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May 2010
Seniors: Graduation NEVER ends; Parents shocked
May 25, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: High School
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Dear Dr. Fournier: Our son
the senior, has been dancing around the living
room for the last three weeks. Parties, lunches,
celebrations and such have started leading up to
the prom and graduation day.
He thinks this is his greatest hurdle and that life will be a piece of cake from now on. He also fancies himself an adult as he will turn 18 two weeks after graduation. His mother and I keep telling him that because he made good grades and a high ACT score that got him in a highly respectable college does not mean he can rest on those laurels. What advice would you give him and others graduating in a few weeks from high school? Marvin G., Atlanta, GA |
Dear Marvin: Graduation.
It’s a magic word this time of year, particularly for seniors and their parents. The magic comes from the expectation of proms, parties, celebrations, and caps and gowns. You’re seeing this already in your son. He is immersed in senioritis, the period of time when students want to fall back on their achievements and to merit new privileges.
Graduation is also a time of mixed feelings, a time when students look back and ask, “Is it over? Is this all there is? How did it go by so fast?”
The Assessment: The shock may be even greater for parents. We remember not just the last four years of school but the day we brought the baby home from the hospital, the horrible nights of colic, the birthdays, the scraped knees, the first date and so much more. Each set of experiences changed us, giving us depth, happiness, and renewed energy watching our children grow and develop physically, intellectually and emotionally.
And along the way, we also experienced sadness.
Rather than being a time of magic, high school graduation is really an artificial event. The graduations that really count – those events that change us and provide new beginnings – are the graduations of life. Some of these turning points are predictable such as, getting your first job, getting married and having children, yet many are not.
What your son is about to begin learning, Marvin, is that we all have a series of graduations in our lives, a time of closing out the past and going on to new challenges. Graduations in life have little to do with school and everything to do with personal growth and learning.
What To Do: For high school and especially for college graduation, give your child the gift of insight.
Think back to your own life and pinpoint your personal graduations – the times when your dreams became nightmares and when your fears brought success.
Find a way to capture these graduations of life, whether in writing, through illustrations, on audio recordings, or in a Graduation scrapbook with photos, clippings and mementos. You may even set up a new scrapbook or journal for your child to record the next series of events that will lead to the next graduation of life.
Getting a degree may lead to a party – what you did to get the degree says whether you truly expect graduation or not.
By sharing your personal history, your child can learn that hindsight gives us direction, vision gives us a road map, and that living through gains and pains gives us the learning that prepares us to go forward. Too many children give up on themselves because they have not measured up to school’s definition of success.
Help your child understand that graduation is not just an end – it’s much more a beginning with new opportunities for success.
The true yardstick is not an artificial graduation tied to a school calendar and a piece of framed paper, but real-life turning points that push us in new directions.
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Study skills classes simply outdated way of learning
May 18, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: All year long, my son’s teacher has written notes saying my child could do better, needs to prepare more for tests and needs to show more effort. His school and other places are offering a study skills course in the summer. Do you think this can help my child do better in school? Tonya A., Bartlesville, OK |
Dear Tonya: No.
Stated bluntly, I believe the concept of study skills is as obsolete as the dinosaur. It’s a term I buried years ago and I refuse to consider today.
The Assessment: The notion of study skills has its roots two or more generations ago when people went to school to prepare for a working world that required sameness of thinking: Many people carrying out the same job description with the same level of productivity.
This is not today’s working work.
Today’s children must prepare for a working world in which uniqueness of thinking will be rewarded. The focus will not be, “Can you do the same task eight hours a day?” Instead it will be, “Can you find a better way to do it?”
Previous generations focused on studying what their teacher (or supervisor or manager) gave them. But now our children must learn what teachers put on the table by redeveloping it with personal thought and creativity. This allows our children to take ownership of knowledge. Anything less will mold our children into the very workforce dinosaurs that corporations can no longer use. You can see this is the case in the people these corporations have pink-slipped in just the last year to get this message across.
If a course is called Study Skills, the very message is inappropriate today.
A child should no longer go to school to accomplish studying. Studying should be viewed as only one of the means for learning. Instead , our children must use their uniqueness in developing a complete learning process.
The term Study Skills and the concept behind it preaches uniformity of study habits:
- Sit at a desk.
- Have good light.
- Avoid distractions.
Unless you live on the moon, it’s unlikely that you can function in such a rigid, sterile way. Our children must develop strategies to confront changing circumstances. You cannot learn how to do this with a system that ignores change and diversity. Your child must develop his or her own ownership of information in a manner that new knowledge and innovation are the goals.
I once worked with a child who had a study skills course as a separate class in which there were tests on study skills. This child went to class to study how to study and then studied at home to be tested on whether he knew the process of studying. Ridiculous!
Telling children how to study is like telling them what size clothes they have to wear. Some kids will fit that size and those who don’t end up looking silly.
What To Do: Tonya, before deciding whether your son needs a course in study skills, consider these points:
- Your son needs to learn how to learn, not how to study.
- Your son must learn to develop strategies to confront new information and diverse situations. He can’t do this with a one-size-fits-all set of skills.
- In order to learn how to learn, your son must actually be learning. A sense of purpose is essential for children to enter into self-exploration with the end goal of developing their own knowledge.
This summer, help your son explore his unique interests. During vacation, he may find some of the best processes for learning, whether it’s keeping up with his favorite baseball team or figuring out how to build a tree house.
At the beginning of the school year, help your son set up a notebook that will contain a diary of learning strategies. In this notebook, your son should keep track of the strategies that worked best and those that didn’t work. Take time once a week to review this with your son and help him learn how to set new strategies that will help him adapt to changing tasks and complex situations at school and in all other environments. This is what your child needs to learn for the long-term.
Here’s an example of a strategy for learning spelling words I use with the children I counsel. Writing spelling words three times as one child’s teacher required was not enough for her to learn the words. I had her record the spelling words on a digital recorder and play them back so that she could take her own practice test.
If you have an iPod or other brand of MP3 player, your son can record his spelling words in a digital audio format for playback. Or, if you have an old-school tape recorder, this will work. Just have him record them and play them back.
Help your child use his imagination and creativity to learn and to become someone capable of facing change by changing himself. Your child can’t get this from a static set of study skills.
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Students: Don’t ruin college chances by picking wrong classes
May 11, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: High School
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Dear Dr. Fournier: Our son is in the eighth grade and the school year will be over in a few weeks. Today, he brought home a list of courses to choose from for his ninth grade year. He must register for the courses now so my wife and I have been looking over the options and discussing with him what he should take. He has picked what I think are too many tough courses and it seems like too much to me. I don’t want to dampen his spirit because he’s excited about starting high school and says he can do it. Should I just let him decide? David E., Blacksburg, VA |
Dear David: When children enter high school, they reach an educational turning point. For the first time, schools ask them to become collaborators in determining their future.
As collaborators, they must understand the privilege of selection and with that privilege goes the responsibility of thoughtful reasoning before decisions are made.
The Assessment: Selecting courses for high school is like charting a route on a map to arrive at a certain destination. In charting both road maps and academic maps, one concern is paramount: You must know where you are headed to avoid wasteful detours.
Setting goals to reach your destination is especially important for students entering high school. Unless they have a plan for the future, they cannot become true collaborators. Instead, they will continue to do as they are told, do as they see others do, or do as they please based on the amount of free time they want now or in their senior year of high school.
In order to draw a complete academic map, students must know why each course is a good choice for their destiny and how these courses need to be timed to reach their goals.
What To Do: David, you should help your son find his own academic path. This does not mean that as an eighth-grader, he must decide today what he plans to do with the rest of his life but he should have some idea of his destination. Once he starts on his path, he can always take different twists and turns, but he needs to stay turned toward his goal.
Here are some guidelines to use for helping him prepare realistic goals:
Make a plan: Have your son write his planned destination after high school. This could be college, vocational education or work. For example: “I will major in psychology in college,” or “I will go to vocational school to learn how to be an airplane mechanic.” Let your child know that changes to this plan are always okay. He may want to start with a general field of interest such as, “I like to work with computers,” and fine-tune his choice as he learns more about possible careers.
Research the destination: Have your child research his planned destination. If he plans to go to college, have him visit the library and check grade point averages and high school course requirements of at least three colleges that are viable choices for him. If a particular college is the destination, have him write for a catalog and general information on the college or go on its website and view and/or download this information. Or if he plans to go directly to work, have him call three places that hire high school graduates and ask for the company’s employment requirements. With this information, your child now has the parameters for making his decision because he has defined the possible destination.
Match high school courses to destination: Have your child review all course offerings at his high school. He should mark the courses required by his state for graduation and spread these out over his four years of high school.
Select electives carefully: Have your child mark additional courses he wants to take. These electives should be strategically selected and based on reasoned thinking. Your child may want to explore a subject he has not taken before but might enjoy. Some elective courses may support the child’s destination; others may not.
Avoid overload: Have your child list how he will distribute these courses during the four years of high school in a way that minimizes overload. Have him write the grade he must get in each course for each subject in order to end up with a grade point average that will open doors later in college, vocational school or in a job. Your child will then be able to weigh how much work he will need to put in each year of high school to meet or exceed grade goals.
Now your child is ready to collaborate with his teachers and guidance counselors to determine what he needs for the future. Any child that has not completed his own rigorous inquiry about state graduation requirements, elective courses and where he is headed in life will not develop mind wealth. This is also a child not ready to speak with a counselor about subject planning for his high school career.
Our nation has too many students that go to teachers, advisors or counselors for all the decision-making on classes. If they do this for four years of high school, it should be no surprise to parents they will do this in college and end up with a degree that leads to a dead-end street.
The first and most important step for your child to learn now is to take ownership of the present with a self-developed compass as to where he is going.
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Teacher works as long as child works like everyone else
May 04, 2010 12:00 PM Filed in: All Levels
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Dear Dr. Fournier: When I
first went to my child’s school, I was amazed.
“We care about your child’s self-esteem. We know
each child is different and the teachers work
with your child based on that concept,” the
school told me.
What they didn’t say is that this is the case as long as my daughter works like everyone else! So ultimately, what I got was a big sales pitch and yes, I fell for it. But my daughter is bright in many ways that school totally disregards. She is caring, meticulous and wants to learn. She’s also very sensitive and cries when she thinks she can’t do the work. When I pick her up from school, she’s often upset by extra work she has to do at home because she didn’t finish it in school. This is on top of her homework. She feels so defeated that she says she’s not as smart as the other kids and I’m tired of having her destroyed because she must live up to the expectation of her teachers. What can I do? Mary M., Raleigh, NC |
Dear Mary: With a reform education movement in this country now steering heavily toward more choices in education, perhaps we need to stop and define both terms – more and choice.
The Assessment: In the past, only parents with extra money, and perhaps extra sacrifice, could afford the choice of a private school. Since they were required to pay for their child’s education, many parents went in search of more for their dollar.
Schools responded to the demand for more by teaching more and teaching it sooner. As a result, children were taught in kindergarten what their parents learned in first grade and the accelerated curriculum mentality was off to a fast start.
Now we are beginning to see that this overdose of education has brought only much pain. The children are the ones who pay the price with depression, feelings of failure and reduced self-esteem and worse yet, those able to do all the additional work confuse intelligence with achievement as measured by rote tests. They also have a change in their feelings such as calling themselves ‘gifted,’ leading to feelings of superiority due to their creativity rather than their thought and action that results in true creativity, not just cute ideas or projects.
What we need from reform is not more teaching but more learning and that our choice is not merely between public and private schools, but between schools that focus on teaching and those that focus on learning.
What To Do: When evaluating a school, meet with the administration first and then meet separately with your daughter’s potential teacher, or teachers.
Keep in mind this general checklist:
The Curriculum: Ask to see a curriculum guide. Select a portion and ask how quickly the material will be covered and what your child will be expected to know. A teaching-intensive curriculum requires students to memorize enormous amounts of information for short-term recall: “We discuss the chapter in class, the children answer the questions from the book and we have a test every two weeks.”
Learning-Intensive Curriculum: A learning-intensive curriculum encourages the students to process information with thinking, learning and creativity: “Each child must read the chapter and be able to explain the impact of an event in history or bring to class the questions of the chapter that the author’s did not answer.”
Homework: Ask to see a typical week’s homework assignments and judge what will be expected from your child both in how they will perceive learning (memory/thinking) and the hours of their childhood it will take to comply.
Teaching-intensive Homework: This requires a student to do certain tasks, usually for a grade and occasionally within a set time limit. This may include copying definitions or answering questions from the textbook.
Learning-intensive Homework: This encourages creative thought, which may not be graded. It may include setting aside time at the end of the school day for each child to assess what is left to be learned.
Tests: Ask to see samples of tests currently used by the teacher. Are the tests formulated by the teacher or from the textbook company? Are the tests graded by machines or by teachers? Will tests be returned to students to give back information in a predetermined format? A teacher-intensive test relies on multiple choice or true-false answers that require students to give back information in a predetermined format. A learning-intensive test requires the student to express thoughts and diverse ideas in reference to unexpected prompts.
One of the best tools for evaluating a school is a very simple one: Stand outside the school for a few days and watch the children leave. Look at their faces. Listen to them talk. Then ask yourself, “Is this what I want my child to be like?”
Your answer will tell you if that is the right school for your child.
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