Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.
With the recently announced staggered contact teaching at schools, when students attend classes intermittently, they have never needed Study Skills more. There is a great deal of independent learning and self-regulation that must take place.
So, here’s what parents need to do; your intervention will ensure productive continuity of your child’s learning. ESPECIALLY if parents are at work, with their teenagers at home. Whether your child is eight or eighteen; they are CHILDREN. Children do, what children do.
They ‘go underground’ faster than you can blink. When they ask, ‘Don’t you trust me?’, tell them ‘NO!’ (because you shouldn’t).
First of all, find an IT technician who will set up Wi-Fi access, times and controls and a User Profile on your child’s computer or tablet, with specific permissions. These will stop students from being tempted to use their technology as toys, rather than tools.
In doing this, you will create the structure and boundaries through which learning has a better chance of success and pleasurable diversions will be blocked.
Ensure they can access the emails, programmes and the course management systems they will need, like Google Classroom. Block everything else: Skype and WhatsApp, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Instagram and others you have not heard of.
I am sure that You Tube will need to stay open and that provides a real risk of disruption.
As students will be online, they won’t need their cellphones. Take their cellphone to work (or in the next room) with you during the day. Children get uber-creative and unsuspecting neighbours may fall prey to their pleas to help them ‘get online to study’ via sharing Wi-Fi passwords.
By all means have a second profile set up on their device – that ONLY YOU have the password to. You can allow them access in the evenings. Never divulge the password. A single moment of love for your child, will enable negative outcomes.
Set your child up with a work station outside their bedroom – in an unobtrusive place in a communal area, in full view. What they are doing during at-home, school time, can be seen by you if you are also working from home. Buy them headphones, if you must, to help with auditory distraction.
If you are out all day, there are dongles available that will record what is going on in the room in which your child is working. Buy one and get it set up. YES, SPY on your child!
Invest in the technology that will manage your child’s choices. Trust me, make technology your ally and your child’s regulator.
I have been working with children for decades and I can tell you, unequivocally, that 99.9% do what is inspected, not what is expected. We are living in serious times, where learning-failure is imminent.
I once had a student whose excuse for not doing homework was, “Auntie Julia, when I get home I have about 400 WhatsApp messages to answer. I can’t find the time for homework!’ The power of peer pressure at play is an unseen danger, as we all know.
Help your child set up an online diary. I recommend Excel, where students can create a weekly tab with dates. Set up days as columns and times that match the school’s class times on the left hand side as rows. Have your child put in their subjects, in the day and time slots. Use a colour key as to whether these classes are in person or online. Let them insert ‘notes’ with what must be done.
On their ‘desktop’ set up a folder named by subject, with sub folders where information sent to them, can be downloaded and saved, either by topic or date. These organizational skills will prepare them well for the world of work.
Times on the left of the sheet should extend beyond the ‘school day’, to plan for any work that should be completed. Also, have your child put in any sports or recreational activities they are involved in. Please ensure your child gets out of the house and into the fresh air!
Finally, put in ‘free’ time when they can play games, if they wish, (on the second User Profile you open for them) and give them access to their friends. Designating bedtime is a ‘must’. Structure that on the Timetable too and remove devices until morning.
Finally, communicate frequently and at depth with your child about their day. Find out what was hard for them; what they mastered easily; what they need help with. Actually LOOK at what they completed and examine the quality.
Find them help if they need it, because studying independently, learning new things on your own, is a very, very hard job. For everyone. Especially when the subject may either be complex or of low interest.
If you need a Timetable template, or need you child to learn HOW TO STUDY feel free to contact me at smartstudying@gmail.com. You do not have to reinvent the wheel.
Boundaries and structure are the key. Habits take twenty-one days to create. The first three weeks are going to be the hardest, and the most significant.
