Learn the Keys to Communication
Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project
A well-rounded academic-focused transcript is splendid. A good high school check-list insures students take the requisite classes and complete those necessary credit hours. You’ll soon learn getting into college is only the first little battle. Your high school student also needs to develop proficiencies to help her stay in college for the long haul. Here’s a short list of skills that must be practiced throughout high school to guarantee a smoother path through college. If you’ve failed to work these into your curricula: Now is the time to add these to your learner’s existing studies.
1. Note taking
Home educated students are rarely great at note-taking unless they have intentionally sought lecture format courses. As much as parent educators love to offer lively, interactive, hands-on, out-of-the-box teaching opportunities, most first and second year classes at college will have a traditional lecture format with large lower level course sizes. I was once a TA for a 700-student mythology course! Will your student be good at note taking?
Conventionally schooled parents may have spent many youthful hours in lecture-format high school classes and wrongly take this skill for granted. Note-taking must be learned, practiced, and perfected. Your student can start to master the skill while reading or listening to sermons at church, vlogs, or podcasts. Later have him participate in lecture-based courses in which he is responsible for mastering what he hears. Don’t let college be your child’s first high-stakes note-taking experience.
The best students know that note-taking is more than just busy work and transcription skills. Good note-takers are also active listeners. The practice of organizing and processing data during a lecture is the first huge boost to learning that data. The second sensible move is to train a student to always recopy her notes right after each class. If she does so, she’ll seldom do poorly on an exam. Fleshing out ideas right after a lecture means far more than just neat notebooks. If she is diligent, a good note-taker will process the data a second or even third time without spending much extra time on the class. By the time she must prepare for the test, she’ll already have much more information neatly stored in her long-term memory. The best way to study for even the most difficult topic is to take notes, recopy those notes, and then copy them a third time. By then, recall will be a breeze.
2. Typing
Parents might be hunt-and-peck typers with short-form abbreviated texting habits. If this describes you, this will likely describe your students. Take some important time in early middle school actively working on typing accuracy and speed. There are several really fun apps on the market to help build both. No student should still be using the hunt-and-peck approach to typing nor the “look at every keystroke” method by the time they go to college so why wait that long? Get those skills going before high school so that it comes naturally when typing is needed the most.
3. Time management
Teens are notorious for being poor time managers while others seem on-the-ball at birth! Some kids are born behind schedule, always rushing to finish projects, chores, and responsibilities. But the secret is basically this: Time management can’t be taught so much as modeled and practiced through personal experience. Parents naturally want to take up the mental load of constantly reminding kids who have a more relaxed approach to life’s schedules instead of letting their children quickly learn what happens when time is not managed adequately.
Start early and never stop stressing the importance of getting things done on time without drama but resist the temptation to DO the managing. Raise the bar for high school students. Give your child the chance to work on a variety of long and short term projects while navigating a normal schedule. State your expectations up front, set firm due dates, and be prepared to live with the consequences of occasional failure without drama. Mom and dad often sabotage real growth in time management skills by softening the blow of real consequences, especially when consequences impact grades. Don’t rationalize offering flexible deadlines to save your learner’s GPA. Poor time management skills in high school will eventually damage college, career and interpersonal success. Start early (well before transcripts are at risk) and stick to your stated schedule and your stated repercussions.
The best students know that good time management will let them pack more into each organized and prioritized day. If they put goals, school projects, exercise, spiritual development and relationships ahead of interruptions, time-wasters, games, and short-form content. They’ll experience the fullness that high school and college have to offer during truly free time opportunities once they know how to finish obligations first, not last. Encourage students to volunteer for community service projects or major family ventures in which they take leadership in planning and implementation. They can see how time management skills pay off while working in service to others. Ever wonder why colleges like to see community service on a high school transcript? Time management is one big reason.
4. Mature Communication Skills
Each semester I teach several hundred home educated high school students live online. I encourage them to communicate questions and concerns about the material at hand rather than asking mom or dad to do this chore. If they don’t understand something or need help, they must communicate that to me instead of having a parent become a translator. When I hear their questions, I get to know them, and they learn to express themselves and even advocate for themselves if they think I need to revisit a score or grant some type of extension. The whole process makes them better students while I become a better educator.
Not every student develops even these communication skills. I will sometimes have a student for 2, 3, or even 4 years of Latin. Out of shyness or due to limited experience in self-advocation, they never step up. Consequently, I never communicate with that student directly. How sad when such a student asks for a college recommendation! All I can do is rave about good grades. College recommendation forms don’t ask teachers much about grades because that’s what transcripts are for. Top colleges and universities want to know how well a student interacts with teachers and students, how well she reacts to adversity, his warmth of personality, her sense of humor, his leadership qualities, character, and extracurricular accomplishments. Colleges especially want to know if a student responds well to setbacks. If I’ve never had a chance to communicate with a student, a whole letter about good grades is worse than no recommendation at all.
The best students overcome a shy or tentative nature by learning to interact with trustworthy adults, educators, youth leaders, and coaches. The best parents not only encourage their children to interact with adults but will insist that their child do all the talking and negotiating when there is a question or dispute. Once at college, professors will interact with students as adults or quickly grow to discount students who don’t act like adults. Parents should never communicate with college professors (or potential employers) on behalf of their students. If you have a shy student, make sure the communication skill has been well rehearsed before freshman orientation begins.
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