Exposing your child when you cannot live in an area with better schools
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Anonymous
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We do not live in Montgomery or Virginia and it breaks my heart to see people complaining on forum and there child is in a not so bad school system. I know I cannot afford private and I am going to have to place my child in public school. I want to know how I can enrich my child after the school day to be up to par with other schools rigor or even private school.
I have thought about foreign language before and after school program or maybe looking for some stem programs on the weekend. I just wonder how do you make up for lack of resources not provided at your child's school. |
Anonymous
The home has more of an impact than the school. Talk to your child and help him develop a rich vocabulary. Most important: REad, read, read. |
Anonymous
+1000 Reading is key. Use the public library. Let your child pick books that he enjoys. Let him see you reading as well. You need to model this. Make sure there is a quiet and comfortable area to do this or just sit in the library. |
Anonymous
| Foreign language and stem are nice, but the most important lessons have to do with maintaining high self-esteem, dealing with setbacks, optimism, making and maintaining friendships, persistence, motivation to always improve, etc. These are life lessons that can be taught at home and through the community just by daily interactions. Role modeling is key. |
Anonymous
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+1 on the reading. We did very little after school activities when DC was young, just one sports type activity. The one thing we consistently did at home was read to DC every night, and when DC could read by self, DC read to self every night, still does at 9, and reads a ton. DC is now in a gifted program. We took and still take DC to the library almost weekly. Also, when reading talk to your DC about the story. I think the verbal interaction is also really important.
The other thing I did was buy one of those math workbooks. It was never a set time type thing. DC did it whenever DC felt like it. But, I think some of this helps, too. You don't have to buy the workbooks. If you have a computer and printer, there are a lot of free sites that have math worksheets. And puzzles. DC has done puzzles since DC was two. I think all these things have helped. |
Anonymous
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Don't waste your time and money doing meaningless enrichment. What PP said is on point. You want to have high expectations for your child, and teach him to have an inner sense of motivation and responsibility, instead of blindly going with the flow. Books are essential, and the best way to lead a child to them is to model reading yourself (and perhaps nix the TV - the year we got rid of ours was the year DS discovered he was addicted to books). As a bookworm, I learned much, much more reading by myself at home, than learning at school. |
Anonymous
| I appreciate it just was wondering what is so special in the schools that have high rankings. I was wondering foreign language exposure, etc.. I would be driving myself crazy trying to have my child in everything. Just want her to be exposed and have a chance. |
Anonymous
| My mom read to me 20 minutes to a half hour from books ahead of my reading age. It made all the difference over time. Same school situation as you described. I would have also benefited from an ongoing club in Chess or similar that continued year after year. |
Anonymous
Many of the kids come from families that value education and take time to work with their children outside of the home. Many people want to send their kids to the "best" schools for social reasons, because they are concerned about the other kids at "lesser" schools," whether that's for language, culture, SES, or safety reasons. There are good teachers everywhere. But the resources are limited, and if there are a lot of other issues teachers need to deal with, they often are not as successful challenging kids academically. |
Anonymous
It's called having parents with money. The rankings come mostly from test scores, and kids from higher SES usually have higher test scores. In MCPS, the curriculum is the same across the board, whether at a 3 school or 10 school. I'm sure there are some outstanding teachers at the 3 schools. It is really the home environment and parental expectations that impact the child's ability to learn. I'm an immigrant from a poor working class background. My parents had less than an 8th grade education when we immigrated here. But, the one thing that they instilled in us was hard work and we'd better do well in school or else type parenting. |
Anonymous
20:35 here. My child is in one of those highly-ranked schools. The difference scores comes down to parental involvement in their children's education. Both psychologically (highly educated parents who instill such values in their kids) and practically (hire a tutor or put them in Kumon to keep them a grade level ahead). The extras such as language, sports and music are just that: extras. Which is not to say that perseverance and team-work can't be learned in sports and music, some parents enroll their kids just because they believe in those benefits! But they are not essential. Resilience is learned every day when your parent goes over your work and frowns at the slightest mistake, and coaches you in every subject until you get all As. That's the "old-fashioned" way. Many parents in less highly-performing schools are too busy working 2-3 jobs to cater to all of their children's educational needs. Some of them do not have such high expectations.for their kids. I'm on the PTA Board of my child's elementary school - we have a budget in the tens of thousands of dollars, while other schools barely have a few thousand. Some of that money goes to fulfilling the needs of ESOL or FARMS students. Much of the money goes to fluff out the curriculum, invite artists to perform, pay for fun activities, hold a fair. Please don't fall into the trap of throwing money at the problem. The real grunt work, the one that pays off long-term, is what involved parents do everywhere regardless of their geographical area - raise their children with intellectual discipline. |
Anonymous
There are certainly things that a child might learn from this, but I don't think that resilience is necessarily one of them. |
Anonymous
| go on field trips and learn firsthand. do a different smithsonian every weekend. |
Anonymous
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We are in MCPS, however, our home schools are bottom of the heap.
The biggest problem for us was not the curriculum (it is same in all MCPS schools), or the teachers (all are highly qualified), or school resources (Title 1 and low performing - so they are flush with money), or facilities (everything is new and nothing is falling apart), or the ESOL/FARMS students (because I am fine with diversity, different languages or kids eating free meals). The biggest issue for us (and why I have labelled them the bottom of the heap) is the malicious disruption in class by some students (because of multiple issues at home) - and the inability of the teachers to punish them or contain them. I would not have minded children who were not bright in my DC's classroom. Our aim was thus to get them into magnet programs. The thing that worked for us was reading to our kids from the very start - from the time they were able to sit up. We started from picture books from very early age and that was a part of their daily routine. In fact, I would make them sit in my lap with a bottle first thing in the morning and read them stories and nursery rhymes etc. It was amazing how much they picked up. Then we made sure that they had access to books, magazines etc and that we were reading interesting storybooks for almost an hour every night to them. My kids loved it so much that they wanted to be read to even when they could read by themselves. This continued till they were 8 years of age. I also made sure that they had mastered their multiplication tables (1-12) by the time they were in 2nd grade. If you feel that you need to enrich them, there are many options available to them now. The internet is your best resource. I will say to you the same thing other pps are saying - the one thing you can do for your kids is read to them. I give the same advice to ESOL parents. I tell them that they should read to their kids in their native language if they do not know English. Just read, read, read to them. Once your kids are hooked on reading for pleasure - EVERYTHING is easy at school. |
Anonymous
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Hi Teacher here--the kids that always knocked my socks off were the ones who were really sweet kids who could look for different solutions. As PP indicated--raising great kids who can function is todays' world counts so much more than test scores.
1. Teach please, thank you, can I help you?, offer to hold doors, and the reasons behind. 2. When kids don't get something, encourage them to try a different way 3. Encourage problem solving--what can you do? Can you try it a different way? 4. Let them explore--if you have a back yard use it as much as possible 5. Encourage projects--building things, making things--these are ongoing and develop above listed skills 6. Expose to arts and various cultures through cooking/eating at various ethnic restaurants 7. Do things together--ice skating, walking in park, cleaning, cooking, etc. 8. Let them fail and talk about why that happened 9. Making reading enjoyable--give them their own library card, let them pick books, have them read to you--talk about subjects (Most schools now force test prep down kids throats so reading has become very laborious. Kids want to see you reading too! ) |