In the past week, our office has witnessed a surge in texts, emails and calls about what to expect and how to prepare for the next school year. Some families have children who can’t engage in remote learning for various reasons, including age, attention span, learning style and social-emotional needs. Others are concerned about the options their school district or private school are offering for safety and/or health reasons.
The only constant this upcoming school year is change. NYTimes education reporter Dana Goldstein recently made this sobering assessment: A huge risk of this summer was spending too much time planning to reopen classrooms and not enough planning to improve remote learning.
Depending on where you live, it may be that school closures and remote learning, or hybrid options, are inevitable.
Given the atmosphere of uncertainty and unease, it’s important for parents and children to identify their developmental goals for the coming year. Although we can’t predict what will happen next, we can control how we build support networks.
In other words, start to explore ways that your student can get the support needed over the course of the year. Some students may need to pursue accommodations from their school. Others might need to spend time outside of school mastering content that is challenging to absorb in remote settings. Most children can also benefit from tutoring/parental support in the form of organizational checks and weekly planning.
Remember: Your child can and should be an active part of this process. What do they want to learn? How do they feel they will learn best? What support do they feel they can use from you or others? There are many ways to outsource and get support from the community, even virtually.
At Green Ivy, we’ve been receiving wide-ranging questions, concerns, and requests for support. We know that executive functioning skills are always critical, but especially so when students are juggling between in-person, hybrid learning options.
As always, we invite you to reach out to us or explore our site to find out more about how we can support you and your child through these unprecedented challenges. Whether your student needs organizational support, content tutoring, college counseling, writing coaching, or creative instruction in one of our mini-courses (in poetry, logic games, earth systems, and more), we are here to offer support for all students, families, and educators.