Effective Academic Help

Helping not Hindering

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Teaching isn’t easy. Sequence ideas properly. Review material at appropriate frequency and intensity while not losing the student through too much repetition or to too little. Test for cognizance. Walk the student through application then see if they can work by themselves. Come back later to see how much sank in and to what level of competence. Repeat as necessary then do it all over again with the next level of mastery. Apply enough pressure to keep the student motivated but not frustrated but be able to bring the frustrated student back to the topic. Finally, invite the student to develop independence from you as educator so that you are no longer needed if you’ve done your job well.

Parent educators will often struggle more than a non-relative educator who has the benefit of a less emotional attachment and more experience with all sorts of academic challenges. The quality of a student's prior preparation, the hope of specific future success, and the intensity of current emotional well-being weigh heavily on the whole educational process for a parent and child. Add to this the fact that parents will experienced the full crescendo of emotions that can erupt when all these difficulties mix with a child's ability to push or pull a parent’s emotional well-being to the limit. Teaching is hard work for everyone.  

When you are tasked with helping your student through a tough academic topic assigned to them by another educator, here are five ways to help them rather than hinder them. 

1. Never Do their Work

A parent doing most of the writing, translating, or calculating to complete a student’s assignment circumvents all the emotional drama I’ve just mentioned. Consequently, a startling number of parents decide to "ensure" students’ success by doing most of the work for them. If you are writing your student’s essay for her, translating his Latin, or sorting out her logic problems, your student now has compounded issues. Having missed the chance to mature through earlier steps now guarantees the next ones will be far more difficult if not impossible. Worse, your student now believes that she was never capable of doing the easier work (after all, you had to do most of it for her) so why would she even attempt the more challenging tasks that come next? What a disaster. A lower grade and some weeping at the kitchen table (yours and theirs) is far better than doing your student’s work for them.

2. Mainly Listen

Think back on your own education. It can be exhausting and overwhelming. You still feel the same way from time to time even if you are normally fine with your coworkers, boss, or your daily tasks. Offer a snack and your ears. Listen to frustrations and concerns. Listen to them explain the assignment or essay prompt. Let them verbally process their worries about a busy project schedule. Talking it through often is enough to make a busy schedule more do-able.

3. Never Join the Gripe Fest

Listening to your student’s frustrations is one thing. Getting in on the gripe fest is another. Your child’s educators have limited abilities to motivate and move your student on to future success.  They have zero chance at doing so if you disparage your student’s educator. Have a talk with your child’s educator privately if you have a problem but never complain about a teacher to the student which effectively ends any positive impact the educator can ever hope to offer.

4. Supply the Time

Supplying your student what she needs for success need not be expensive. The thing students need most is sufficient time to accomplish the tasks set before them. I educated all three of my now adult children at home. I used to feel a little guilty about not adding more music lessons, sports, and events to their lives. As professionals and college grads today, they don’t talk about their extracurricular schedule. They talk about the time they had to explore things that were unique to themselves like playing their favorite instrument out of enjoyment, creating art out of inspiration, climbing a cliff as volunteer camp staff.  

5. Weather the Tears

Learning challenging things can be rough. Many of our brightest students shoot through a lot of topics and years before they ever meet their first truly difficult academic challenge. There may be more than a few tears the first time a lower than usual score comes their way or when they don’t easily grasp a new topic or when they didn’t do their best work. This is the time to model grit, fortitude, and stamina. Of all the things your student needs in life, grit, fortitude, and stamina through difficult times should be top of the list.