PTA/PTG

Focusing on the “Opt” in the “Opt-Out Movement”

Dianna Terrell Leave a comment

Like most others, I have had the good fortune to be alive and paying attention enough over the last ten years to bear witness to at least two major revolutions.

I never thought I would see the day when people could actually talk to other people with their wrist watch, and just last month the Supreme Court reaffirmed its’ commitment to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by safeguarding equal access to the institution of marriage. These are major changes – both of which were propelled by and, in turn, will have major implications for democracy.

Though not as long-in-the-making nor as groundbreaking, I’ve been watching the growing “Opt-Out” movement with a muted – but similar – enjoyment.

Is the Opt-Out Movement Truly a Movement?

The “Opt-Out” movement, where parents block schools from testing their children with high stakes standardized measures, is pretty fascinating. In a sense this small movement is akin to seeing hundreds of thousands of parents across the nation turn to each other with expressions of utter disbelief saying, “Wait … we can do that?”

For so long, parents have sent their children to school without asking many critical questions about what their children experience during the school day, including the decisions that administrators make about curriculum, or how data about their children’s performance on standardized tests are collected and used.

Parental disgruntlement has usually centered around their child’s new teacher, and concerns about particular “trouble-makers” in their child’s class. Research has shown over and over that some parents feel entitled to follow these conflicts through, while others feel disempowered or reluctant depending on their cultural or economic background. (See the book “Our Kids” by Robert Putnam or “Class in Schools” by Richard Rothstein for full descriptions of how this plays out.)

Regardless, disgruntlement is minor and scattered. Parents experience and deal with these conflicts in vacuum, and the conflicts experienced by many individuals separated by space and time could never be regarded as a movement. 

So, the recent uproar about the over use of standardized tests, and calls for opting children out of said tests, in contrast, seems to be something of a revolution in the way that parents understand their role in their children’s education.

Why We are Suddenly Concerned about Over-Testing

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) stipulated in 2002 that all children grades 3-8 & 10th or 11th be tested using a state-administered standardized test. The intent then was to reach “universal proficiency” on those standardized tests by 2014. So, all students in every state had to “pass” these standardized tests by 2014. This was an extraordinary lofty (read: unrealistic), but worthwhile goal.

Most states contracted to private companies to develop standardized tests, and the students’ tests were scored with the designation “Failing,” “Basic,” “Proficient” or “Advanced.” Students’ performances on those standardized tests were spread across the four designations. However, districts with pockets of poverty were more likely to have concentrations in the “Failing” and “Basic” categories, and districts with concentrated wealth and college-educated parents were more likely to be labeled “Proficient” and “Advanced.”

This gap in performance was predictable. Students have performed similarly on standardized tests since the national government started administering National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP – sounds like “nape”) in the 1960s. This gap in performance is the well-documented “achievement gap.”

Getting to “universal proficiency” by 2014, therefore, conveyed the expectation that states could close the achievement gap in 12 years. All schools had to show “adequate yearly progress” or “AYP” toward this goal of universal proficiency. If they didn’t, all sorts of penalties ensued. NCLB required standardized tests as the preferred way to track changes in student performance.

Testing Mania

As lofty as this goal was, when the data from these tests were crunched it became clear that NCLB and standardized tests weren’t closing the achievement gap.

Many very smart people decided that the tests were probably not very good measures of what we want students to learn. (Others decided it was probably the teachers’ fault, but let us leave that for another post.)

So, since the tests were to blame, a few powerful organizations set new guidelines about what American kids should be learning, resulting in the Common Core State Standards or CCSS. With little time to vet the standards, states adopted CCSS and implemented them in their schools.

Then, some very lucky private companies were contracted and got a whole lot of money to design new tests to measure whether students were mastering CCSS. Two tests, the PARCC test and the Smarter-Balanced or “SBAC” test were adopted by most states.

This year, our nation’s schoolchildren in grades 3-8 and 10th or 11th had the sad misfortune of “piloting” these new PARCC or SBAC tests while simultaneously phasing out their state’s old standardized tests. The result was dozens of school days (out of a 180-day school year) spent penciling in bubbles on Scantron sheets and/or clicking through items on the computer.

Add together the state standardized tests; the new, and considerably more challenging, SBAC or PARCC test; for most 10th or 11th grade students their AP test and PSAT or SAT test; and, perhaps their ACT or other college-entrance tests and it’s pretty clear that this year we tested the hell out of American schoolchildren.

Opting Out

This year, the number of parents who said “Thanks, but no thanks” (or more accurately, “Take your test and shove it!”)  to standardized tests exploded. 155,000 kids opted out of tests in New York alone.

As an education researcher, I lament the lost data. As a parent, I totally get it.

On the one hand, I know our nation’s children are over-tested. According to education expert, Linda Darling Hammond, we as a nation focus more on testing than any other country in the world. We have too many standardized assessments. Some of them generate meaningful data, but others not so much.

On the other hand, I know standardized tests are a source of information about student academic performance. Schools can use this data, but it’s typically used most by education researchers and the national government to help track (some would say exacerbate) the gap in performance between different segments of the American population.

This summer is really the first time that I have thought about it on a personal level, because this school year my oldest daughter is entering third-grade. That is to say, this school year marks the first time NCLB and yearly testing is a reality for me as a parent.

I also live in New Hampshire where our state’s new “parent trigger law“ allows parents to opt-out of any public school curriculum they deem inappropriate. Though our governor vetoed a bill that would allow parents to opt-out of standardized tests specifically, many of our state’s districts are allowing it. It’s probably only a matter of time before NH’s House and Senate override her veto, so I expect the Opt-Out debate to surface again in NH by winter.

My husband and I take parenting decisions on a case-by-case basis. If I had a child who experienced tremendous anxiety over tests no matter how valiant our efforts were to calm her, I would probably pull her out. In that case, the tests would do more harm than good. I defend parents’ rights to protect their children in these cases.

I also happen to think there is a massive level of hysteria around parents opting their children out of testing right now. I don’t judge them, they have their reasons.Their children might react more strongly to taking a test too, where my child doesn’t seem to register a difference between taking a standardized test and taking the teacher’s weekly spelling challenge. Yet, the hysteria overshadows the advantage of standardized testing, which is their power as a source of information and a diagnostic tool about how their child is learning. 

Finally, I hope that the parent veto rights bill isn’t overused in New Hampshire. I have many misgivings about parents telling schools regularly what should be in the curriculum. Parent vetoes convey a certain level of distrust in our teachers and schools and they are often used to prevent teachers from teaching things that are widely accepted by scientists to be true (e.g. evolution and climate change). 

For all of those reasons, we will have both of our children follow the standardized testing schedule in our district for now.

Opting-in: With Reservations & Just for Now

Even having thought through all of this and made a decision (for this year at least), I will do several things to parent my kids through standardized tests.

First, and most importantly, I will make sure my daughter understand these tests are not high stakes for her and don’t measure her intelligence. Standardized tests are not tests of intelligence, and just to be clear, intelligence tests (IQ) aren’t even tests of fixed intelligence. 

Any standardized test should be treated as a diagnostic tool at most, which can help us identify areas where we can support children’s learning more, and areas where they are already demonstrating mastery of skills and content. So, I’ll try not incite further hysteria in my child when I talk to her about the tests. I hope her teachers and building principals do the same – as far as I can tell they do.

I will definitely be examining the testing results when they are returned, and in this manner the personal and the professional overlap for me since I have the training to make sense of test reports (which don’t make sense to many parents). This information can be useful to parents, teachers and schools, but test makers need to do more in the way of making test results meaningful for all.

I also plan to be very active in the school district to make sure that the standardized testing results are NOT used in a high stakes or inappropriate manner. Standardized test results have been used inappropriately in New Hampshire’s recent past as a result of NCLB, and continue to be used inappropriately in other states now (e.g. as a punitive measure for districts failing to meet AYP or as a measure of teaching quality – both so wrong). NH has a waiver from NCLB so these misuses are unacceptable. 

In short, my children will take the tests for now, because standardized tests are a useful tool when used appropriately, they are no-stakes for my children in New Hampshire, and I can parent my kids through the experience.

Focusing on the “OPT”

But, I have the option to change my mind and opt-out, and therein lies the sentiment that makes me a true geek for democracy and overjoys the social studies teacher still very much alive inside of me.

The Opt-Out movement is a movement, and as such has the power to get more parents involved in very important day-to-day educational decisions. It also has the added benefit of bringing the “public” back into “public education,” because people more so than ever before in recent history, seem to be paying attention to what’s going on in our nation’s schools.

So when the frenzy kicks back in again in the upcoming school year and people are debating who is opting in, who is opting out and who doesn’t really care one way or another… know there is at least one person in the nation who’s happy simply that people are recognizing there’s an “opt” in the discussion.

The children are watching and learning that civic participation in our nation’s schools is a democratic and meaningful act.

Improving your child’s academic performance – a question a day

Dianna Terrell Leave a comment

In a recent post, “Where are the good schools?” I joked that you can tell a lot about the quality of a school by noting “parent lingering” at pick up and drop-off, but did you know that schools often gather data on the amount of parent volunteerism in their district?

This is for the simple reason that parent engagement is linked to student achievement. So, the number of hours logged by parent volunteers can quickly become a bragging right.

Parent Engagement Boosts Student Achievement

Consider these findings about parent engagement highlighted by the NEA:

Regardless of family income or background, students with involved parents are more likely to:

  • Earn higher grades and test scores, and enroll in higher-level programs
  • Be promoted to the next grade, pass their classes, and earn credits
  • Attend school regularly
  • Have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school
  • Graduate and go on to postsecondary education

These findings are hard to dismiss, and many state governments, national agencies and foundations are working to improve parent engagement in schools.

Meanwhile, studies exploring the relationship between parent engagement and student achievement are gaining prominence. Take, for example, this study that points to specific behaviors of parents (“monitoring, warmth, and autonomy support”) as assets in preparing adolescents for career and college.

Parent Involvement Doesn’t Take Much More Time

Being an “involved” parent can mean many different things, and I know what you’re probably thinking: How can I find any more time to do that? You might also worry that you don’t have much to offer a classroom full of ten-year-olds.

Trust me, volunteering in schools doesn’t have to be an on-going major commitment to reap the benefits. In fact, things you’re probably already doing – like staying on top of all of the paperwork that comes home from your children’s teachers, or consistently monitoring your child’s homework habits – both constitute very important types of parental engagement.

In other words, simply showing an interest in what they do during the school day, from kindergarten through high school, leads to gains in achievement. Knowing details about what goes on during your child’s school day, and learning some of the “language of the school” leads to higher quality questions and conversations during the school year.

With a quick skim of a teacher’s communications home, you can replace your standard questioning attempt, “How was your day?” with a better developed question that will lead to more information from your child like, “I read that you’re learning about compound words. I thought of one… ICE-CREAM! Is that a compound word?” Better yet, provide an incorrect example and see if your child can correct you and explain why you’re wrong – that will really get the gears going!

Similar to giving your children good, high quality feedback on what they do well and what they need work on – as I addressed in this post – knowing details about what your kids are doing in school lead to higher quality conversation and point to clear avenues for you to engage in your children’s education. You’re creating a situation where you’re helping your kids practice their skills, you’re showing them your intellectual curiosity, and you’re subtly letting them know that you actually communicate with your kid’s teacher! It’s clear how all of this effort leads to the type of academic improvement we typically see with the children of engaged parents.

So perhaps you don’t want to download and read EduTopia’s full guide for parents on engaging in schools, and maybe you don’t want to sign up with the PTA or PTG for something that requires your attention once a week for the whole school year. Rest assured knowing if this type of thing is the best you can do then you’re already doing pretty well.

More Ways to Connect and Engage

If you’re at a loss for how you can contribute to your children’s school as a volunteer, Larry Ferrlazzo posts bi-monthly or more frequent updates that consolidate information on boosting parent engagement in school here. Many of these posts center on what groups of dedicated parents are doing together to create change in high need districts, as is the case in Baltimore, Maryland. If you’re not on board with the group effort, the National Department of Education released a “Parent Checklist” outlining questions and resources that parents can use as their children head back into the classrooms in August. Some questions parents might ask their children’s teachers include:

Quality: Is my child getting a great education?

  • How will you keep me informed about how my child is doing on a regular basis? How can we work together if my child falls behind?
  • Is my child on grade level, and on track to be ready for college and a career? How do I know?

Ready for Success: Will my child be prepared to succeed in whatever comes next?

  • How will you measure my child’s progress and ability in subjects including reading, math, science, the arts, social and emotional development, and other activities?
  • How much time will my child spend preparing for and taking state and district tests? How will my child’s teacher and I know how to use the results to help my child make progress?
  • Are the meals and snacks provided healthy? How much time is there for recess and/or exercise?

Great Teachers: Is my child engaged and learning every day?

  • How do I know my child’s teachers are effective?
  • How much time do teachers get to collaborate with one another?
  • What kind of professional development is available to teachers here?

Equity and Fairness: Does my child, and every child at my child’s school or program, have the opportunity to succeed and be treated fairly?

  • How does the school make sure that all students are treated fairly? (For example, are there any differences in suspension/expulsion rates by race or gender?)
  • Does the school offer all students access to the classes they need to prepare them for success, including English language learners and students with special needs (for example, Algebra I and II, gifted and talented classes, science labs, AP or IB classes, art, music)?

One thing that I would add to this list for parents of adolescents is to acknowledge your “trouble threshold” grade. Many students, when asked, can probably point to a specific grade (for my parents it seemed to be around a B) anything below which triggers parent involvement… you know, the troubling kind (according to your kid). Studies have found that parents’ “trouble threshold grades” become their children’s threshold grade, and that “threshold grades” differ among families based on cultural and ethnic traditions.

So while a parent must strike a balance between becoming that helicopter parent, by over-protecting and over-directing their children through school, there are plenty of good conversations to have with your child’s teacher this year and plenty of ways to be involved. You’ll note that most good conversations begin with a question.

Posts in the cooker… Bringing research to the foreground

Dianna Terrell Leave a comment

I have scores of ideas of things I’d like to blog about, but here’s the shortlist. If you’re interested in knowing the history behind features of schools, or what the “research says” about schools, please comment with your suggestions!

Cheers – Dianna

  1. What does it mean to “Opt-Out” of a standardized test, and should I do it?
  2. How do schools in different states stack up?
  3. Louis C.K. broke my heart when he called out the Common Core
  4. Is homework for kids or their parents?
  5. LGBTQ kids ARE our kids
  6. What’s the deal with 7 AM start times?
  7. Is there really a teacher shortage?
  8. My child’s report card makes no sense to me (& competency based grading)
  9. What’s the point of “group work?”
  10. Why is the site called “Our Kids?”
  11. Calling a truce in the mommy wars.
  12. Talking about American race relations with kids – a white momma’s work.
  13. The manner in which teachers are portrayed in the media is killing the profession.
  14. My friend says her kids are “totally average,” and I admire that attitude.
  15. The shocking reality about how few kids finish college.
  16. College shouldn’t be “four years at Hogwarts” (truthfully put by Martin O’Malley)
  17. The U.S. is actually not doing badly in international ratings – it just depends on how you slice the data.
  18. Should we lengthen the school year?
  19. Reforms that might work in our schools.
  20. How parents can support schools.
  21. Things *not* to say at the parent-teacher conference & questions to ask.
  22. Decoding the standardized test report
  23. The obesity epidemic and school lunch programs.
  24. The anti-Vax movement and CA’s new mandate for measles vaccine.

Why do schools start at dark-o’clock in the morning?

Dianna Terrell 2 Comments

Our children’s sleep habits change almost immediately after school lets out for the summer.

It doesn’t matter how much sleep they’ve gotten or when they went to bed. One or both of them can saw logs through 7:30 am – no problem. This is, of course, in stark contrast to a typical school morning when we have to drag them both out of bed about an hour and a half earlier.

During the school year, I find myself missing the toddler days when they would bound out of bed at 5:45 am (and that moment at 5:46 am, when you realize you’re not going back to sleep, is hard to miss).

I’m not too different from my children. To be honest, one of the reasons I left high school teaching was because I found it emotionally draining to get up early enough to be prepared, functional and verbal at 7:25 am. This was the time that the “warning bell” rang at the high school and class began.

So let’s back this up: To be in my classroom at 7:25 am, I had to be at the copy machine at 6:55, at the computer making printouts at 6:45, in the parking lot at 6:30 (it was a big campus), leaving my house at about 5:30 (no later than 5:45).

To be in the classroom at the ready at 7:25, I regularly set my alarm for 4:45 am, and that’s assuming I knew exactly what I would be teaching the next morning before I went to bed.

Even after all that effort, it’s worth mentioning that if there’s one way to kill a love of learning in our nation’s adolescents, it’s talking to them about Jacksonian Democracy at 7:30 am on a Monday in February. Relatedly, if there’s one way to kill a love of teaching in an adult, it’s asking them to ignite in their students a love of learning at this obscenely early hour. 

Why do schools start so early?

In any effort to reform our nation’s schools – even something as simple as start times – we need to first uncover why it it is the way it is. Many folks know that the academic year was initially built around a farming schedule and leaves a wide berth during the long summer months for children to help their parents on the farm. I know how much you all rely on your children to bring in the harvest, so I’ll leave that one alone for now. Anyway, none of that history really explains the typical start time for a school day, and that’s because early start times are a relatively recent phenomenon.

Most studies attribute early start times to the increasing role that extra-curricular activities (e.g. sports and clubs) play in the lives of the American adolescent. Add to that the need to coordinate game schedules with other districts, busing schedules for all of the district’s children, complex teaching schedules that often have multiple teachers sharing expensive resources, and managing specialists’ schedules (i.e. art, music, phys ed.), and it becomes pretty clear why the easiest solution seems to be to start the school day earlier.  One look at a building principal’s “master schedule” might elicit some sympathy in even the staunchest opponents of early start times.

Despite the rationale behind the shift in school start times, there is overwhelming medical consensus about what it does to adolescents. Research has demonstrated time and time again how backward these start times are, and the toll it takes on adolescents’ physical safety, emotional well-being, and academic success.

The negative consequences of early start times

Many studies published in medical journals acknowledge how early start times work in cross-purposes to the naturally late “sleepy time” for adolescents. Several studies note that adolescents don’t produce enough melatonin to feel sleepy until about 11 pm. So, it follows that “waking up an adolescent at 7 am is the equivalent of waking up an adult at 4 am.” I would add that most kids need to be in school at 7 am, not just waking up, so I would correct their statement to read, “waking an adolescent at 6 am is the equivalent of waking up an adult at 3 am.”

Either way you slice it, it is as unappealing to me as it probably is to you.

It’s not simply a matter of interrupting adolescent sleep cycles. One study found that sleep deprivation from early start times played a role in growing obesity rates and risk behavior in adolescents. This makes plenty of good sense to me, since I regularly see the link between exhaustion and risk behaviors in my own child. The clearest indication that our five-year-old is overtired is the rapid increase in her total defiance of our basic and most commonplace rules.

Early start times aren’t just inconvenient or annoying or impossible to get your body used to (owing, again, to the fact these are physiologically appropriate cycles). Early start times increase daytime sleepiness, depression and caffeine use in adolescents. At the end of the day adolescents are children – just older – and children + caffeine = negative health consequences.

Let us try to forget for a moment that later start times result in adolescents who are better rested, less moody and depressed, less stimulant-addicted and less likely to crash their cars. Let’s just push that aside and consider this: Later start times have the impact that decades of school reform have struggled to produce – they actually improve student academic achievement.

Everyone say it with me… “DUH!”

Later start times improve academic achievement

I think what I am saying here is that it’s a little easier for an adolescent to understand Jacksonian Democracy at 10:30 am than it is at 7:30 am. Most of this has to do with the very simple idea that it’s much easier to learn when you’re conscious. Another very simple thing is that kids who are well rested register fewer absences during the school year, and they even come to school on time. It doesn’t boggle the mind to understand how both of those behaviors lead to significant increases in academic performance. It’s not rocket science (though it is neuroscience).

So, the research on adolescents is incontrovertible. What about younger children? While very few studies exist on the impact of earlier start times for elementary-aged students, one of those few studies suggests that younger children don’t experience a significant impact in their total sleep time as a result of earlier start times. (Remember your toddler waking you up at 5:45 am on Saturday?)

Let’s also acknowledge the fact that younger children require less prep-time to get ready for school. There is very little social stigma for a child under a certain age – I imagine the cut off to be about eight – to literally roll out of bed, eat breakfast and go to school. Beyond that age, the time it takes to get ready in the morning grows longer and longer. We should be delaying start times for adolescents just to give them en0ugh time to perfect their emo makeup and manage their Bieber swoosh.

Some alternative models to the “dark-o’clock” start

So, why not just reverse the schedules so younger children are headed to school first and older children catch the bus after them? Some would voice concern here over their five year old standing in the dark at the bus stop. I would be among them, because we can’t settle for a model that endangers younger children.

But let’s be clear, if we can create a whole system of time zones so people on trains can remain diurnal, and if nearly our whole nation can change their clocks in unison twice a year, surely we don’t need to have our adolescents bearing the brunt in this totally wrong model. We are pretty smart people, there has to be a way to adjust that master schedule.

Aside from reversing the busing schedule and school start times between elementary and high schools, we might also consider a full-switch to athletic training in the morning. I would prefer to run two miles in the morning in September versus the mid-afternoon (the hottest hours of the day). These are only a few ideas.

Take it up with your PTA

An organization called StartSchoolLater.net chronicles the success stories that many districts have experienced in establishing later school start times, and every effort takes a slightly different angle to achieve success. You’d be surprised how many districts have explicitly adjusted their schedules in response to the overwhelming empirical evidence about adolescent sleep deprivation.

Parents can be pretty powerful in this regard if we stop aiming our outrage and exhaustion toward our parenting partners and start directing it in a focused way toward the people who can impact some real change. This would be an appropriate initiative for a well-organized PTA/PTG to appeal to local school boards.

Figure out what it would take. While you’re fighting the fight, just keep in mind the people that have to deal with that crazy master schedule. They’re not ignoring research out of malice, they’re dealing with the tough reality of managing multiple and often conflicting schedules. We’re all maniacs during the school year, and a special kind of maniac in the morning. This change is long overdue and research has shown it is worth the effort.

Do Tiger Moms Hibernate over Summer Break?

Dianna Terrell 2 Comments

I visited a friend who has a friend who has a house on Martha’s Vineyard for a work retreat, and I couldn’t stop myself from sneering a little at the mommas getting on the boat for summer vacation. You know, like, the whole summer vacation?

(Let’s be honest, I should have tried a little harder to stop myself.)

You ask, am I jealous? YES. Totally. 100%. No denying.

For the most part, though, these aren’t the “Tiger Moms” we’ve been hearing about through the years. These are moms who are looking forward to relaxing time at their island home. And though I know very little about what happens in the lives of children who spend the summer months at their other house (yes, still jealous), it’s likely that their time is spent in very different ways than the children of Tiger Moms.

Tiger Moms, grrrrrrrrr. These are women who are dedicated at extraordinary levels to enriching the lives of their children through consistent exposure to intellectual activity; encouraging them to practice Bach’s Chaconne from Partita in d minor until their fingers are swollen; traveling hours, with free library passes in hand, to the Bodies exhibit at the Museum of Science; first in line in January to sign up for the summer institute for the gifted and talented. 

While they do have critics, and boy do they have their critics…everywhere…, Tiger Moms are kicking my ass at parenting. And “NO!” they do not hibernate during summer months. That’s when they kick it into high gear like a Kentucky Derby race horse on the inside track. (I can picture them peeling away from me as I wave the cloud of dust from my eyes.)

Learning from the Tiger Momma – without the “hysteria”

You can learn something from everyone, and I think Tiger Moms have something going here. We know through decades of research that a very real phenomenon called summer learning loss plagues classroom teachers at the opening of every academic year.

This isn’t a hard concept to grasp as most of us vividly recall those early weeks of the school year walking through the school hallways in a haze, desperately trying to reset our circadian rhythms to the obscene hours that schools typically start, and feeling like we wanted to pound our heads against the wall because we know we knew that last year, but now – for the life of us – that learning seems to have disappeared.

Summer learning loss a real thing, and Tiger Cubs probably don’t deal with this phenomenon as acutely, so that’s a plus-one for the Tiger Mom. My own children, however, seem to be just fine and happy resting on their laurels through another episode of WildKratts (thank you very much). Yet, I know it’s worth taking a page from the Tiger Mom’s book.  What do I mean here?

Kids add important skills in the summer too

A lot of very important learning happens during the summer months. I stalwartly defend the summer vacation that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years – and not because I like my ten-month academic calendar (though it is nice to be a SAHM for two months). It is because we know through decades of research that critical to a child’s academic success is developing strong social and emotional skills (think grit, perseverance, patience, humility, tenacity to name only a few).

Summertime, as it turns out, is the perfect time for parents to work with their children to develop, strengthen and hone those crucial soft skills.

There are many ways that you can work with your kids on these skills. Step one would be to improve your feedback to your children. We are a nation obsessed with telling our kids they’ve done a “good job,” though it tells a child nothing about what was “good” about the “job” they did. Ergo, they may not realize when they’re repeating it or should repeat it.

Changing meaningless praise to meaningful feedback

An alternative is to name the behavior and and commend them on it. For example, imagine your child is having a difficult time piecing together the three dimensional homage to Mickey Mouse they’re creating from felt, tape and glue. (This scenario did just happen this morning. My daughter’s art unfolds on many planes.) You see them quelling their rage with the Elmers. After over an hour they create their…er…masterpiece. Instead of saying, “Good Job!,” you might say,” That was really frustrating, but you really stuck with it.” Or, “You had something in mind the whole time and you made it!”

If there’s one thing we know about offering praise to a child, there’s a way that leads to entitlement, and there’s a way that leads to motivation. These commendations acknowledge the child’s perseverance, not their “talents.”

I’m slowly learning the art of higher-quality feedback under the tutelage of our family’s favorite Kindergarten teacher – a women who’s been working with five-year-olds for over forty years. She would point you toward a great book by Adele Faber that helps you fill in the spaces when you don’t know how to respond to your child’s meltdown.

Getting gritty with it

Another soft skill worth developing is your child’s grit, which sounds peculiar and slightly machiavellian, but many athletic families parent this disposition to a science. Parenting your child’s ability to lose with grace is something that is often overlooked, and there are very real academic benefits when kids have a gritty outlook.

Finally, help your child learn some good old-fashioned self-restraint. This one is particularly difficult for me because short term allowances for indulgence tend to lead to more quiet-time in the house. Long-term, however, I know what happens when you over-indulge a child.

My seven year old was fascinated by this famous study that found that children who could put off eating a marshmallow with the promise of two marshmallows in the future were found to finish college at higher rates and were generally more successful in life. Viewing the video together also provided a good opportunity to introduce the notion of self-restraint.

Teachers need parents’ help with soft skills

Social and emotional skills are where kids (and teachers) need the most help from parents, because with an average student teacher ratio of 21:1 for elementary schools and 26:1 for secondary schools, your child’s teacher cannot patiently peel your kid off the ceiling – as the other kids watch – after she couldn’t calculate the correct least common denominator. (Don’t worry kid, I can’t remember how to do that either.)

These soft skills lead to clear academic bennies. And, anyway, wouldn’t it be nice to raise children who don’t kick, scream and stage a (usually public) hissy fit after losing a soccer match or game of “Go Fish?”

So while I won’t be making my children practice their (imaginary) cello, or complete pages of the district-endorsed workbooks to keep their academic skills sharp over the summer, I will be embracing my inner-fledgling-tiger-momma by working with my kids this summer on social grace and emotional intelligence. Let’s wish us all good luck on that!