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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Most of it is actually free or low cost.

Have your child build relationships with their teachers. If they have any accommodations, they should send an email as soon as they have their schedule. My kids always start a class with a hello and thank the teacher as they leave the room. Participate in class discussions. This is how you stand out and stay engaged in a large class. In addition, every teacher my kids had offered help sessions during advisory or lunch. Some even after school. Take advantage.

Work on study skills and organization. Some schools offer a course on this if your child has a disability. For kids without, MC had a great summer course years ago. Alternatively, if your child works well with you, teach these skills yourself. The shortcoming of MCPS is these skills are not explicitly taught to most kids.

Teach your child to self-advocate. They should be comfortable reaching out to teachers and counselors if they hit a bump in the road.

Hire a tutor at the first sign of struggle. We had the best luck with MCPS teachers who tutor on the side since they know the curriculum.

Emphasize to your child to check online for assignments and missing work daily.

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I think this person is closest to correct—being a helpful engaged student in the class is probably most important.  In my experience, the college counselor stuff is a racket and will just mold your child into a very obvious packaged product.  Here’s some of the things we spent money on that were useful and successful—
— technology.  We got my kid a good laptop and an iPad.  They could take notes on their iPad which they could color code and save in OCR format so they were searchable and impossible to lose.  Good laptop was key for tech courses—you literally can’t do some of the advanced coursework on the McPS chromebooks.
— supporting extracurriculars.  For instance, we hired a personal coach for their sport (which actually almost everyone in their position does).  Kid was not a recruited athlete but this did make it possible for them to play the whole four years as a varsity athlete.  Kid also had a club they were very involved in — club couldn’t get it together to go to a particular competition, so we just paid to send kid on their own.  Another year, when my kid was running the club, we fronted the money for the club to participate in a big competition and individual kids paid us back for their part—running the expense through MCPS was incredible bureaucracy and this allowed the club to participate and saved our kid countless hours trying to manage the McPS bureaucracy.

We also did little things like just ordered extra copies of books for home use, where that would be helpful.  
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Did the school let them use an iPad in class? I see all these complaints about phones so was curious. Also, is it safe to carry this around or will it get them mugged?[/quote]

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