Skip to main content

Help Your Child be Successful...Without Hurting Anyone!



As you all know, I have three boys.  One is a junior, the other is in eighth-grade, and the youngest just started middle school.  My oldest breezed throughout middle school exactly as he breezed through elementary.  He never struggled with organization, he never asked for help on his assignments, he never for got anything  and he always did his homework and aced his tests.  I thought I was obviously doing something right!  I must be an amazing parent!
Then, my middle son started middle school, and I was humbly reminded that  I really don't have much control over my children!  It was a nightmare.  Every time I checked his grades, my blood pressure skyrocketed.  I had a sore throat from yelling so much!  WHAT WAS WRONG WITH MY CHILD?  He did great in elementary, and suddenly he was getting Cs and even...gulp...Ds!  Sometimes he would fail to turn in a project worth 100 points claiming, "I forgot."   This was NOT acceptable.  I am a teacher.  My kids are supposed to be excellent students, right?  The entire year was pretty much like riding a bike with square wheels.  Exhausting!


That summer I thought of my options.  Obviously, adoption wasn't one of them, so I had to come up with an alternative.  I had heard our school counselor mention homework contracts to my students' parents (never thinking I would be one of those parents whose child might need one).  I did a little investigating and came up with my own.  In August, my husband and I created a united front and presented Nate with three documents.  He had to read and sign each one.  I also enlisted the help of his basketball coach, his idol. I told his coach that Nate might have to quit the team if he didn't get his grades up.  He had a chat with Nate, and that certainly helped.

His second year of middle school was amazing.  He made the honor roll!  I rarely, if ever, had to nag him to finish assignments.  It was joyous!

I share this with you in case you have a Nate now or in the future.  I am attaching the contract documents I used, and you are welcome to use them!  If you have a child like Nate, I feel your pain! It's both frustrating and exhausting.  However, it is also possible to turn kids like Nate completely around. :)  They are, after all, just twelve and thirteen.  They need our guidance and encouragement, as well as our occasional discipline.

Nate's coach regularly asks Nate about his grades.  Nate is so proud to tell him!

Consequences and Rewards

Parent Contract

Student Contract

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TQE: Get students Engaged and Digging Deep

I've mentioned before how Twitter has helped me grow as an educator.  Edutwitter is a valuable resource for book recommendations, new teaching methods, lessons, and articles.  One of my favorite educators to follow is Marissa Thompson, a high school teacher at Carlsbad High. This summer I read about her TQE(thoughts, questions, epiphanies) method for discussing literature.  I'd always longed for having discussions like the ones I had in my college literature courses, but when I try fishbowl or Socratic seminar with my students, the discussions felt forced, flat, and awkward. That changed today when I tried TQE for the first time.  Sharing homework in small groups Students writing their TQEs on the board When I listened to Marissa's podcast on Cult of Pedagogy ( check it out here ), I was intimidated. After all, her students are in high school and have a rock star teacher.  I think I read the transcript twenty times before finally trying it....
5 comments
Read more

Writing an Essay...with a Partner

I love technology for collaboration! Teaching writing to middle school students is not easy.  All students come with different skills and knowledge.  With 35 students in a class, it's impossible to sit down one on one and assist students with the writing process.  Teaching students to write a literary analysis is particularly challenging because most seventh-graders have little, to no experience.  Students need to learn to  develop a thesis statement, find evidence from the text to support it, provide the context of the selected quotations , and write insightful commentary on the evidence they selected. Remember, these kiddos are twelve! Graphic organizers are particularly helpful to these young writers. The biggest challenge is providing feedback to students as they are writing, rather than after they turn their work in for a grade.  Students need to be able to use the feedback they receive and see the difference it makes in the final product.  I...
2 comments
Read more

Mock Trials-Periods 0 and 2

MY Ethan Couch (notice the shirt) Wow!  What a fantastic week it has been for me as a teacher!  My students have been working hard preparing for their assigned cases and getting ready to go to trial.  Each group was assigned a case based on an article we read in class.  One case was about a sixteen-year old  boy named Ethan Couch.  He had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit when the car he was driving hit a disabled vehicle and killed four innocent people.  He receive one year of rehabilitation in Malibu and ten years probabtion as his punishment. His attorneys blamed his behavior on what was called "affluenza."  Please ask your child about this word and how it was used to defend him in court! The other case involved for teens who threw an eight pound rock over an overpass and struck the passenger side of a vehicle.  The passenger was Sharon Budd, a middle-school English teacher and breast cancer survivor.  Sh...
27 comments
Read more