by Dennis Harter, MS Principal
dennish@isb.ac.th
At ISB, it is our goal to develop learners in six Attributes, articulated on our foundational documents. Recent times have certainly tested many of these attributes, including adaptability and social intelligence. This post focuses on one of our Attributes that is particularly relevant in middle school: self-management.
In Elementary School, parents are heavily involved in the oversight of their child’s organization and scheduling. Parents pack their child’s bag, unpack Friday folders, keep track of whether it’s a “PE day” or not, and communicate frequently with the classroom teacher about homework, their child’s learning progress, and more. Parental involvement with ES students has been even greater during the Virtual School experiences of the past few years.
In High School, students are much more independent, often engaging in learning content that we don’t understand, keeping track of multiple classes, teachers, clubs, and activities. Schedules rotate, classrooms change, timings vary, and in general, HS students manage it all.
Not surprisingly, in Middle School, we find ourselves somewhere in between. Our students have more variance to keep track of, more teachers/classes to remember assignments from, and more communication back and forth to manage. Developmentally, they aren’t ready to handle this completely on their own, but we need to provide them the opportunities to do so, in order to grow into the independent HS students they will be.
This is to say that deliberately there is a shift in the way Middle School communicates, shares, and involves parents in the overall academic life of your child. We teach students to use and monitor the communication tools to keep up with assignments and classes, submit work, and get involved, but we also want parents to have the opportunity to know what those things are, even if they can’t directly get involved.
For example, we provide all students with information about upcoming schedules or events in our Good Morning Middle School news emails. Parents don’t automatically get this email, but can request to receive it, if they feel they need to be more involved in helping their child organize.
After the October break, we will be more widely using the Google Guardian Summary feature, which will share with parents classroom activity and assignments, but not provide access to the assignments or the online class directly. The summaries will allow parents to engage in conversations with their MS child (“tell me about this flash fiction assignment you are writing…”), without placing them in the classroom environment.
In the past few years, the pandemic has demonstrated to us the efficiency and powerful opportunities that Google Classroom can provide our students and teachers. As such, we have been transitioning more and more to its use over PowerSchool Learning. While there are still some instances of the latter, the transition is almost complete to the Google Classroom, which is why we will be activating these Guardian Summaries.
If you want to know more about this and more, we will be running a MS Parent technology session on Thursday, October 21st (see post in this eNews).
We know that this can be a challenging time for parents as you “let go” of some of the control and/or oversight of your child’s approach to school. This is an important developmental stage for young people and we encourage you to have conversations with them, even as you allow them to navigate and make decisions and learn from their mistakes. We will be there to support your children throughout this process.
