Parenting

Credit recovery is used to explain a wide variety of educational strategies and programs that give high school learners who have failed a class the chance to redo coursework or retake a course through alternate means, thereby avoiding failure and earning educational credit.

Online credit recovery was introduced over a decade ago, and it has since become a trend in education and a cash cow for education companies. School districts have experienced soaring graduation rates, leaving companies competing to sell virtual courses to districts across the nation.

The problem is that credit recovery courses lack quality control. Typically the content is not rigorous, and, according to critics, these courses serve as a poor substitute for in-class instruction. In a rush to raise graduation rates, schools put the learners who most need educator intervention the most in front of a computer screen, leaving them to their devices.

In some cases, learners are being “pushed through the system” and earning educational credit for having passed mediocre substitutes for the real thing. Also, a credit-recovery program may or may not be well aligned with the course’s learning expectations or assignments that a learner has failed.

Some credit-recovery options may be customized to address the distinct learning needs of a specific learner, some may consist of intensive oversight and support from an educator, and some may be hybrids—learners may work part of the time with an educator or specialist.

Also, online programs usually provide highly detailed info that teachers would not obtain in a traditional educational setting. For instance, software applications may track precisely how long learners worked through a problem or how many attempts it took a learner to complete a learning activity—data that teachers may use to identify specific learner-learning needs or deficits.

There is more good news; competency-based credit recovery programs, in which learners must show mastery of a subject to enroll, are beneficial. These programs, based on mastery instead of completion, show a positive direction for online credit recovery.

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Accommodations are tools or processes that gives equal access to the teaching and learning process for learners with disorders. Kids with cognitive challenges often face barriers to learning. For instance, if your kid is hyperactive they may not be able to sit still long enough to do math problems. If they have reading issues, they may struggle to learn history from a traditional textbook. Fortunately, there are changes in the class—called accommodations—that can remove these barriers.

Accommodations Defined

Accommodations are alterations that remove obstacles and provide your kid with equal access to learning. Accommodations don’t change what your kid is learning. Rather, they change how your kid is learning.

Here’s a classic example. Let’s say your kid is taking an American history class, but they struggle with reading. As an accommodation, the educator lets them listen to an audiobook version of the textbook.

By utilizing an audiobook, they can learn history without their reading issues getting in the way. This has removed a barrier to their learning.

Accommodations don’t change what your kid is expected to know or learn. They don’t lower expectations. Your kid may utilize an audiobook in American history, but they’d still be expected to learn about events like the Civil War. And they still must finish all assignments and take exams just like their peers. The accommodation simply helps them work around their challenges.

This is what makes accommodations distinct from modifications. A modification changes what your kid is expected to know or learn. For instance, in American history, a modification may be that a kid only needs to learn half of the textbook’s content.

Forms of Accommodations

Accommodations work at an optimal level when they target a key barrier or challenge. For instance, for the kid who can’t sit still to do the math, an accommodation may be frequent breaks. For the kid who struggles to write out answers on tests, an accommodation may be to give answers verbally. The accommodation matches the need.

Here are four categories of accommodations for distinct needs.

• Presentation: An alteration in the way information is presented. Example: Letting a kid listen to audiobooks instead of reading printed text.
• Response: An alteration in the way a kid finishes assignments or tests. Example: Providing a keyboard to a kid who struggles with handwriting when they write an essay.
• Setting: A. alteration in the environment where a kid learns. Example: Allowing a kid with ADHD to take a test in a separate room with fewer distractions.
• Timing and scheduling: An alteration to the time a kid has for a task. Example: Providing extra time on homework assignments for a kid who has a slow processing speed.

Requesting Accommodations for Your Child

If you think accommodations may help your kid, talk to their educator. Often, the educator may agree to informal supports. These simple changes don’t mandate paperwork. For example, it is easy for the educator to move your kid’s seat away from a noisy class door that’s distracting.

If your kid needs bigger changes, however, you may want to seek formal accommodations. Under federal law, kids with disorders have the right to equal access to learning. This means accommodations for their disorders, which can include cognitive challenges. To exercise this right, you must request that the school assess your kid.

The evaluation results can mean an IEP or a 504 plan for your kid. You and the school decide what accommodations to write into the plan. Legally this must also cover any accommodations on state tests.

However, just because an IEP or a 504 plan lists accommodations doesn’t mean they’re always followed in the class. It’s still essential to check in with the educator. And it’s essential to talk with your kid about how the accommodations are working.

Schools are open to providing accommodations. The larger challenge is choosing the right accommodations and keeping track of which ones are most helpful.

If accommodation is in place, but your kid isn’t utilizing it, find out why. If your kid gets accommodations on state tests, it’s essential to utilize them regularly in class. This helps them get familiar with the accommodations.

Accommodations Away From the Classroom

Cognitive challenges don’t just create challenges in school. They also affect life outside of school. That’s why accommodations also exist outside the class. Instead of allowing an equal opportunity to learn, they provide an equal opportunity to be involved.

Accommodations can apply to many activities and events. You may see them implemented in driver’s tests, the workplace, summer camps, sports clubs, and even Six Flags.

Some of these accommodations are given informally. During and away from the school, kids with disorders have a legal right to reasonable accommodations.

As a parent, your biggest concerns are your child’s health, safety, and education. When it’s time for them to begin kindergarten, you will have to start deciding what type of school your child will attend. If you decide to go with your local public schools, you will want to know the school district your home is located or “zoned” in and what elementary, middle, and high school they will attend.

This is very important because if you have bought a home in a subpar area with a sub-par school district, your child’s education will most likely be substandard and so will the environment they grow up in. That’s why most people think about these things before they start having kids and purchasing a house.

If you are wondering what school district your home is currently located in, here are some sites that can help. In most instances, you must input your address and receive the name of the school district you are zone for and the individual elementary, middle, and high school.

1. Great Schools

https://www.greatschools.org/school-district-boundaries-map/

2. Niche

https://www.niche.com/k12/schools-near-you/?center=-79.98065150000002,40.431337657622095

In authoritative parenting, the parent expects to be constantly acknowledged while making specific demands of the child, which the parent thinks must be met. While this parenting style has the parent’s actual presence and warmth in the child’s life as an advantage, such a parent is likely to need the child to rise up to the standards created for them. Additionally, in this type of parenting style, there is an imposition of expectations and boundaries.

Many children do well under authoritative parenting. Most of the children raised in this manner tend to express characteristics such as independence, collaborativeness, warmth, proficiency, and self-confidence. With their excellent social skills, they often end up being very assertive, intellectually brilliant, and productive, as well as fully immersed in beneficial activities.

They have also been noticed to maintain a clean bill of mental health and aren’t typically inclined towards the use of drugs, alcohol, or exhibition of violence.

Authoritative parenting is about maintaining a healthy balance and changes from one family to another and even from one kid to another.

Here’re the key benefits of authoritative parenting in detail.

Secure attachment: Authoritative parents are listeners and nurturers. They create a space where the kid feels safe and secure. This kind of relationship is called secure attachment. These kids also have more self-confidence, higher self-esteem, and are friendlier.

Better coping skills: Everybody deals with frustration, sadness, and anger at some point. Yet, people also learn how to deal with these emotions to regulate their feelings and behavior. Emotional regulation is something that can be learned. According to research, kids of authoritative parents have better emotional regulatory skills. The probable reason behind this is these parents encourage and guide their kids to solve problems when stressful situations arise. They teach the kids the ways to cope instead of removing obstacles for them. These kids tend to be better problem-solvers because of their ability to cope and self-regulate.

Better academic performance: Authoritative parents are supportive of and invested in their kids’ schooling. They keep a close eye on their kid’s homework and grades. When it’s possible, they remain present at school meetings and events. Their expectations in school and at home are consistent but age-appropriate and reasonable. One study found that college GPAs were moderately higher in students with “high authoritative” parents than those with “low authoritative” parents.

Good behavior: Authoritative parents aren’t strict disciplinarians. However, they do set restrictions for their kids and provide the right consequences for not following the rules. As a result, their kids are likely to be more cooperative and may demonstrate better behavior than kids raised by authoritarian or permissive parents.

This parenting style captures parents who have a high response rate towards their children, without a correspondingly high demand level from the children. While they are always present in the children’s lives and show an abundance of love, they rarely create/enforce boundaries or rules and are not inclined to discipline the children.

It isn’t rare to find kids of permissive parents who struggle with maintaining self-control or good self-esteem, and this can usually be traced back to the paucity of parental guidance and boundaries while growing up. These kids may sadly act entitled or demand their way through life. In addition, they have low expectations of themselves, so they may be poor achievers and engage in risky decision-making/behavioral tendencies.

Permissive parents usually don’t regulate or monitor their kids. As a result, these kids tend to struggle with self-control, leading to many negative outcomes. Some of the major ones include:

Poor academic performance: Permissive parents don’t monitor their kids’ studying habits. Therefore, their kids have less self-discipline. These parents also don’t set a goal for their kids to strive for or demand their kids to perform. As a result, these kids tend to have poor academic performance.

Aggressive and more impulsive: Permissive parents don’t control their kids’ behavior. Therefore, their kids aren’t much aware of the boundaries of acceptable behavior. They also have more behavioral problems and exhibit worse impulse control. When facing stressful situations, they’re more likely to resort to showing aggression.

More prone to substance use and delinquency: Some studies suggest that kids raised by permissive parents are more likely to engage in substance or alcohol use and misconduct.

Poor ability to self-regulate: Emotional regulation isn’t something people are born with. It’s a learned skill. Because permissive parents’ kids are left to regulate their own behavior, emotions, and activities at a young age, they’re likely to have more difficulties self-regulating.

Here’re some strategies parents can utilize to turn things around.

·         Parents should create a list of household rules. Children need to clearly understand their parents’ expectations to know how they’re supposed to behave.

·         Parents need to be consistent and firm but still loving. They should help the children understand why the rules are important by providing enough explanations and feedback but still ensure that consequences are in place.

·         Parents have to ensure that their kids know the penalty of breaking the rules. Guidelines are purposeless unless there’s some kind of consequence for not following them. Losing privileges and time-outs are logical consequences for breaking the rules.

The neglectful parenting style features parents who are not involved in the lives of their kids. They are neither demanding nor responding to these kids and are usually emotionally unavailable. With very little guidance provided to these kids, they are left by themselves with no expectations required of them. Many times, the reason for this sort of parenting is that the parents are too absorbed by their own life challenges and are unable to look beyond those to even see the needs of their kids. They might even try to avoid the kids knowingly.

The products of this parenting style are socially inhibited kids who are more likely than others to engage in substance abuse. These kids might also be fearful about their absence of familial support structure and might respond to their family trauma by pushing away anyone who wants to get close to them.

It’s important to note that neglectful parenting (also known as uninvolved parenting) isn’t generally a conscious choice. It can happen when parents become too involved with their work and find little energy or time to focus on their kids. This can trigger a disconnect that hurts their relationship, where they become isolated from one another. Sometimes, this style develops when the parents have been raised by uninvolved parents themselves or go through mental health issues that prevent developing any kind of emotional attachment.

Signs of neglectful parents include the following:

·         Whether it’s work, a social life without the children, or other problems or interests, neglectful parents remain preoccupied with their own affairs – so much so they’re unresponsive to their kids’ needs and make little time for them. Everything else comes before the children, and in some instances, parents may outright reject or neglect their children.

·         For many people, an emotional attachment between the parent and the child occurs naturally. But in the case of neglectful parenting, this bond isn’t automatic or instinctual. The parents feel a disconnect that severely restricts the limit of nurturing and affection they extend to their kids.

·         Due to a lack of affection, neglectful parents aren’t interested in their kids’ school work, events, or activities. They may skip kids’ sports games or don’t show up for PTA meetings.

·         Neglectful parents typically lack a discipline style. Therefore, unless the kid’s behavior affects them, they don’t generally offer any type of correction. They allow the kids to act the way they want to. And they don’t get upset when their kids perform poorly in school or other activities.

This term is used to explain the dominant approach to parenting which a parent typically uses. Fathers and mothers should ensure that their parenting style is supporting healthy development and growth because the way they interact with their kids and how they discipline the children will influence them for the rest of their lives. Parenting styles are distributed in four common categories: authoritarian, uninvolved, permissive, and authoritative. These styles vary in several areas, including discipline style, nurturance, communication, and expectations.

Here’re brief overviews of each parenting style.

Authoritarian parenting: Authoritarian parents are often considered disciplinarians. They follow a strict discipline style without much room for negotiation. Punishment is common in this parenting style, and communication is mainly one way, from parent to kid. Authoritarian parents usually have high expectations from their kids with limited flexibility.

Uninvolved parenting: Uninvolved parents give kids a lot of freedom and usually stay out of their way. Some may consciously choose to parent this way, while others are unsure of what to do or less interested in parenting. No specific discipline style is utilized in uninvolved parenting, and communication remains limited.

Permissive parenting: Permissive parents mostly let their kids do what they want to do and provide limited direction or guidance. They act more like friends than parents. These parents have no or limited rules and mostly let kids figure problems out on their own. Communication is open in permissive parenting, but parents let the kids decide for themselves instead of giving direction.

Authoritative parenting: Authoritative parents are nurturing and reasonable and set clear expectations. Kids with authoritative parents think for themselves and are likely to be self-disciplined. Parents clearly define the disciplinary rules and explain the reasons behind them. In authoritative parenting, communication is appropriate to the kid’s level of understanding and frequent.

Few parents fit neatly into a single parenting style. Instead, they raise kids using a combination of styles. Parents should think of the four parenting styles as a continuum instead of four different ways to parent. Ideally, parents should think about their kids and what they need from the parents at certain points in time. For instance, while a parent may not typically follow an authoritarian parenting style, there may be times in a kid’s life when that particular style is needed. While it becomes easier for the family when both parents follow the same parenting style, some research suggests that when at least one parent follows the authoritative style, it’s better for the kid than having both parents following the same, less effective style.

Are you looking for apps, tools, and resources that you can use to collaborate and communicate with your student’s parents? If so, we have you covered. Check out our list below. Let us know if there are any that we missed.

Appademic – Appademic is a school communication solution based in Australia that delivers notices, forms, communications, and more to mobile devices. It includes apps that can be deployed to communicate efficiently with parents; data collected by the app is stored securely.

1st Class GradeBook – The 1st Class GradeBook app provides modern grading features, including class and student activity, marks, QuickMarks, reports, and more. Teachers can also send reports to parents to keep them informed of their children’s progress. This app comes with a

ACTIVE Educate – ACTIVE Educate provides a complete, web-based registration and management solution for all types and sizes of classes and schools. Subjects covered include language, music, dance, art, vocational schools, and childcare centers. All the data is securely stored in the cloud; the app provides useful reports that give parents valuable insights into their child’s progress.

Brightwheel – Brightwheel is childcare, daycare, and preschool management software for your ECE program. Explicitly designed for directors and administrators at mid- to high-capacity centers, Brightwheel provides essential features, such as seamless attendance tracking, intuitive digital daily sheets and reports, paperless billing, robust parent communication support, and free training and technical support.

ChildPilot – ChildPilot provides streamlined administrative software and parent communication tools at a reasonable price. Websites that register with ChildPilot receive a personalized website that covers marketing services, a family portal for guardians and student registration, and a teacher portal. Tools include interactive calendar/schedules, online document storage, and personal and bulk messages; ChildPilot can be accessed from anywhere on any device.

Daycare Works – DayCare Works is a web-based solution for managing before/after-school programs, community education centers, and childcare operations. The software delivers everything you need, including registrations, secure payments, staff, and student schedules, attendance, billing, third-party subsidy payments, lead management, meal tracking, class ratios, family and staff portals, mobile apps, parent communications, assessments and more.

Hello Parent – This system provides schools with an easy solution for parent communication and allows parents to pay online. The system is parent-friendly. It has automated fee reminders with digitized fee receipts, which removes all manual intervention.  The system is hosted on a reliable cloud server on the cloud, and data is 128-bit SSL secured (bank-level security). ParentSquare– ParentSquare is a tool that increases parent involvement in school management and planning by providing a safe and secure platform for parent-educator correspondence. It helps to maintain a tightly knit, proactive group of educational stakeholders by offering two-way group messaging, private chats, area-wide alerts and announcements, and a simple user interface. ParentSquare brings parents from silent spectators in their children’s education to more active participants by establishing an open, two-way communication channel between them and their children’s educators.

KigaRoo – KigaRoo is a cloud-based daycare solution designed to help with administrative tasks and organization. The platform helps to perform tasks related to parent communication, billing, statistics, and any form of analysis. KigaRoo is designed with a simple interface to ensure that using the smartphone app and the parent portal is as seamless as possible. The software can handle group and staff management, central file storage, remote access.

Moment – Moment app was created for childcare school administrators to communicate with parents effectively, manage day-to-day activities, accept online signups, and collect payments. The app helps users build communities around its classes and enhance the communication channel with parents while handling the day-to-day events, staff, and families. The app has sections devoted to parent communication, class management, and online signups.

SimplyCircle – SimplyCircle serves as an all-in-one parent communication app. Consider it your virtual personal assistant for things like field trips, class announcements, volunteer signups, and other classroom or school events. It can provide automatic parent reminders, collect RSVPs, ask for volunteers, manage permission slips, and more! In four easy steps, you can streamline (and ensure privacy!) for all manner of classroom activities. SimplyCircle can even assist with photo sharing for class parents.

TodLog – This app is designed to help the childcare and preschool market streamline operations and parent communication using mobile technology. TodLog helps educators improve communications and engage parents in the learning process. It helps track attendance, fill out daily reports, schedule events, and send real-time updates.

Helicopter parenting is a style of parenting in which the parents are overly focused on their children. They are too involved in their children’s experiences, especially their successes or failures.

Characteristics of a Helicopter Parent

For the helicopter parent, there are high demands put in place, with high responsiveness and warmth displayed towards these kids. They are also heavily involved in the day-to-day lives of their kids. They provide for all of their children’s needs but go overboard by doing things that the child can and should be doing for themselves. Think of helicopter parenting as overparenting.

In modern terms, helicopter parenting is when parents help K-12 and college students with tasks and endeavors that they can easily do themselves. For example, parents overstepping their boundaries by calling a professor about their child’s poor midterm grades, completing their class schedule, etc. These are tasks that students can do for themselves without parental assistance.

What Causes Parents to “Overparent”?

They are a lot of reasons why parents hover. One possibility is that they want to shield their children from negative consequences. Parents have anxiety about their children receiving poor grades, not getting a job, or not making an athletic team. Because of this, they do everything in their power to prevent their child from falling.

Sometimes overparenting results from parents overcompensating with their children because they felt unloved or ignored by their parents. They end up overdoing it and become helicopter parents. Lastly, some parents hover because of peer pressure. They see other parents being overly involved and think that this is the norm.

Consequences of Helicopter Parenting

For children raised by helicopter parents, low self-esteem and shyness are very common features. They are also less likely to stand their ground or have appreciable social skills. When they reluctantly make their own decisions, the outcomes are often less than satisfactory because they haven’t had much experience with personal decision-making.  Again, some of these kids may act belligerently when out of their homes.

Also, when parents are always around to clean up their child’s mess, it prevents them from experiencing problems and issues; and they may never learn how to cope with loss, confrontation, disappointment, or failure. They then become incompetent at dealing with the stresses of life. Research has even shown that overparenting is associated with higher levels of childhood depression and anxiety.

Some children of helicopter parents can even develop a sense of entitlement, as they are used to having their own way. For many, they quickly learn that this is not the way that life works. These kids usually have underdeveloped life skills, as doing everything for a child can prevent them from learning how to master these skills.

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