If you are a low-resource family - what tips do you have for maximizing success in HS?

[Anonymous]

Discipline? Love? Organization / planning hacks?

What can I do do help my child succeed and thrive in high school? I am concerned about huge class sizes and limited personal attention. Since I am a single working mom, I have limited funds and time. I am happy to help DC out as much as I can in other ways.

TIA!

[Anonymous]

OP, I'm a high school teacher in a school with mostly low resource families, and yes, our class sizes are not ideal. Here's my advice:

1. Make sure your child gets enough sleep. Sleep is free! It is every bit as critical as adequate food. I can't emphasize this enough.

2. Go to Back-to-School night at the start of the year and to parent/teacher conferences. Talk to the teacher about your child. It makes a difference. In a class of 36 kids x 6 classes, the bit of extra info I learn about a particular student keeps me better attuned their needs. Also ask the teachers/counselors about any kind of opportunities your child might benefit from. Should they be placed in honors or AP? Are there summer internships? Scholarships? Arts programs? I teach social studies, and I'm always getting emails from outside civics and educational organization about cool opportunities my students can apply for.

3. Have rules about phone use and make sure your child knows to keep their phone put away in class. Feel free to check in the with teacher periodically and ask if your child has a problem with this, then follow up with consequences at home if necessary.

4. Check SchoolMax/Synergy/Canvas or whatever system your school uses for attendance, assignments, and grades. Don't micromanage, but just stay aware of how your child is doing so small issues don't become bigger problems.

5. Make your child's world as big as possible. Model intellectual curiosity. Have high expectations. Help them set goals and make a plan to reach those goals. We are blessed to live in an area abundant with free museums and activities that address every interest.

[Anonymous]

Have your child do Khan Academy for a math class the summer before they takes it. Math teachers run the gamut and if your kid gets lost during the class, that could have a long term impact on them psychologically and academically and it really won't be their fault.

[Anonymous]

Youtube has many educational videos put out by tutors and educators. My kid is watching some AP World ones right now. Sure it won't replace an excellent class, but it helps.

I can't believe some of the great videos out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Youtube has many educational videos put out by tutors and educators. My kid is watching some AP World ones right now. Sure it won't replace an excellent class, but it helps.

I can't believe some of the great videos out there.

Forgot to add, they aren't just randomly choosing to watch AP World videos. They have it this coming year and they have a challenging extracurricular and wanted to get a jumpstart on the material since they heard it was a lot of material to cover.

[Anonymous]

What range of low-resource?

On DCUM where "poor" people have HHI above 100K, it's worth asking the question.

We don't have much disposable income, but education is a priority for us and we saved enough to pay for expensive one-on-one tutors in high school, as well as SAT prep. The goal was not to close doors for college admission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What range of low-resource?

On DCUM where "poor" people have HHI above 100K, it's worth asking the question.

We don't have much disposable income, but education is a priority for us and we saved enough to pay for expensive one-on-one tutors in high school, as well as SAT prep. The goal was not to close doors for college admission.

Me again. This was for a kid with ADHD and low processing speed, who needed the extra individual attention. More generally, we've always placed great importance on studying, getting good grades, intellectual curiosity, love of reading, that sort of thing. We brought our kids to museums starting when they were kids, read them all kinds of books, discussed international politics and science at the dinner table. That kid is in college now, our youngest is starting high school - we've never had any trouble with lack of motivation or work ethic in our kids. But overcoming severe inattention and very slow processing took EXTRAORDINARY dedication on his part, as well as on our part as 24/7 executive coaches, and the school, who gave him an IEP, then a 504 in 12th grade, and did an overall good job of following through with his accommodations (except a terrible math teacher who really gave him grief, unfortunately).

[Anonymous]

Hi. If your child is disciplined and responsible, you can definitely help your child achieve without expensive supports.

Good homework habits and self-identifying trouble spots are two areas a proactive child can control. Also being the type of student teachers like to have in class. On another thread about college, a parent recommended saying hello when entering a class and thanks when you leave. That caught my eye as extra respectful and therefore a distinguishing suggestion.

With respect to high school math and SAT math, it's very important to stay on top of it. I do pay for franchised math tutoring but that's partially because I got tired of monitoring my kids to self-study using free or inexpensive resources. Khan Academy is known to be good. I have paid for ixl.com (IXL) which covers up to pre-calculus and some kinds of English (reading comprehension, grammar, etc.). It does diagnostics and recommends practice areas but you can jump around in it to practice areas of greatest need. A parent can review and monitor work on this portal through the parent account features.

Another thing I would recommend is to ask for help affording expensive, fun extras. Our school has some ways to help kids with things like Disney band trips, Washington DC class trips, senior all-night party, etc. We have an ordinary school district (not affluent) but people here are very inclusion oriented.

Start early with understanding your financial picture for college. Know where the local, low competition, financial need considered scholarships come from. Ask your child to consider getting good financial aid to be a part-time job. If planned ahead, many scholarship application essays are reusable. For example, I'm a reader for a PTA scholarship committee. We give out about 10 $500 scholarships and only get about 30 applicants. It probably can't take more than 3 hours to apply, even if you don't have a matching 250 word short essay.

Another free thing you can do is listen harder to your child's likes and dislikes than most parents do. Help your child select and continue with ECs that really matter to them, work with the school career counselor to find the most appropriate summer job opportunities, etc. A lot of people let their kids bumble through freshman and sophomore years. Know for yourself what your student's options are and suggest things.

Do anything you can to encourage your child to read at an advanced level. Libraries, subscriptions, author talks, poetry readings.

[Anonymous]

Single mom here. I chose a hybrid cyber public charter, a brick and click for my kids. They offered tons of gifted classes and small classes, teachers available, great guidance, and my kids had to learn to structure their own schedule. They went to the school about once a week for a whole day so best of both worlds. My kids had no limit on clubs so they were in leadership of several academic clubs.

[Anonymous]

PP above. I just realized the tip about saying hello and thanks to your teachers is actually from the "high resource" thread. I got it mixed up with suggestions for sitting up front in college and making eye contact with professors and taking advantage of office hours.

It kind of makes the point though. Money just makes things easier and more convenient. A child can stand out and succeed in a lot of ways without being supported by expensive infrastructure. "Kicking it Abraham Lincoln style!" Adults are always impressed by diligence, responsibility, maturity, purposefulness in young people.

[Anonymous]

Take advantage of the free museums we have in DC to offer enrichment ti your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have your child do Khan Academy for a math class the summer before they takes it. Math teachers run the gamut and if your kid gets lost during the class, that could have a long term impact on them psychologically and academically and it really won't be their fault.

+1
It's hard to get the kid to do it... but the two years my kid did a lot of Khan Academy in the summer were their best math years in terms of grades and stress. You can identify the specific subject kid will be in next year (e.g., HS geometry or Algebra II) and the kid can work through it week-by-week. There's tons of stuff for the littles, too. I think it's harder to match exactly what the kid's curriculum will be next year, but any math preparation will make them stronger, even if there's not a one-to-one alignment with the grade year curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Does your kid have their own library card? Regular trips to the library for fiction, poetry, non-fiction, languages in terms of books and DVD's as well.

Also free library events.

[Anonymous]

The biggest thing is just being a good parent. And demonstrate the good things in day to day life - curiosity, self-discipline, kindness, ambition. Have high expectations and make that the norm. Every high school is going to have smart, high performing kids. Find them and make sure that's the friend group.

[Anonymous]

I am from a low-resource family that did not do anything other than get me to and from school on time. Maximized success (got into a TT) in K–12 on my own. The degree of neurosis on dcum is next level.