Fostering a solid home-school partnership is a key to creating a firm foundation for academic and social-emotional achievement. Parent involvement in a child’s education can be important to developing mastery and self-efficacy, and can increase the value of education itself for the whole family. One vital way to improve the home-school partnership is to give parents tools with which they can engage their children.
Often, parents do not know how to help their children; yet, they want to so desperately. They sometimes fail to realize how their experiences as adults in their work and in their social interaction could be utilized as models for children and adolescents to view their jobs as students. Parents might feel intimidated by school or not see themselves as their children’s vital teachers. If parents recognize that they have learned some tips or tricks to make their work or lives easier, they can impart to their children the need to find such strategies in their work and lives as students. Yet, parents need techniques to teach their children.
What is lacking is a common language for approaching assignments across content areas that can be utilized by teachers, students, and parents alike. ACE My Academics can provide such a language, which can afford everyone a chance to comprehend the mechanisms for completing schoolwork effectively. Common understanding and clear communication foster partnership between home and school. With ACE My Academics, the components of literacy beyond decoding are broken down into specific behaviors with job descriptions and character names. This system gives families a way of talking about learning in English/language arts, history/social studies, and science. Parents can learn the system and model how they use or could use such techniques in their own lives. In addition to modeling with specific examples from a parent’s direct experience in the workplace or social environment, parents can select sample texts, media, or primary sources of interest and work through the strategies to show their thinking to their children. They then can work with students on assignments to demonstrate how the techniques apply to schoolwork. This would be followed by a gradual release to students working on their own, following the I do. We do. You do. paradigm.
With ACE My Academics, through modeling with a common language, parents can elevate the value of student work and give children and adolescents the chance to think about, analyze, interpret, and respond to information in a mindful way. Parents can help raise self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-efficacy. They can use their knowledge and experience to further support student achievement. With ACE My Academics, parents have a manner to discuss student work, the school day, and knowledge acquisition in general with their children and with educational professionals. This practice enhances a student’s efforts to be successful in school, while affording families the chance to take part in education and be on the road to lifelong learning.