Recently I finished Think Like a Freak which tries to get people to think differently. It briefly discusses education and says that if we are ever going to narrow the achievement gap and/or improve individual student performance we cannot do it all in school. So one think I do a lot of is schedule individual parent-student-teacher conferences (15 out of 60 standard kids had one last year) where, in part, I go over the tips in this video. Usually kids who are not achieving their realistic success level are ones not following the guidelines in the video.
What I have above is nothing earth shattering, but I think it helps to remind parents, nicely, that even if they are tired in the evening, so are there kids and the parents' job (yes I am bolder as I get older) is to keep their kids on their homework. So this year I will be sending this video out early and then again to the students whom (no matter the grade) I believe are not up to their ability level. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
3 comments:
Great idea. I will probably do the same and send it out to parents. Cant fix a problem if you cant address it at the roots. I have come to the conclusion that most parents need to be informed. No different than a doctor telling a patient how to improve their health.
Agreed.
I love it! I've had parents say straight to my face in conferences, "I'd like to help my child, but I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm too busy." It makes me so upset, because I see so many good, smart students slipping through the cracks of the education system.
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