The Pandemic Has Changed Parenting

The Pandemic has Changed Parenting

Most of us, in Pre-COVID times, would drop off our kids at school in a rush to get back to the rat race. Then we would spend the next 7 hours at work trusting, hoping, and possibly worrying that our kids were getting what they need to be successful at school. 

In our imagination, the time spent sitting at a desk and listening to a trained professional explain history, mathematics, literature, and science would somehow make them graduate ready to face this increasing complicated and chaotic world.  

 As parents, exhausted and distracted by our phones, would pick our kids up from school, we would fight make the few hours before bed FUN, even memorable. However, most nights may have been spent arguing, deal making, and pleading to get homework done. 

For many families, the idea of school had become these wacky “Common Core” worksheets and an underlying frustration. School was a disruption of the few precious moments of bonding left in the day.

Our society was too busy to question how an underpaid, but well intentioned, teachers could possibly ensure 30+ kids will stay on track to go to college, fulfill their potential and make a career for themselves.  These unspoken expectations have caused a rising anxiety on the schools side as well.  

Then came a global pandemic that turned our lives upside down. For those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs, school and work worlds collided.  It has been strange reset to the whole field of education.  Parents can look over their kid's shoulder and see their classroom. Working in a school, I can say this has freaked teachers out in the beginning. Having 30 parents deciding to do a classroom observation on the same day was the stuff of educator nightmares. 

Now secret is out. The system we use to educate children in America is outdated. While the people who choose to be teachers come in all personality types and ability levels, very few are given the proper training to handle a classroom on their first day. None of them are prepared to tap into the high levels of discussion necessary for students to master the Common Core. There just isn't a text book for this anymore. It has become obvious now to parents when their kids are struggling, and we may blame the zoom format and simply wait out the storm. I think the problem is much deeper. 

Make it stand out

If you do a quick Google search on how learning best occurs, you will notice a fact which has been proven over and over again.  Children require undivided attention to learn a new concept. They need someone to listen and answer their questions. They need someone who can truly see their methods of understanding the world to help guide them to success. Who is in the best position to provide this?  Classroom teachers? Tutors? Educational Specialists? Not so much…

Parents, guardians, even siblings have a much better insight into child's learning. Who are they are most comfortable making mistakes in front of… its YOU.    

The Concept of Homework is Broken

A parent’s role in 20th century schools has become confined to the absurd cultural concept of “Homework.” The actual purpose of this work is purely practice. Ask any teacher, most of the homework worksheets and learning software activities you wrestle with each night are fairly meaningless to your child’s grade or progress in mastering the standards. A good teacher is like a Doctor and much prefers their own carefully constructed exam or their own observational notes of a student’s performance in class, when making this diagnosis.

Creating Your Remote Learning Space

 In this past year, parents have used every trick in the book to give their kids a space to stay focused while on Zooms with their teacher, but there has yet to be any formal guidance. If you are lucky your school will chip in for a nice set of headphones to go with the Chromebook and they will wish you luck!

Now while the kitchen table is a flat surface and makes it easier to keep track, these types of common areas are the worst place for learning, as they are often busy and full of distractions. It’s important to define a space with your child that is dedicated to learning. 

At my school, we send home school supplies typically used by teachers and encourage parents to build a learning environment. While you can use their bedrooms, it is best that the space is not used for other activities, and far away from distractions. 

Posters with learning targets, calendars, phonics cards, multiplication tables, are all simple ways to create the mental space for your student to focus. When something is on the wall a student may read it hundreds of times per day, as they take breaks from the screen. 

If you want to place to start, I highly recommend googling the closest teacher store, (LakeShore Learning is my favorite) or look online for places teachers go to set up their rooms. 

 The Agenda 

  One of the most important parts of a good home learning environment is a daily agenda board (either magnetic or dry erase) that can be used to structure the day. 

We discuss this in further detail in other posts, but dividing the day into smaller digestible chucks allows your child to manage their energy and focus. You will want to work with your teacher to better understand their plans, but be sure to add “brain breaks” and exercise times in between Zooms. 

Its best if this agenda is a white board or can somehow be renewed each day. I recommend leaving an open slot on the agenda in the afternoon for your child to earn a choice activity. 

One of the most powerful ways to use this agenda is as a place of reflection. You could give happy faces or points for those activities that went well and find a way to signal when you need a change in behavior in others.

The Calendar

The Calendar is something in every classroom that helps students better understand the passage of time and if used correctly can help them to chart their progress. For little ones, it is critical to use a calendar and discuss the day of the week, the month and any upcoming holidays. There are so many great conversations that come spontaneously out of a discussion on what day it is. For those of you Tiger Moms and Dads, you can do a quick google to find an important event in history on each date.  

When it comes to charting progress, its simple. At the end of each day, maybe after reflecting on your agenda, you turn to the calendar and write a few words or a symbol you have agreed on to sum up the “highlight.” For example, you could write “Finished Charlotte’s Web” or “got my first fraction problem.” You will likely miss many days, but the ones you catch and write something will be magical by the end of the year. I promise!

The Learning Target Board

If you haven’t already, please check out our student friendly Printable Learning Targets for your grade level. These are taken from the Common Core Standards and provides a list of skills your child must master in each grade. Before the pandemic, the good teachers would set the goal for the day or week based on these standards and post it on the wall. 

“By the end of the week I will be able to ….”

Every home is different, but if your learning environment allows for some extra color (maybe in a garage, closet or guest room), I would go all out and get bulletin board materials like fadeless butcher paper and borders. They are very cheap but can quickly transform the emotional experience of a space. 

A dark garage becomes a classroom when you staple a large sheet of bright green paper with blue borders. Even better they sell these products in themes. Ask your child to pick out their favorites. I guarantee that if you hand the learning target on a wall that is covered with dolphins and sea creatures, you will have captivated their interest.

Now is the time you need to use your brain. You may want to ask the teacher which the learning target they will be covering in the next few weeks to stay on the same page. Look at the skill and try to model out how you would answer the question on a chart paper or series of pages that your child can refer back to. In a pinch, you can google the skill and you will find downloadable images that look like worksheets that you can use. I think its best, however, for you to put yourself out there and show them YOUR way of doing it. 

Now as the class starts working on this skill, your child will be the first to raise their hand. While it may take them time to fully master it, you will have set their efforts squarely on this target. I encourage you to make a big deal and use stickers or colors to celebrate mastery of a learning target. You will find your student will ask more questions and be more motivated to listen in class. 

Graph paper and Wide-Ruled Notebooks

The learning environment at home is completed with a few extra tools that are often over looked. In Remote Learning, a huge part of learning was disrupted by the keyboards and screens. No matter how good the teacher or learning software program, nothing can substitute for a piece of scratch paper. 

 Every brain on this planet has a slightly different way of learning and processing new information. We each have a different way of taking notes to answer a word problem or outlining an essay. The Parent Partnership has many different ways to maximize the use of a Graph Paper notebook to support learning in Math, and a lined notebook for reading and writing. (line width is based on age)  These notebooks allow your child to show their thinking on paper, and I highly encourage you to read through it regularly to see if you can spot any confusion. If can message your teacher on what you see, this can greatly help the school be more efficient in serving your student in class. Even better, you can try to guide and review these skills yourself on the next page. The world is yours on a blank notebook!!

Tips for Distance Learning- You got this!

As a principal of an elementary school during March of 2020, there were a lot of thoughts running through my head. 

As we moved into April, and we realized that sending packets home and zooming a few hours was not enough. The kids were not engaged and not learning. This was going to take a shift in perspective. 

Over the summer we started a weekly training course for parents. Parents learned about the need for structure and routines at home, and to create a dedicated learning environment for their student at home with school supplies. 

We wanted to treat them like part of the faculty at the school, and give them the tools we give our new teachers. Here are some of the top tips we shared in these sessions:

It’s Not About Being Finished

The biggest misconception with education is that teachers want perfect work. As a parent, you never want to give answers or force your student to complete something they don’t understand. 

Each assignment is an opportunity for a wonderful discussion to help you understand how your student thinks and where they need help. Rushing or punishing students for not getting things done can create negative feelings about school for both of you. 

Take your time, ask a lot of questions and enjoy listening to your student work through problems and build mastery of the skills themselves. If you both are stuck on a problem, teachers love it if you send a message to let them know.

The Learning Key

Our website offers you a list of Learning Targets your child will be responsible for at his or her grade level. It is important you look this over and become comfortable with what is expected. 

As the year progresses you will see the teacher using these same terms when they update you on report cards and assignments.  Being able to listen to your student describe the weekly Learning Target and identify any confusion, will help you target your help and build their confidence in overcoming mistakes.

 “I do”, “We do”, “You do”

If your student is having trouble on a Learning Target, it’s best to start with modeling how to do it correctly. First you should demonstrate the skill for the student slowly and accurately, while thinking aloud, the student will have a chance to imitate this success. (I do)

Next, you can try a problem together and ask your student questions to move you step by step through the problem. You may find that this may take several attempts to practice, but it is very important to listen carefully to your student. (We do)

Finally, once practiced, the student is ready to try some of the problems on their own. They may not get them all correct, but they will be confident enough to engage with the problem and try their best. (You do)

Must do and May do

Sometimes you may have siblings at different levels of success with school. In this case, it is important to create ways to make things fair, and not allow one student to become frustrated when the other finishes. 

Developing a list of “Must do” tasks and “May do” tasks, can help keep all members of your family busy during learning time. For example, both of your students “must do” the assignments given to them by their teacher, but if one of them finishes early, they may do a cartoon book or science experiment.

We at the Parent Partnership believe that this conversation will outlast this pandemic. The old model of teacher in front of the class education was already fading away as the flipped classroom and blended learning approaches were becoming mainstream. 

Higher Level Thinking at Home

In schools today, your child is spending much more time learning to think than learning any facts or information. To put this in perspective, a 4th grade student must be able to evaluate an author’s technique, describe a story’s underlying theme, and cite evidence to defend their opinion of a character’s decision. In more popular culture and media, these skills often get lumped together into the concept of “critical thinking” or “higher level thinking.”   

What is higher level thinking?

Most educators agree that the framework developed by Benjamin Bloom in 1956, commonly referred to Bloom’s Taxonomy, is the clearest method to describe these levels to talk about thinking and learning: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating.

As you can see in the chart below, thinking builds towards breaking down complexity and examining relationships between abstract concepts. This sounds much more like college than it does elementary school to those of us who are adults. However, the Common Core standards have now focused on ensuring elementary and high schools are teaching and assessing student’s abilities at the top three levels. This has led to the crazy looking homework you might have noticed lately.

From my experience as a principal and teacher, these higher level thinking skills are hard to teach equitably. Often, they are well developed in a small portion of students who actively participate in the class discussions and ask lots of questions. However, with 30 students and the insecurities of peer approval, most of the class will sit quietly and lay low. Now add the awkwardness of a zoom classroom.  These students will lose out on opportunities to work on these skills without good discussions somewhere in there lives. 

It is important to remember that learning and understanding at higher levels comes from depth.  Each time a child hears the story they pick up on a new aspect of a character, or another detail in a picture or setting. 

The good news is there is plenty you can do at home with little or no preparation to fulfill this need. 

Close Reading at Home

Education Departments have agreed that one of the best ways to address higher level thinking reading standards in the classroom is through a process called close reading.  This is where the students may read a shorter passage or paragraph several times to better understand each detail and decision the author has made. The familiarity of the text allows students to spend their brains energy on the deeper meanings.

Now think of your child’s favorite movies or that favorite bed time book you have read so many times you have lost count. While you can’t remember where you left your keys, you can probably recite lines from these on command. 

Whether a reward after homework or a story before bed, and these characters and plots have become a ritual part of your household.  This moment in the day provides a parent with a tremendous opportunity to use close reading strategies and higher level thinking questions that will all but ensure they are on a path to master the grade level standards. 

Your questions may start something like:

Do you feel like reading “Madeline or Corduroy?”      

Do you want to watch “Moana or Frozen?”

After watching the opening credits or looking at the book’s cover, you may ask a few REMEMBER questions to warm up.

I forgot, what was the name of Moana’s pig?

Do you remember why did Madeline need to go to the hospital?

As you move toward UNDERSTAND questions, you can have them describe the main plot points. Trying to get them to use their own words to describe the events and character feelings. 

Why did Elsa lock herself in her room as a child?

Why did Corduroy decide to leave the shelf?  

Depending on their grade level’s Learning Targets, you may decide to approach APPLY questions more in science and math. However a question like:

After seeing how Corduroy felt when the girl fixed his button, what might you do next time your sister needs help?

As we move into ANALYSIS, it is important your child has mastered the previous levels. This is where you can pull out a character or scene for a deeper dive. You may stop and reread a page in the book or rewind the movie.  

What do you think makes the girl decide to choose Corduroy in the store?

What does the green stone symbolize in Moana and what parts of the movie make you think this?

How was the movie different than the book? What parts were missing?

EVALUATION questions can be the most fun, but you have to keep everything tied back to evidence from the story or movie.  You will often be surprised at these answers!

What is the happiest ending in a story you have ever read?

What makes Frozen the best written movie you have ever seen? 

How did the author pull you into the story and characters?  

Who is your favorite villain character and why? What makes a good villain character?

Lastly, using your nightly journal, you can ask CREATING questions. In this context the most fun is to have them write their own ending to a story with a different goal for the audience’s emotions. 

https://youtu.be/ZN-I7SLGR3k

Once you begin to use these type of questions, you will find every conversation can get a little deeper. You can ask CREATING or APPLYING questions to solicit help in fixing a broken toy or rearranging their room.  You will find your own brain feeling tingles... its good exercise!! 

Look for more posts in the future targeting higher levels of thinking in science, math, and nonfiction.  

Making Sense of the Common Core

For those who are not aware, every public school must follow a set of standards for what and when certain skills are taught to our children. This means for example, schools must ensure every first grader knows how to add and subtract, and every 7th grader can solve for x. 

In 2014, the Common Core Standards were introduced as a complete overhaul to the American system of education. Previously, the states’ education departments had complete control over these standards, and each varied in emphasis and pacing. There was a big push in the 1990s and 2000s for states to create their own bubble tests to demonstrate student achievement. However, the system showed its flaws, as the incentives to provide easier the tests to produce higher test scores led states and schools to water down curriculums. 

As countries in Europe and Asia outpaced our students in every category, the science and technology economic sectors started moving out of the country and outsourcing projects. In response, the US Congress issued the initiative that all states should adopt the same set of standards, and that these would be redesigned to prepare students to be problem solvers and critical thinkers in an age of rapid technological advancement. 

Like most sweeping educational reforms, the execution of the Common Core has already stumbled. The task of implementation was bestowed by the National Governors Association who were lobbied heavily by private text book businesses. 

Before long a whole new market was born, as these companies capitalized on these new standards to force schools to buy whole new curriculum sets. Teachers had to scramble to buy the next bottle of snake oil to get their students prepared for the Common Core. 

With the Every Child Succeeds Act of 2015, the Federal Government attempted to withhold funding from No Child Left Behind if states were unable to adopt the new standards. However, some of the states have fought back and there are several states, like Texas and Alabama, who never ratified. The current position of our Federal Government is that they are guidelines and strongly encouraged. There has been a politicization of these standards that was unexpected.