Q: One of our teen-aged grandchildren will be staying with us for the next four months while his parents are overseas. They want him to stay home because he’s not doing well academically and they don’t want him to miss school.
We’re worried about this because school is different than it was when we were kids, what with the new math and all. We’re not too sure where to start.
A: It is not just the new math that might be a problem for you. Social studies is different these days. Huge new material is presented to reflect the historical development of our First Nations communities, something that was not there when you were a kid.
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A number of kids do not take math — they study calculus, they do laboratory work on personal computers and if they are lucky, they will learn to play either the clarinet, the oboe or maybe even a stringed instrument in music class.
More than exciting, school is demanding and as well as you may have done, it is doubtful that you can keep up to the assignments your grandson is bringing home to complete. You will not be all that helpful.
Your best bet is to not focus on course content or what it is that he is learning, but rather to look at how he is learning. What are his study habits? If your grandson is like many other adolescent kids, the chances are good that he has terrible study habits.
If you help him fix them, his overall school performance could spring upward. Tell your grandson that you are going to help him with his schoolwork and then work with him on this thing.
Find a place in your home that is his for study and designate that as his. Get him to agree to study times. The more regular the times, the better it is. The rule of thumb is to study or do school work for an hour, take a break for 10 or so minutes, study for another 45 minutes, take another break and finish the session with no more than another half hour.
By the way, don’t let him flood the room with noisy computers, cellphones, TVs or whatever. Many kids do well with a little quiet music in the background when they are studying but no one is the better for it when that quiet music escalates into noise pollution.
Help your grandson organize his course material. You do not need to know new math to know whether his math book is neat and organized. The tidier are his books and the more structured are his notes, the easier it is for him to learn. You might even help him learn to fixate on priorities. What does he need to learn today?
Finally, know yourself that learning is more than just reading a book or listening to a classroom teacher. Learning is in the doing. The more that a person plays with ideas in his head, writes them out and experiments with them or even describes what is being learned to others, the better are that person’s learning opportunities. This is where you come into the picture. You may not know much about the content of what your grandson is learning in school but if you get him to teach it to you, to present it to you in ways that you can understand, the more clearly is he going to learn it himself.
It is win-win. He is going to do better in school and you are going to finally understand what new math is all about.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
