Over the last 10 years of teaching middle school and after hundreds of parent conferences, I have learned a few tricks and tips that are effective in helping students succeed in middle school. Here are 5 strategies I find to be most effective in helping your child not only do well in school, but also strengthen your relationship with your child during some of the hardest years of life. I hope you find these tips useful!
1. Create structure, organization and routine at home. Your child will now have 4 or more teachers, and each one of them will have their own set of expectations and requirements. In addition to their personal philosophies of education and subject matter, your child will most likely have some sort of extra curricular activities, church functions, or family obligations. It is also likely that other family members have busy schedules as well. Having a Command Center that lists schedules of sporting practices and events, chores, and homework will help each family member stay connected and organized. This is also a great place to post papers that get sent home by the teacher and need to be signed by the parent. In addition, party invitations, homework or class announcements can be posted here as well.I encourage the parent to fill everything out for the first few weeks, while having your child with you making observations as to what you are doing and what kind of information you expect your child to provide before eventually handing over the responsibility to your child. The goal is to eventually have the student be able to update his activities and chores in order to inform everybody in the household.
2. Stay involved! I can’t even tell you how many times I have heard parents tell me that they thought that now that their child was in middle school, they felt they needed to back off and let her figure it out. This is a huge mistake. You have to keep in mind that up to this point, your 6th grader has had 1 teacher who was with her all day long. The class sizes were smaller and her teacher had plenty of time to get to know her and modify the daily schedule to better assist her. Now that your child is in middle school, your child will only spend approximately 2 hours of the school day with each core teacher; one hour with the Elective and Physical Ed. teacher. Each teacher will spend her day teaching to at least 120 students each day (if not more)! Because of this, many students easily fall between the cracks because nobody is monitoring the student like in elementary. It definitely takes teachers at the secondary level more time to get to know each student’s personality, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. So, I encourage you to stay connected. You don’t necessarily have to be that helicopter parent, in fact we prefer you not to be that kind of parent, but definitely utilize all the different communication tools the teachers are using nowadays. With technology you don’t need to be all up in your child’s business, yet still be able to stay in the loop on what is happening in the classrooms. Also make time to talk with them, but please keep in mind that your children at this age will start withholding and even selecting information to tell you about their day at school. Don’t overreact if you hear something that sounds alarming. Chances are they are not telling you everything. Definitely inquire more information if it is bothersome, but make sure to do just that: inquire! Please do not start accusing other people, especially teachers right away. One thing we say at CLMS is if parents promise to believe only half of what they hear happens at school, we, teachers promise to only believe half of what we hear happens at home. :)
3. Help your child communicate with adults! Many times we as parents want to just fight our kids’ battles. Trust me, there is no bigger "Mama Bear" than me! However, the best thing we can do for our children is to help them advocate for themselves. When they are stressed out, scared or simply frustrated from not understanding the homework, have them stop what they are doing and write out their thoughts. Have them tell you what they are confused with rather than just accepting the response: “I don’t get it.” Have them write down their feelings and articulate what exactly they are confused about. After, have them contact their teachers and let them communicate what they have written down with the teacher. If you know your child is extremely sensitive and shy, go ahead and give the teacher a heads up in an email or if you see her, letting her know that your child would like to speak with her. I promise you, after your child fights his first battle, he will feel so empowered, and it will become easier and easier to voice his concerns without your assistance.
4.There will be more work this year! Our education system is broken into two main groups: Elementary (K-5th grade) and Secondary (6-12th grade) Typically in elementary school students receive at least 2 hours of Language Arts instruction for reading and writing. Starting in the 6th grade here in Lake Elsinore, your child will have less than an hour per subject! That means they will be given less time to process information and complete work in the classroom, and they will need to adjust to switching classrooms. One of the biggest problems is that students shove their work in their backpacks in a panic to make it to their next class on time. They tell themselves that they will organize the backpack later. Well, “later” never comes around and the backpack becomes the black hole where everything goes missing. Help your student manage her time. Make it a routine when she comes home to organize the backpack first. In regards to the workload, they all will struggle their first semester of middle school! It is something new. You need to be patient and give it time for them to adjust. In elementary, students learned the fundamentals, but in secondary school they will learn in depth, beyond the surface information about these subjects. This requires critical thinking, problem solving, and more rigor. We really want to focus on helping our students learn study skills. It is not impressive or necessary for students to spend hours and hours at the dinner table doing homework. In fact, I, personally, prefer my students to stop when they are too confused to continue, write down what exactly they are confused about (with the help of the parent) and bring it to my attention right before class starts. I am not impressed with them spending hours figuring out the homework by surfing the Internet, or having mom and dad help them. Once they bring me their point of confusion statement, I can better assess where they got stuck and either they can spend a few minutes in the beginning of class finishing up their homework, schedule a time to meet with student to help her and give her an extension on the deadline. If they start to spend a ridiculous amount of time on homework that is causing problems in the household, please schedule an appointment to talk with the teacher. Many teachers, including myself can diagnose the problem and provide tips to help reduce the time spent on homework. What can you do at home before meeting with the teacher? Please document the amount of time your child is having on each assignment. Instead of giving some vague response to the teacher, such as “My child is up all night doing your homework.” It would be more effective to bring the documentation to the teacher, such as “My child spend 2 1/2 hours on the writing assignment you assigned last Wednesday. She was struggling with understanding a thesis statement.”
5. Be prepared to deal with the drama of the teen years if you haven’t already! These years are a hormonal rollercoaster! I encourage parents to educate themselves, read some literature on the subject to help them cope with the stress of trying to fit in and puberty. Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman is a great book for parents of girls. For both boys and girls, a really good book to read is 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey. I have yet to read any books for just boys. If you happen to come across any, please fill me in! I am always looking for new information to help my students and parents!
All in all, the best advice I can give parents of middle school students is to simply communicate with your kids! Be interested or at least fake it! :) I find it hard to believe that not all people share my passion and love about ancient history, but believe it or not, there are a few strange people out there who find history boring! Can you believe it!!??? LOL
If you need any help this year with anything at all, please contact me! It is my job to better serve my students and their families!
Best of luck to you all this coming school year!
