As an experiment, I encouraged
him to focus on the material instead of
how long he studied it. That changed
everything. Sometimes he now studies
for several hours before he’s ready for
a test. Other times 30 minutes or less
is sufficient. He has learned to focus on
the material, not the clock.
Teach Them To Use the
Internet - But Wisely
— by Tanni Haas, Ph.D.
How To Help Your Kids Succeed
In Middle & High School
A
s a professional educator
for more than 20 years and
the parent of a 15-year-old,
I’ve learned a lot about what it takes
for kids to succeed in middle and high
school, and what parents can do to sup-
port them. Here are some of the most
important lessons:
Teach Them To Plan
Ahead — and Backwards
On the first day of middle school,
kids often get an “agenda book” (or cal-
endar) to write down all of their assign-
ments with deadlines. This is a great way
to teach them the importance of planning
ahead so they don’t hand in their assign-
ments late. But an important thing
kids have a hard time understanding
is that the agenda book isn’t just for
planning ahead; it’s also for plan-
ning backwards, in the sense of cre-
ating a time line.
Teach your kids to take each as-
signment deadline and work back-
wards, so they can see what they
need to do each day to turn in their
assignments on time. Once my son
understood this idea of planning
backwards, he became much better
at managing his time and stopped
spending all-nighters writing essays
that were due the very next day.
18 WNY Family September 2019
Teach Them To Study For
Mastery - Not Time
An agenda book is great for teach-
ing kids what and when to study. It
doesn’t help much in teaching them
how to study. You can teach them that
by making them understand the need to
focus on learning the material and not on
the amount of time they spend studying.
When my son was in his first year of
middle school, he used to give himself
a certain amount of time each evening
for homework. That was fine, but every
so often he didn’t do as well on a test as
he’d expected.
No matter where you look, you see
warnings about the dangers of letting
your kids surf the Internet when they’re
studying. These warnings aren’t without
merit. If your kids are constantly check-
ing social media or playing games, they
are distracted, and that’ll negatively
affect how well they absorb the mate-
rial. However, there are ways of using
the Internet that can actually boost your
kids’ learning.
For example, my son recently
completed a fairly difficult high school
course in Physics. He’s a solid student
who takes good notes and studies hard,
but he got much better at solving Phys-
ics problems when he started watching
YouTube videos. He found a lot of vid-
eos where teachers from schools across
the country demonstrated how to solve
problems in different ways.
Teach Them Real-World
Applications of Learning
An excellent way to support your
kids’ learning is to teach them the re-
al-world applications of what they’re
studying in school — it makes the
material stick so much better than any
amount of homework.
To help my son better un-
derstand math concepts, I often
ask him to help me with practical
things that require an understand-
ing of math, like adapting dinner
recipes for more people than origi-
nally planned or taking measure-
ments for new window treatments
in our home.
Tanni Haas, Ph.D. is a Professor
in the Department of Communica-
tion Arts, Sciences, and Disorders
at the City University of New York
– Brooklyn College.