Lessons Learned as a Parent of a Virtually-Schooled Student – #2 (cont.)

Lesson #2: Discipline is required more than ever from student as well as parent.

In last week’s post, Lessons Learned as a Parent of a Virtually-Schooled Student – #2, I shared the areas of discipline in which I feel my son, Little Man, will definitely need to hone in on in order to be successful in his virtual school setting. And so, today’s post is a continuation of this discussion with a focus on what I (as his mother) can do to model parental discipline in the virtual school setting.

Oddly enough, I JUST came up with a great case in point for my overall role as a support and disciplined example to my son this school year. And, its source came from my last week’s blog post (highlighted above).

Here’s what happened . . .

Since I knew I would be doing a part 2 for Lesson #2 to the “Lessons Learned as a Parent of a Virtually-Schooled Student”, I identified that the first order of business would be to go back and reread the blog post for part 1 to refresh my memory of what I covered. Then, I could proceed on with today’s post and hopefully keep some semblance of continuity between the two.

While I was rereading the post (which I also did several times last week before publishing it), I came across little, silly errors that I made in the content. They weren’t typos, per se; but they were more of the “wrong word choice” or “totally incorrect word used” variety. And, it’s not like errors in written content is a new concept to me. I’m human and I make mistakes all the time in my writing. Human is as human does. But, it was strange to me that I came across so many, as I was sure that I proofread the post at least three times before publishing it.

But guess what? If you go back and read that post, you’ll probably find some lines that need rewording or where some typos may have occurred, even after my four rereads at this point. You’ll, more than likely, find some errors in this post even. And, I’m quite certain that all of my posts could use some tweaking and correcting here and there if I were to go back and reread them all. So, what can a writer do? Well, I say that a writer should keep on writing and strive to get better and better in all writing etiquette with practice and time.

Now, I pride myself on being a decent proofreader and trying to catch errors personally before they become viewable to the world publicly. I mean I’ve always been that individual who double checked my work before submitting it to my boss, or reread an email before sending it out to the distribution list, or rechecked my test answers (if time allowed) before turning in my test (even if that meant I was the last test taker left sitting). But sometimes, the mistakes still manage to deflect my capture tactics.

I said all of the above to finally come to what I view as my expectation for discipline as a parent of a virtually-schooled student. It all kind of revolves around assuming the proofreader/double checker role but for my son’s school efforts specifically. And, I can best sum it up like this: I must learn to stay in my parent lane as a support and not overstep my bounds by coming to my son’s rescue every time I determine he needs to be bailed out of “tough work” jail. And, please don’t get me wrong here. As a mother, I will always be there for my son to be a support and to help him succeed by providing assistance, instruction, and guidance when he needs it. That’s what a mother who loves her child would do.

However, I don’t want to become an enabler. And, I think there can be a fine line between helping your child when true help is warranted and enabling your child when the help can lead to an unhealthy dependence and lack of effort on the part of the child. Of course, the statement I just made can be looked at from so many different life aspects, but I’m going to keep it related to the topic at hand: virtual schooling.

So, the way I see it — my job is to assist Little Man by making sure that he’s able to progress in his schooling in a positive direction, but that doesn’t mean that I . . .

1. do his assignments for him.
2. provide final solutions to problems he’s working on without making him work them out first.
3. feed him answers when he has to respond verbally online to questions his teacher asks directly of him.
4. always read out loud to him but rarely have him read out loud to me.
5. tell him how to spell something without him trying to spell it first or look it up in the dictionary.
6. tell him the meaning of a word without him looking at context clues to give his best guess of what the word means first or having him look the meaning up in the dictionary.
7. tell him how to pronounce a word without having him try to sound it out first using his phonetic awareness skills.
8. explain what his teacher’s instructions mean without first making him ask for clarification of the instructions from his teacher.
9. proofread his writing assignments without first making him proofread through his own work to correct errors he comes across.
10. allow him to short cut his work without giving it his all, because I know I’ll be there to catch his mistakes and help him correct them before they become public.

In other words, I can’t be his ENABLER. I need to remember that, if he was in a brick-and-mortar school, he wouldn’t have the benefit of having the “extra” help that’s so easy to provide him at home (because we’re at home). I need to remember that, being away to school, he would be forced to ask his teacher to restate her instructions or clarify her instructions if he didn’t hear or understand an assignment that was to be completed at school. He wouldn’t have his mommy there to check over his answers and make sure all the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed. I wouldn’t be there to make sure he wrote complete sentences and restated questions where requested or remind him to show all his work or complete all the steps in a multi-step math problem.

There are sooooooo many other examples I could add to the ones above, but I think you understand the idea I’m trying to get across. I want Little Man to succeed, and I will do everything in my power to be an aid to him but not a crutch for him. I want him to learn to be an independent thinker, a hard worker, and a problem solver; because all of these characteristics and more are going to be necessary in a world that so desperately needs them from the youth as well as the adults.

My role (or the role of any parent of a virtually-schooled student), again, walks that fine line of how to be an effective support mechanism for the child. Simply stated, we should be so in tune with where our children are scholastically, especially being at home with them, that we should help strengthen our children in those areas where they academically struggle and continue to encourage them to fine-tune those areas they’re skilled in. (It feels like a future blog post may develop from the topic of finding some effective ways of helping our children strengthen areas needing improvement and fine-tuning areas of mastery. We’ll see.)

We should also strive to reinforce the instruction their teachers are providing them — not take over their school teachers’ roles. For example, trying to teach our children certain foundational concepts they’ll learn in reading and math that don’t line up with what our children are learning from their teachers can lead to straight-up confusion for them. So, if we wanted the role of classroom teacher, then we should have opted for the straight homeschooling setting, where we could control the curriculum and all aspects of what our children are learning and how they’re learning it.

The only exception to this rule for me, personally, would be if my child is being instructed in a way that goes diametrically against certain belief structures that have been established in my family’s household. And if you’ve come across such scenarios, then you, as the parent, have to straighten those conflicting instructional areas out. These situations require clear communication with the teacher so he or she is aware of the belief systems in your household and how what’s being taught at school may conflict with what’s being taught at home. Then, you and your child’s teacher should collaborate on how to best handle any sensitive issues that may arise and do what is in the best interest of your child and the classroom-at-large.