EEU 10: Summer Reflections of a Parent Educator

Now that the school year has come to a close, and you’ve got final grades and assessment results, you may find yourself wondering…now what? First, take a day or two to breathe (at least!). Then, hop over to my post on preventing summer slide. I won’t belabor the point, as I already elaborated previously, however, it really is about providing opportunities to keep the brain engaged. This isn’t a workbook! It’s the experiences you’re having over the summer with your child.

Ok, this next brain dump is a reflection on some experiences I had recently with various clients and advocating for, what I call basic common-sense education, to occur in modern times. You see, I’m not asking for impossible things. I sit in these meetings and ask for basic things like data, timely feedback, accommodations to help students, and, well, clarity. It has become painfully clear that few are looking at the big picture of education. Before anyone thinks that I’m about to go down the road of politics, I’m not. I think most, if not all, politicians are crooked. When a student is doing well, there should be enrichment. When a student is not doing well, there should be intervention. Not six weeks from now intervention, but immediate intervention. This used to be part of MTSS and what the districts require, but it seems that the budget really has all but completely removed this common sense step of kids’ educational experiences.

I’ll give you an example to illustrate just how far we’ve come. A student, let’s call him Billy, is in 3rd grade. He already has an IEP for speech and language services. That’s wonderful. Billy is reading at an early first grade level. Not so wonderful. You would think a student like Billy is certainly receiving intensive interventions and that his progress is being monitored. And, like me, you’d be incorrect. The school has communicated minimally with the parents, despite their continual requests for more information. When my colleague and I attended a meeting with school personnel, they described collecting such intensive data as “minutia” that they don’t have time for. I am pretty sure at that point that my tongue was bleeding because I was biting it so hard! Minutia! That’s the word they, the educators including ESE personnel, used to describe being able to show if a student is making growth while receiving extra support. Their data was generated entirely from Lexia, the online, independent digital platform. When asked what the real human being had observed while working with Billy, they blamed the district.

Another family I recently worked with have a third grader, we will call him Adam. Adam was enrolled in a traditional school up until February. By that time the school had suggested that he may be effected by autism, but provided no data to support their assertion. The parents were understandably taken aback. Then, the teacher made a comment regarding his reading abilities and how that was their focus because math “doesn’t matter.” Everything in both my parent brain and educator brain about lost it. Math doesn’t matter. Wow. In this case, the parents opted to begin homeschooling. Their son has gone from begrudgingly doing work at school, to independently working on the tasks given during homeschool.

Parents, if there is one thing that you can take away from Billy and Adam’s stories, it’s this: TRUST YOUR GUT. Long gone are the schools we went to as kids where classrooms were drill and kill all day long of memorization. Gone are the days when young kids play and learn through experience. At a conference this weekend, I heard it about as plainly as I can think to say it…in a lot of cases schools are prisons. No one says it because “what about the hard-working teachers” but its nonetheless pretty accurate. Come in, sit down, be quiet, work. Don’t go over there, don’t touch that, don’t make a mess. Clean that up, put that away, go home, and repeat. Teachers aren’t free to teach, and kids aren’t free to be kids. (Sounds like prison now, doesn’t it) When something feels off, it probably is. Ask more questions! If you aren’t sure what to ask, message us.

Knowing your child’s rights under the state legislation is paramount. I recognize that not all families have figured out logistically how to homeschool their children, and that’s ok! When you see that assessments like Lexia, iReady, STAR, etc are not matching classroom grades, ask why. The question that seems most pertinent for this moment is, what should I do with all these results we received? I suggest weaving some amount of review of the concepts they did not show proficiency in throughout the summer. Again, not for 4 hours a day. More like 15 to 20 minutes a day. I explain this to my kids by saying, would you like the future time you spend working on this topic to be easy or a struggle? Most kids don’t prefer a struggle and are surprisingly receptive to the way you will explain a concept versus having the whole class watching their struggle. Celebrate their successes! Growth (or improvement) is a success. Move away from the idea that the only thing that matters is proficiency. Kids just need time to digest some concepts. Don’t we all? Allow them that time to process and grow. You will be glad you did.

Below are a few free resources that I utilized when I was in the classroom as well as the state site where you can view ALL standards. Not all parents care about the standards, but some do. I believe that they are useful to determine a progression of skills from various ages/abilities. It’s a roadmap not the handbook. There are MANY ways you can leverage these resources to benefit your learner.

https://www.cpalms.org/search/Standard - Florida BEST standards for Reading / Math as well as NGSSS standards for Science and Social Studies standards. Search by subject and grade level. You can see the progression of skills by changing the grade level. Start where your kiddo is at!

https://www.readworks.org/ - Reading passages with comprehension by level. What I like about this site is that the passages are assigned a lexile level. Lexile tells the complexity of the text. So, you really can be in the driver’s seat of what level and skills your child works on.

https://www.ixl.com/ - This is great for targeting a certain skill and taking a “pulse” of where your child is at with it. In the paid version, it will track progress and the child can earn points and badges. All subjects available!

Notice there aren't ads showing, so these people aren't paying me, I just like their resources.