Category Archives: Parent/School Communication

First Steps to Help a Struggling Student

Parent/School Communication, Struggling Students,

 My Child is Struggling: The First Steps

 

The moment you know that your child is struggling in school your heart sinks and your mind begins to race with questions.  Is he just not trying hard enough?  Is this just a phase she will outgrow as she gets older?  What will the school do to help me?  How do I help my child?

While there are no right answers to most of these questions, here is a roadmap to direct you on starting the process of helping your child.

1.  Contact your pediatrician.  As a starting point, parents should always inform their child’s pediatrician of any school struggles.  Eye exams and hearing screening tests are always an important first step and usually a pediatrician can easily perform these tests.   The school nurse may also be able to do quick screenings.   Upon being informed that a patient is struggling in school, a pediatrician should also have parents and teachers complete standard medical questionnaires regarding the student’s behavior, anxiety level and attention.

2.  Conference with the classroom teacher.  At the same time as you are working with your pediatrician, you should conference with your child’s teacher to address your concerns about your child’s struggles.  A parent need not wait until conference time to confer with the classroom teacher.   Teachers will often,  upon request, schedule conferences to address concerns about a student’s progress during the school year.   At the conference raise your specific concerns and bring support such as homework that your child did incorrectly, assignments he could not complete and papers showing below level grade work.

3.  Determine the best intervention and set goals.  Once the concern is raise and demonstrated, ask your teacher what sort of interventions are available for your child at their school.  These could include working with reading specialists in small groups within the classroom, “pull-out” support groups outside of the classroom, and built-in “intervention blocks.”  Work with your child’s teacher to determine which intervention best suits your child.  During this conversation ask who will deliver this intervention, how often will intervention be provided and what are the qualifications of the person working with your child.   Sometimes the individual providing the intervention is very highly educated, but other times there is less training than parent would expect.  Try to tactfully discover whether the person providing the intervention is qualified.  In rare cases, no help is better than help offered by an unqualified individual.

4.  Follow up on progress.  Parents must be even more vigilant during this intervention period.  They should investigate the grade level expectations for their child and make sure that their child is on track to meet them or is at least closing their performance gap.    Parents should also work with the school to determine appropriate goals to ensure the intervention is working (ex. John will improve two reading levels in two months).   Additionally, the parents and teachers should determine a mutually agreeable time and method of follow up.   If little progress has been made after 3 to 6 months of interventions, it is time to consider performing comprehensive evaluations of your child.

5.  Reinforce at home.  Finally, ask the school to let you know what and how they are teaching your child so that you can reinforce it at home.  Struggling learners learn best with a consistent approach and reinforcement at home.    When there is a true home-school partnership, the student benefits.

Finally, a word of caution to parents:  in my experience, elementary students usually give their best efforts and if they could do better, they would do better.   In some instances a parent would rather believe their child is just not trying than face the possibility of a learning challenge.  This mindset may lead to harmful delays in obtaining the help the student needs to progress meaningfully in the curriculum.

 

Do you Know if your Child is Struggling in School?

Parent/School Communication, Struggling Students, , ,

I thought that I would magically know if my child were failing to keep up in school.  Their struggles would be easy to spot, like a fever or a cough.   In reality, it is deceptively hard to determine whether your child has an educational disability, especially during the elementary years when grading is purposely fuzzy and most struggling students are deemed “developmentally appropriate”.   It is up to parents to be vigilant and involved.

Parents looking for an honest, straightforward assessment of their child’s strengths and weaknesses will be disappointed, even at the much anticipated parent-teacher conference.   A teacher’s concerns are often softly stated or stated in a sort of code, to which parents are not privy.  Teachers will generally tell you all that your student can do well (“has an original point of view”, “has lots of energy”) and minimize your child’s deficits.  Instead of telling a parent that a student talks too much and is impulsive and disruptive, a teacher may say the student is “very social.”  Instead of telling a parent that a student has not met the grade-level expectations, a teacher may say the student has “improved” and that the skills are “developing” or “progressing.”  It is not surprising, then, that parents are often blindsided when it seems that their child “suddenly” is performing poorly in school.

The following are some tips to ensure that you have an accurate picture of your child’s performance in school.

  1. Volunteer in your child’s classroom, at recess, on field trip and other events.  Nothing helps like being in the classroom and watching firsthand your child in his classroom or with her peers.   By participating in a weekly reading program in my child’s classroom, I was able to witness firsthand my son’s lack of progress in reading as compared to his peers.  This directly led to our discovery that he was dyslexic.
  2. Communicate with your child’s teacher in their preferred manner.  Some of my children’s teachers have requested that I email, others prefer phone messages or notes.  Communication should be respectful and appreciative of the teacher’s experience and authority, but parents should clearly (and preferably in writing) state their concerns about their child and expect a timely (within 72 hours) response back.   If your child’s teacher is repeatedly unresponsive, contact the principal or vice-principal regarding your concerns and efforts to communicate.  Do not give up if you are initially met with a lack of responsiveness.  Be persistent but respectful.
  3. Self-educate on your state’s Curriculum Standards for your child’s grade level.  Each state sets forth curriculum standards in each academic subject for each grade.  These standards may be found on the school district’s website and will be on your state’s Department of Education website.  Raise any of your child’s suspected deficits with his or her classroom teacher and in writing.
  4. Ask for data regarding your child’s educational progress.  Schools engage in a great deal of testing of your child, but they often do not provide this information to parents.   Ask the classroom teacher for a list of assessments performed on your student each year, your child’s results, and the grade level “benchmarks”.  In my son’s case, I was told his reading was “progressing” during first grade.  When I asked the school for the underlying data on him, I found out he had “progressed” only from a DRA level 3 to a 6 during the entire school year and that the grade level expectation was a 12.  To me, this was vital information.