more ideas. How do YOU help your jr. high/high school kids develop good study habits and get good grades? What do we need to be prepared for in high school? My mom, the former sophomore Honors English teacher, says it gets a lot harder once you hit high school.
6 comments:
You are a great mom!
Have fun at the party today. Sorry we will miss it, but I only have 2 days left and we are finishing up last minute things. Tell everyone hello!
You know I am still figuring this out so I adore you list. Going to go have Brittany read it right now. Thanks!
Good advice. I'll need this in a few years. Thank you for hosting the New Year's luncheon today. You are amazing to host it with only three weeks to go. It was really nice of you and really fun to see other moms and talk.
It gets harder? I don't want to hear that. :) :) We survived another term. I'm hoping "we", meaning Lex, are learning more and more of these life lessons each term so that by the time that permanent 9th grade GPA comes around, we'll be a bit more prepared.
I loved this. All great advice especially in having the kids deal with their own teachers. I never learned to do that and it was a big handicap in college. Also when c gets a bad mid-term, I sometimes hear, "this class is too hard" but then we look at late assignments.. missed extra credt and we find that the class isn't too hard after all and we can improve.
I like your suggestion that students deal with the teachers themselves. We also had an experience with a teacher offering for my daughter to come in on the end-of-term day to complete a missing assignment. She didn't care to, but I gently nudged and she did go. I've seen how it made a huge difference in that teacher's opinion of her.
I'm a terrible one on this subject, since I clearly don't have the answers. I tried the approach of "letting the consequences be the teacher." When Kyle was sporting an F in 8th grade, of course I did everything to encourage him to make it up, weeks before the term ended. But when he was still poised for an F, I decided to step back and let him fall. It was, after all, before his GPA was permanent. I hoped the school's consequence for a failing grade would steer him of making that decision again. You know what? There wasn't one! The school didn't care one bit that he had failed as an 8th grader. No loss of school privileges, no need for a make-up class, nothing. Whatever consequence had to be of my making, thus perpetuating the poor parent/child relationship. Grr.
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