Mid-Summer Check-in for Parents of School Aged Children
If you’re like me, you’re starting to feel that mid-summer conundrum of…what do I do with my kids for the rest of the summer after camps have ended and…oh my God how is school already around the corner? It’s a double edged sword of giddiness (finally back to school!) and alarm (wait, are we prepared for another school year to start?). There really are two different problems to address: what to do with them for the rest of the summer, and how to make sure that you set yourselves up for success in the school year. I can’t promise to have all the answers, but here are a few steps that we’ve taken in our household over the past week to make sure we maximize the remaining time of our short summer.
Pulse Check: First ask your kids, how are things going and what kinds of things would you like to do for the rest of the summer?
The other night over dinner I asked my two oldest daughters how their summer was going thus far. They spent the first half at a performing arts camp where they honed their musical, dance, and artistic skills to create weekly productions. This is their third year attending and we love both the atmosphere (everyone seems to know everyone, it feels like family) and the proximity (it takes place at the South Fulton Arts Center, right in our community). Both girls said that they enjoyed the camp, but unsurprisingly they’ve also enjoyed more the unstructured down time they’ve had at home. I made the case in a previous post for why unstructured free play time is critical to building kids creativity and innovation so I won’t rehash it here. But, hearing my girls say that they’ve enjoyed the mix of both structure and unstructured free time is affirmation.
When I asked them how they’d like to spend the remaining 4 weeks, they both had a lot of good ideas. They said things aligned to what we’ve already got planned such as traveling, spending time with extended family, etc. They also named a few things that we weren’t really thinking about, but are important to them (visiting six flags for example). We try to include them in decision making as much as possible when it comes to our family time so hearing their input helps as we plan out our schedule for the month of July/August.
Setting Expectations for the upcoming year: Ask your kids what would they like to accomplish next school year?
The biggest part of our dinner table conversation centered on the upcoming school year. I asked each of the girls what they were most looking forward to about the upcoming year, and what did they want to accomplish by the end of the year. It was essentially vision setting for the school year, except I wanted them to drive the conversation and build their sense of agency for owning this process.
Full disclosure/heavy caveat: I came into this convesation well prepared. Prior to our dinner I spent significant time reviewing their test results from the previous school year (benchmark results for reading and math) to understand their academic growth. Additionally, I spent time researching first and third grade standards for my rising first and third graders. I’ll dive into this process of interpreting data, researching standards, and choosing the right school in another post, but sufficed to say, there was a lot of information to sift through. It’s important to understand that the reason why I did all this was to simply have a clear picture of what was expected and how they performed relative to “other people’s bar”. This isn’t necessarily my bar, but it does inform where we start.
What I heard from my girls surprised me in some ways. My oldest daughter, an academically gifted student, admitted that she was nervous about the upcoming year because of…wait for it…the test. Can you imagine, already at the age of 8, her perspective of school is framed around a test that arguably has nothing to do with her value or growth as a student. As a parent I was crushed because this flies in the face of everything I believe about education. After a little coaxing and conversation about what she’s good at, what she cares about, and what learning really is about, she finally showed some enthusiasm for her own goal this year: writing and publishing 3 books of her own (she’s a gifted writer and illustrator). I’m excited to share this big goal with her teacher, along with a plan to grow her other strengths and passions.
For my first grader, our social butterfly, I was surprised about her response but for a different reason. She said that this year she wants to become a better reader so that she can read chapter books. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an admirable goal: she wants to read X number of chapter books on her own this year (we’ll come up with a number and tracking system later). I was just surprised because well, admittedly she’s the student that we have to coax, bribe, and/or threaten to do homework. And yet, becoming a more proficient reader is her goal for herself? I just wasn’t expecting her to choose an academic goal.
I wondered where this came from. Perhaps watching her older sister (who loves to read), has rubbed off on her. Or, perhaps she sees reading as a tool towards independence (a noble motivation). Either way, regardless of how she got there, I’m proud that she arrived at this conclusion on her own.
For both of them, our next step will be to sit down and figure out our plan for reaching their goals this year. We’ll review the progress they made last year, and we’ll have a healthy discussion about why their personal goals matter just as much if not more than any performance goals that they will encounter from school. I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous when I started down the path of planning for the launch of another school year. Now, I’m still nervous, but at least I feel a bit more prepared.
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