Don’t wait to get help. This is one of the biggest mistakes students and parents make. With hectic schedules, time quickly flies by and soon it can be too late to remedy problems with assignments and grades. The moment you see a problem, move forward toward resolving the problem. If needed (and it very likely will be), bypass your student and send an email (or better yet, call) the teacher.
Although convenient, email isn’t always the best means of communicating with teachers. Sometimes, you may want/need to call them. The issue, of course, is catching them. The best time to call a teacher is anytime they are NOT teaching a class. Your best chances are: immediately after school (and I mean the second the bell rings), during one of their off periods (the school secretary can tell when that is), or 5-10 minutes before school begins (not usually a good time so only use this if the others haven’t worked). If you call during the teacher’s off period, you will likely need to tell the secretary that you’re calling during an off period, otherwise, you’ll end up being sent to voicemail.
School faculty and staff are often overworked and in charge of too many students. Be sure that YOU are keeping a close eye on YOUR student’s progress in school. Check the parent portal regularly, contact teachers with questions/concerns, talk to your student about school.
Most middle school and early high school students either cannot or are not taking advantage of their textbooks as a helpful resource. This does them a great disservice and is particularly common with science textbooks. Talk to your student about reading for comprehension rather than reading to get the reading finished. You may even want to read through part of a chapter together, discussing the material as you go. Also, be sure you spend time reviewing the diagrams and pictures with them so they begin to understand that those are useful as well.
If your student has D’s or F’s in any classes, don’t let anyone tell you that your student is in _____ grade now and you need to let him/her handle matters on his/her own. Clearly, your student is not currently capable of handling matters on his/her own, thus, the poor grades. Many students who are “old enough” to handle things themselves are, in fact, NOT old enough. Age is a number, maturity is something altogether different. Just because your child is 14 years old does not mean he/she has the maturity to handle the responsibilities of school without your consistent help and guidance.
Absences from school, even just one day, cause enormous problems for students and teachers. A single absence can be the impetus for weeks of academic struggles. For some reason, parents don’t seem to appreciate the negative impact absences have. Why do I say that, because of the volume of student absences I see and the reasons for many of these absences.
Don’t get me wrong, a child’s health is the number one priority and a student should never be forced to go to school in legitimately too ill to attend. However, if I had to guess, I suspect that over 50% of student absences are “unnecessary”.
If you’re not sure what constitutes a necessary absence, talk to your physician.
The free ACT offered by the state of CO for all juniors does not include the essay portion. This is a problem because some schools require the essay section and you CANNOT use the essay section from one test with the scores of another test. In other words, your ACT scores from the free CO provided spring test are worthless for any school that requires the essay portion of the test.
The free spring ACT is still a great chance for students to practice and should be taken seriously.
It pains me to say it (and even more so to see it day in and day out) but the industry in which I work (private tutoring) is pretty awful. I can say with 100% honesty that I have heard dozens of stories from students and parents about Sylvan (probably the industry leader in terms of money) and only ONE has been positive. One! I’ve also had conversations with several teachers who have worked for some of the big name companies and NOT ONE had good things to say about their experience, the approach, the quality, nothing.
So, avoid the big names? Yes, I think so. How about the opposite: individuals simply doing a little tutoring on the side? This can be a great resource as some of them are wonderful (and generally less expensive). The issue? Many of them are NOT wonderful and it can be very difficult to sort the good ones from the bad ones. Also, there is the issue of safety as private individuals mean no background checks. That’s a big concern for me.
My advice? Well, of course my advice is to work with Peak since no one holds their teachers/expectations to the high level the I do. But, if Peak isn’t a good fit for you (location, cost) I would suggest looking into the smaller local companies.
In a lot of ways, I feel the ACT and SAT are very similar tests. One important difference I always highlight to students/parents as that vocabulary is much more important for the SAT than for the ACT. In fact, the SAT has actual vocabulary questions on the test; the ACT does not. So, in prepping for the SAT be sure to start with studying common SAT vocabulary 10-15 minutes daily.
If you’re student tells you that he/she is prepared for the big test tomorrow, spend some time going over the material with them so they can SHOW you they know it. You can simply ask them to define some of the bold faced vocabulary from the textbook. If they can’t provide a reasonable definition for most of the vocabulary you ask them, you know they’re not fully prepared. Then, provide some guidance as to what they need to do to better prepare.
