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    Start the School Year Right: What Parents, Students and Teachers Should Know
    Start the School Year Right: What Parents, Students and Teachers Should Know
    Start the School Year Right: What Parents, Students and Teachers Should Know
    Ebook167 pages2 hours

    Start the School Year Right: What Parents, Students and Teachers Should Know

    By Queena Lee-Chua

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    About this ebook

    Is there such a thing as too much or too little parenting? How can parents tutor their kids effectively? How can students avoid procrastination? How can they battle computer addiction? What are the pros and cons of implementing K to 12? How can teachers best manage problem students? Bestselling author Queena N. Lee-Chua addresses these questions and other topics chosen from her popular column "Eureka!" in the Learning section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Part of Anvil's Learning series, this volume includes more than thirty learning issues for parents, students, and teachers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnvil Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateOct 10, 2017
    ISBN9789712729294
    Start the School Year Right: What Parents, Students and Teachers Should Know

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      Book preview

      Start the School Year Right - Queena Lee-Chua

      Start the School Year Right

      What Parents, Students, and Teachers

      Should Know

      Queena N. Lee-Chua, Ph.D.

      Start the School Year Right:

      What Parents, Students, and Teachers Should Know

      by Queena N. Lee-Chua, Ph.D.

      Copyright 2013

      by Queena N. Lee-Chua and Anvil Publishing, Inc.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any

      form or by any means without the written permission of the copyright

      owners and the publisher.

      Published and exclusively distributed by

      ANVIL PUBLISHING, INC.

      7th Floor Quad Alpha Centrum Building

      125 Pioneer Street, Mandaluyong City

      1550 Philippines

      Sales and Marketing: marketing@anvilpublishing.com

      Fax: (+632) 7471622

      www.anvilpublishing.com

      Book design by Ariel Dalisay (cover); Joshene Bersales (interior)

      ISBN 9789712729294 (e-book)

      Version 1.0.1

      Contents

      Preface

      Education does not occur in a vacuum. While students may be the main characters, parents and teachers are indispensable supporting players in and out of the classroom. But in this fast-paced world, educational fads seem to appear as quickly as they vanish, each one supposedly a solution to the age-old question: How can we learn as best as we can?

      My column Eureka! has been in the Learning section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer since 2008. I talk to parents, students, and teachers, using timeless and up-to-date research and, often, real-life stories, to meet their concerns. Some of my columns have been collected into the book Learning, which came out in 2010 and reprinted afterward. You hold in your hands the third collection, titled (what else) Learning: Start the School Year Right.

      Parents are unsure about many things. How can they help their children thrive at home and in school? Is there a way to balance between too much and too little parenting? How can they tutor their kids effectively? What is the secret to raising eager writers? How can parents prevent their children from burnout?

      Students are anxious about many things. How can they start the school year right? How can they study in the zone? What are tips to avoid procrastination? Is there a way to battle computer addiction? Why doesn’t multitasking work? What are the learning secrets of successful student athletes and beauty queens?

      Teachers are worried about many things. How can they be the best teachers they can be? What makes students respect and remember them? How can they implement K to 12 well? What are ways to manage rude or tardy students? What innovative practices can they use to teach math, science, and religion?

      I would like to thank the Inquirer’s Chelo Banal-Formoso and Linda Bolido, Sandy Prieto, and the late Gani Yambot, for giving me a home. DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro, for inviting me to work with K to 12; Elvin Uy, for addressing K to 12 concerns.

      Maribel Sison-Dionisio and Nesy Fernandez, for helping out in the Ateneo, Bulacan, and Marikina Best Practices Surveys. Isagani Cruz, for regaling me with education stories, big and small. Xandra and Miguel Ramos of National Book Store; Meinard Cruz and Enoy Ferriol of Scholastic Philippines, for providing good reads. Edward and Monica Sy of Gentle Star Trading, for providing great toys. Dedet Panabi, for sharing tutoring tips; Lia Andar, Chris Tiu, and Joyce Ann Burton, for sharing school experiences. Fr. Johnny Go, SJ and Mike Asis, for writing inspiring stories. Jay Jaboneta, Dr. Luciano Santiago, and Atty. Charlie Yu, for educating me on the Yellow Boat Project, the first Pinay doctor, and beauty contests.

      My students, Ma. Luisa Elago, Jaime Miguel Barcelon, Manuel Antonio Miranda, Carla Micaela Honasan, and Harvey Nicol Chua, for sharing their thoughts on teachers. My students, Bong Belardo, Rex Forteza, and Richard Briones, for sharing their lesson plans. Gina Hechanova, Lianne Alampay, Boboy Alianan, Joy Teng-Calleja, Bopeep Franco, Meling Macapagal, and other psychology team members, for helping Sendong victims heal. Mikey Scott, and Francis Kong, with Shellane Dy, for asking me to contribute to the website, Life by Me, and the book Famealy Matters, respectively. Edelyn Yanilla of Speedo Philippines, for permitting me to write about my entry in their contest.

      My gratitude once more goes to Karina Bolasco of Anvil, who prodded me to compile these pieces; Ani Habúlan, Gwenn Galvez, and Joyce Bersales for ensuring the book reaches as many people as possible. A huge thank you to Fr. Ben Nebres and Dr. Honey Carandang, mentors and friends, for their invaluable advice and support through the years. Thank you to my students for sharing their thoughts and experiences; and to my readers, for sending their comments and suggestions.

      To my dad William and my mom Anita, thank you for loving us, I miss you so much. To my husband Smith, our son Scott, and our dog Hershie, thank you for making life worthwhile.

      Dear Parent

      School Year Resolutions for Parents

      Is there such a thing as too much or too little parenting?

      It takes a village to raise a child. Parents and teachers need to work together to ensure that children learn in the most effective and satisfying ways possible. Whether you are a parent batch representative, or even if you haven’t attended any parent-teacher conference at all, you can always become a better guide.

      Be Present for Your Child, Especially in Significant Events

      For working parents, taking time off to attend school events requires months of planning and advance scheduling. Go ahead, do it. Look through the school calendar and cross out the days for parent-teacher conferences, father-son days, graduation, and so forth. You don’t want your child to rely on his teacher as a surrogate father during camp, do you? Or to ignore the teacher’s warning about your daughter’s falling marks? Or to miss graduation because you have to meet a client who is out of town?

      Your children may forgive you (eventually) for these lapses, but they will never forget. And they will never fully trust you again.

      Address Academic Difficulties Early

      If you wait until report-card day to deal with your child’s learning difficulties, then it may be too late. Flunking marks are not made overnight—they are the result of failed quizzes, long tests, quarterly exams.

      Keep communication lines open with your child. Ask him regularly, or better yet, everyday, if he understands the lessons. If not, ask him how you can help. Check up on his quizzes. If he constantly flunks them, then something is wrong. Unless the majority of the class gets low marks (in which case it is perhaps due to the teacher’s incompetence), repeated failure is a sign that your child needs help right away.

      Schedule a consultation with the teacher immediately. Together with the teacher, develop a plan to help your child.

      Help Your Child Develop Solid Study Habits

      Studying well is a habit like any other. It can be developed over time with constant guidance. When your child comes home from school, does he deal with homework soon after, or does he procrastinate? Establish a routine for your child: snack, bath, homework, games, TV or computer, then sleep. If needed, give the yaya enough authority to enforce your dictum.

      Just because you are at work does not mean you should relinquish all responsibility. Call home and check on your child. Remind him to put work before play. When you return, check if he completed his homework.

      Do not do assignments for your child. You are the parent, not the child. Your task is to ensure that he does the work.

      Learn to Let Go

      There is such a thing though, as being too present in your child’s life. Helicopter parents hover over their children, micromanaging each and every second, questioning their children’s decisions and never letting them make mistakes. Worse still, these parents fix the mistakes for them.

      Are you in school every day? Your child is the student, not you. Do you call up teachers frequently, so much so that they dread hearing from you? You need to know your child’s teachers, but consulting them for every little thing is overkill.

      Let your child make mistakes. That is the only way he can learn. I am not saying that you should let your child flunk. But an 8-out-of-10 is not the end of the world, as long as your child understands his mistakes and corrects them the next time around.

      If you are always doing his projects, his papers, his homework, he will never learn. If your child does something wrong and never learns to face the music, then he will never grow.

      Stop Comparing Your Child to Others

      Children have different strengths and weaknesses, and that is how it is. Think about how boring the world would be if everybody were a science genius!

      Do you expect Junior to be a language whiz, just because his elder brother was editor-in-chief of the school paper? Accept that Junior may not turn out to be a writer. Maybe he is a budding artist! Are you hung up on your child’s marks, so that a 9-out-of-10 is unacceptable? Your child will become anxious, and he will stop enjoying school because of this. Do you call up other parents and compare the grades of different kids, crowing about your child when he is on top and trying to tear down others who may be better? Recognize that children are different, and rejoice in the successes of others.

      Parents who have a lot of time on their hands tend to compare their kids to others, basically because they have nothing else to do. Learn a hobby. Volunteer in church. Turn your energies into something positive. Get a life outside of your children.

      Tutoring 101

      How can parents tutor their kids effectively?

      With encouragement and monitoring by their own parents, most student achievers learned to study independently at an early age, and to love learning for its own sake. Most of them never relied on tutors.

      But many parents, especially those in the middle and upper classes, do not want to tutor their kids.

      Some parents say, I was never good at math, so how can I teach my child math?

      Parents are adults who know how to do operations with numbers and fractions. Effective attention ("tutok") by parents should end when children are in Grade Four, when they have mastered the essential habits of focusing on the lessons in school, consulting the teacher when needed, and doing exercises at home.

      No one expects parents to teach high math. The students who require professional tutors usually do not listen in class (since their tutors will answer homework for them, anyway), so they need to relearn the topic

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