Connections Academy Blog, Virtual Learning Connections

When you’re busy acting as both parent and online school Learning Coach, you may wonder if your house will ever be clean and tidy again. Something as ambitious as spring cleaning may seem like an impossible dream!

To accomplish your household goals, why not involve your family in projects like spring cleaning? Your children can learn from your example. By enlisting their help, you can teach valuable lessons about planning, setting goals and priorities, responsibility, and teamwork. Here are a few tips and ideas to get you started on the right foot:

• Discuss the Plan – Before you begin, talk to your children about what you are doing, what it will accomplish, and how they can help. Using a whiteboard or large sheet of paper, make a big checklist of all the cleaning tasks so everyone can clearly see what needs to be done. Check off tasks as they are completed. If you plan to weed out old items, give children some autonomy by letting them choose a few things in their rooms that are “off-limits” and won’t be touched, like a favorite box of action figures or collected rocks.
• Establish Rewards – Naturally, you’ll want to reward your child for hard work completed with your words of praise and gratitude. But you may also want to consider an appropriate incentive when a goal is achieved to keep motivation high, like a favorite meal, a trip to the zoo, or a new video game. The bigger the accomplishment, ...

Kids may not listen to what you say, but they almost always notice what you do! If your family’s lifestyle shows a commitment to the importance of education, you can strongly influence how your child feels about school and learning. Here are a few suggestions for how you can lay a foundation for lifelong learning—online and offline:

• Incorporate family values. Try to tie your educational values  to family ones, so your child will see the two as linked. For example, make sure your child has the opportunity to see parents and other adults conduct research and read to learn something new. If education is important not just for school but also for the everyday lives of people in your family, it strengthens the desire to learn.


• Relate it to the real world. One of the best ways to get your child engaged in a lesson is to show him or her how to use the concepts/skills in real life. Having a context for what is being learned is the perfect way to show children why it’s important to advance their education.


• Encourage questions. The more questions your child asks, the more invested he or she is in the material being learned. Don’t forget that you can use questions to generate conversation, drive home an important point, or elaborate on a critical concept. Questions lead to discussion, and discussion leads to a richer overall understanding.


• Celebrate little victories. Your child’s earning a great score on a big exam isn’t the ...

How do you answer “Mom, please just solve this one math problem for me”? As a parent, you might really want to just relieve your child’s stress and anxiety by providing the answer, but as a Learning Coach, you know the math problem must be solved by the student. So, what are the keys to smoothly shifting from a parent-child relationship to a Learning Coach-student relationship? Throughout my years of homeschooling and virtual schooling, I have found that discipline and communication are critical. It’s so important to set clear rules and boundaries in order to establish a cooperative and joyful household.

Create and discuss your rules at the beginning of school and review them periodically throughout the year to keep students focused on completing schoolwork successfully at home.

Here are some rules that have worked for me and that might help you with establishing a winning school-at-home routine too:

1. Consistently be the Learning Coach during the school day.
   Let your students know that besides being their mom or dad, you are also the Learning Coach and that you will answer any questions and help the best you can while they are working on their virtual school lessons. However, be careful to not give away answers or solve entire problems for them. Instead, help your child become an autonomous online learner.
   
   
2. Be clear about rules and consequences.
   If your child previously attended a different school, ask him or her to tell you some of the rules, and ...

I just read a new study by Harvard Professor Nancy Hill concluding that parents’ helping children with their homework does not help them do well in school (article by Deborah Blagg, 2009). Wait a second, I thought, that is what good parents do! My wife and I take turns working with our three children on their homework because we assumed that our efforts would help them succeed in school and beyond. I guess if the world always worked as we expected, we wouldn’t need research.

So if “homework help” isn’t really helping, what should we be doing to ensure that our children are successful in school and in life? According to Professor Hill, volunteering (e.g., PTA, helping out in the classroom) helps a little, and educational activities (e.g., trips to the library or a museum) also can’t hurt, but what really can make a difference is our ability to connect children’s schoolwork to their life’s work. Hill writes, “Our study shows that helping children understand the value and utility of education correlates well with higher achievement levels in middle school and high school.” Children need to understand that mastering their times tables, reading Shakespeare, and learning the state capitals all have a connection to higher education, meaningful work, and ultimately a good life. If you can convince them of that, then they will get their homework done on their own—and you will just need to get out of the way.

So how do you do this? Hill’s analysis ...