Parenting Future-Focused Kids

Setting Your Child Up for Academic Success

August 02, 2021 Madison School District Episode 2
Parenting Future-Focused Kids
Setting Your Child Up for Academic Success
Show Notes Transcript

This episode of Parenting Future Focused Kids will focus on the unique academic challenges of the new school year and strategies to help your child thrive. Guest  Dr. Mike Winters is starting his eighth year as the Executive Director for Curriculum and Instruction in the Madison School District and his 23rd year in education. Prior to serving in his current role, Dr. Winters was a principal, assistant principal, middle school science teacher, and a high school biology and chemistry teacher.



0:10  
Welcome to parenting future focus kids, a Madison School District podcast for families that provides resources for supporting your child's academic success, and social and emotional wellness. Today's topic will focus on the unique academic challenges of the new school year and strategies to help your child thrive. I am your host, Nicole Rodriguez, Director of Community Relations. I would like to welcome Dr. Mike Winters. Dr. Winters is starting his eighth year as the Executive Director for curriculum and instruction in Madison School District and his 23rd year in education. Prior to serving in his current role, Dr. Winters was a principal assistant principal middle school science teacher, and high school biology and chemistry teacher. 

0:50  
Welcome to the show Dr. Winters, we are excited to chat with you about the upcoming school year. 

0:54  
Thank you, Nicole, I'm excited to be here. 

0:56  
So everybody knows that the last year was very challenging to say the least how was learning impacted the most last school year, 

1:04  
I think there were several impacts, both positive and negative. And to some might be surprising that there were some positive impacts. Some of the bigger ones was just because of the nature of the school year, not as much of our curriculum was covered is regularly scheduled, so to speak. Some students experienced challenges with learning online, and some teachers experience challenges with teaching online. But that being said, all students, all teachers gain a great deal of new skill when it comes to using technology. Some students actually thrive online learning was actually a better platform for them to learn some of the challenges in terms of curriculum where that especially in our younger grades, kindergarten through second grade, some of those foundational reading and mathematics skills were not as well mastered as we would like to see. And I think those are the main impacts we saw. So there were some some challenges, but also some some good things that came out of the challenges of the school year.

2:06  
And I think I've heard something mentioned about the resiliency of not only students but teachers as well. And is that something? I mean, I know, I've seen it children have, you know, thrived online? Maybe it was a little bit different. But could you talk a little bit about that resiliency that we saw in students?

2:23  
Sure. I, I think we underestimate children, sometimes they are extremely resilient. Oftentimes, our worries and our fears for children aren't the same ones that they have. They if you ask them, you assume they're worried or concerned about something that now that's not what they were worried about. They're worried about something else completely, that you would never even think of. Kids are resilient, they're going to be fine. In our in our teachers showed great resiliency as well. Nobody went to school and was trained on how to be an online teacher, nobody. But in a matter of days, we became online teachers and everybody got better day after day after day after day. So kids will the kids bounce back, they adapted quickly. And I think it speaks volumes about our teachers, and and our kids about how much learning dig take place in an entirely new setting.

3:16  
I think that you brought up amazing points. Dr. Winters, I know that our students are completely capable of learning online, they're resilient. They showed you know, they showed up every day our teacher showed up every day. But I know that some students did have some challenges online, it was completely different. And did we see this in our test scores? Did we see this impacted in in student learning in any way? 

3:39  
Sure. In terms of assessments, our district gives a national assessment called NWA map. We give that three times a year. And the results on those assessments were down, they were decreases from we would typically see However, they were nowhere near the decreases. We had feared it was a lot better than we had initially thought. I think once again, that speaks very highly of our students and our teachers. It despite the challenges we were still able to perform. Not quite as well, but pretty pretty darn close. And I think we hear out there a lot that the sky is falling. It's It's horrible. But that's not actually the case when it happened in terms of our assessment results. Were there decreases in assessment scores? Yes, there were but but nowhere near the level that we were made to believe would be the case.

4:32  
And I think that's reassuring to hear. Especially as we move forward into the new school year. What resources can families use to support learning at home, especially if their child was you know, if families had children who were faced facing some challenges online? 

4:48  
Sure. I think today, we are uniquely suited to support learning at home. There's a plethora of resources available to parents that didn't exist 5 or 10 years ago. There are so many online educational resources which, yes, we were online, a lot, people may not necessarily want. But there are a ton of online resources for parents and kids out there that are free. They can be educational games, videos, text, all of that's available. But there's also lots of other things. You know, you have bookstores and libraries, tons of documentaries on the various streaming platforms out there. There's just an amazing amount of information and resources available to parents at no cost that you can help kids engage with, whether it's reading, mathematics, science, social studies, I know there's even art tutorials on how to draw, if you want to engage your kid in some sort of learning over the summer there, there was a resource out there for you, and most likely, it's free.

5:49  
That's awesome. And I know we have access to all of these online. And if you don't want to be online, there's there's resources outside of that as well. So what specific types of activities can families do at home to support learning? 

6:03  
Sure, I think the biggest one is to read, read some more. And then when you've time reading, read some more. And there's reading available in all shapes and forms everywhere. I think we tend to go straight to literature. But we really want to try to focus our reading to be about a 5050 mix of literature and informational text. Have a child read how to manual or the instructions to like, for instance, I just bought a spot remover, carpet cleaner machine, have them read the instructions to that. Read, read, read. And then they just don't have them read ask questions, ask him to summarize. Perhaps it's in writing so they could practice their writing skills afterwards. But there's just a ton of reading material. And if you don't have any in print, course, you can go online and get tons of reading material there as well. You know, the library will help make sure you're getting grade level and age appropriate text for kids. But there's we're surrounded by texts that kids can engage in. You can use simple things like playing cards to have kids practice math facts, take a deck of cards, draw a two and a three and the kid has to add two and three, or maybe at the multiply or subtract or divide, or games can be used. Maybe they're playing Yahtzee, there's all kinds of different things you can do at home to incorporate math and reading on a daily basis. And then, like I said that the streaming platforms have so many science and social studies, documentaries now that that pretty much information you want to find, you can find it now at a very low cost, if not free.

7:42  
That's awesome. Those are all great suggestions. Something that comes to mind when I'm sitting here thinking about this is we need to have that balance right? between academic and the social, emotional aspect.  So what's the most important thing to keep in mind when trying to accomplish additional learning outside of the classroom, maybe before school starts or even when school starts on the evenings and weekends?

8:06  
I think you used a key word. And that's balance. I think a lot of people are thinking now we got to give our kids all this extra learning because they're behind. No, I, you got to let kids be kids, and listen to them. And I don't mean that just verbally, but watch and observe, they're going to tell you when they're done. So don't force them into it. I think right now during the summer is a good time. Like I have a almost 14 year old son. And his favorite thing in the world to do is play video games. But he has certain things he has to do before he can play video games like read for 20 minutes and tell us about it. We started Khan Academy this this week. Once he then he has to clean his room and do this and that then he can play video games for a couple hours. But setting up those kinds of routines for kids, I will really reiterate about the resiliency of our kids and our teachers. If you're worried about kids not being where they're at, or where they're where they need to be at. That's okay. But the kids I understand that kids are where they need to be. And our job is to get them to learn and grow. And we will do that this upcoming school year. And I have full confidence that by the end of the school year, kids will be where they need to be.

9:17  
How do you strike a balance between academic learning and social and emotional well being?

9:23  
I think that goes back to the ideas I was talking about earlier, where you really have to listen to our kids both verbally and observationally. They're going to tell us when they're done learning. When they get burned out on learning, their brains just aren't in a place where they can function and learn anymore. They're done. And that's just basic brain chemistry, basic brain biology. We'd allow them to get back to a state where they're ready to learn. So that's what I mean by listening to them. Let's get them back. Give them a break. Not forced them to be working on learning all the time and get them back to work. And their mind is set to learn. And that goes back to developing some of those routines if kids know, okay, every night, I'm going to come home, I'm going to read for 20 minutes, I'm going to, I'm going to talk to my dad about what I read, then I'm going to do some math, then I'm done, that's going to put them in a lot more rested state for learning than if every day is a little bit different. Or if I'm, you got to read for three hours, you got to do 45 math problems to quote unquote, catch up, that's going to cause a lot of anxiety for most kids. And it's not going to promote good learning for them. So just really being aware of where they are socially, emotionally so that they are ready to learn. Because if their social emotional wellness is out of whack, they're not going to learn because they're not, they're just not wired do so when they're not ready to learn.

10:45  
Absolutely, I think that social and emotional component is key, when when going back to school, we're really going to focus on that, especially at this next year. What are the benefits of moving forward socially with students and their peers, even when some of with some of the learning difficulties that occurred last year?

11:04  
I think this upcoming school year, it's going to be as more important than it ever has been before to make sure we're for forming positive classroom cultures, positive relationships, so that kids can re engage with their peers, so many of them were isolated for the last 15 months. And there's gonna be some anxiety for kids that remained online all school year coming back and re engaging with their peers, we can, we can do that in a variety of ways. The method I I use most often is through cooperative learning, where we focus on our academic skills and learning through social interaction. As humans, we're social animals, we want to talk we want to get up and move around. So let's use that to harness that want to move and talk to engage kids and talking and moving around with academics. So they're going to get to build positive relationships with their peers, simultaneously learning the academic content, that's going to be critically important for next year, more so than it ever has been before. And I mentioned that I like to do it through cooperative learning activities. And I think people hear that sometimes they think group work. But I want to make sure that there's a clear distinction between group work and cooperative learning, they are not the same thing. group work is the things that a lot of us experienced. And when we are in school, when teacher put us in a group, and they said here work on this together. And if you were in my group, I took the pencil in the paper and did everything. And you did nothing but talk about your weekend. And we call those hogs in logs, I will tell you, I was a hog. But if you're a log, you might be having fun, but you're not going to have any learning. But in true cooperative learning, everybody is held accountable for participation. There. There's a distinct line there. So we're socially interacting and moving, but we're still being held accountable for our our academic learning.

12:57  
So can you give us an example? That sounds amazing! And could you give our listeners an example of what that would look like in the classroom?

13:04  
Sure, it can be very simple, or it could be very complex in terms of directions, but I'll give it a simple example. These all have little cute names. So for example, tying to pair share, which is exactly what it sounds like, there's time you pair up with somebody and you share. So in the past, we might have said, okay, talk about what you did over the summer. And then two people look at each other and they start talking at the same time, nobody's listening, or they sit there and they do nothing. Under time pair share, I say, okay, partner A's, you're on the left hand side of the classroom, partner B's, you're on the right hand side of the classroom, partner A's, you're going to have 30 seconds to share what you did over the summer, Partner B, you're going to then you're going to have 30 seconds to share what you did over the summer. And this way, there's an equal amount of time each person is sharing for 30 seconds. Another simple one is rally Robin, let's say we want to we want to brainstorm a list of, of nouns. Partner a is going to start part and v is going to go second, it's a rally. So then partner is going to go Partner B is going to go. So I would say car. Partner B would say person, I say plant. Partner B says desk. So went back and forth until the teacher says to stop this way. Everybody is participating. We're taking turns and an equal amount.

14:25  
Thank you. I think that that sounds a lot more engaging than some you know what I think of when I hear group work, so thank you so much for giving that example. So what resources will be available to Madison families, this upcoming school year to support academic success?

14:42  
I think first and foremost is going to be just coming to school every day. Our teachers are going to provide their their typical quality instruction on a day in day out basis. We're going to assess kids to find out where they are right now. And we're going to move forward. We're going to we're going to Figure out where they're at. We're going to teach accordingly. They're going to learn they're going to grow, we are going to teach the grade level standards, the I have spent a lot of time over the summer reading and listening to the national and international education experts consuming their research in the research is in I agree, it's a bit counterintuitive, because the natural inclination, I think, is let's go back and review and catch up all the stuff. That is not what we're doing, we are moving forward with what that grade level says. And when we identify a gap in learning, we're going to address it, we're going to go we've identified through a couple of national organizations that deal with our state standards, which state standards are the really, really important ones, we're going to dive really deep into those. So we're going to attack things with more depth and less breath. That's not to say we're going to ignore things. But we're going to spend a lot more time on some of those more important standards, the we're also going to provide an ample amount of tutoring opportunities at school. So what I've been saying is that we are going to conduct an instruction on a daily basis. And if there are still some learning challenges or gaps, that would be an opportunity for students to attend tutoring, get those taken care of. But it is it is kind of intuitive, that we were instead of kind of rehashing things, we're gonna move forward, because if we rehash, we're just gonna, we're always we're gonna be we're gonna be perpetually behind for the rest of our lives if we if we don't move forward. So we're going to really focus on those important grade level standards, and dive into them very deeply. And where you haven't just thrown darts at a dartboard. Here, we've used the Department of Education's resources, and also a couple of other national organizations to really hone in on what we're going to be focusing on for the school year.

16:43  
Thank you. So that's great that we're offering those tutoring opportunities for our students. And then we're really diving deep into the research and looking at, you know, from a big picture what we need to do to support our students academically, while also focusing on that balance that we talked about before. So what advice would you give to parents who, you know, are concerned about their child's academic achievement this year?

17:07  
I think it's similar advice to what I would give any other year. And that's be involved, ask questions. Your teachers are going to tell you where your child's at, based upon their observation and also bought based upon assessment. Do your best to understand that information, ask questions, so you clearly understand where they're at and what it means. What are the implications for your child moving forward based upon that information. And I know this is going to be easier said than done. But don't worry, kids, as we said, a few times, kids and teachers are resilient, they're going to bounce back. They're where they're supposed to be right now. They went through really about 15 months of unprecedented time. And no one's head are behind where they're supposed to. They're where they're supposed to be at. And children, teachers are resilient, that the teachers, administrators and Madison, throughout the state throughout the country, are going to spend the next year teaching kids to the best of their ability. And I don't know if you if we come back at this time next year, I would venture a prediction that will be pretty darn close back to where we were before all this happened. It's going to be okay. I do recognize that that is easier said than done. For those of us that are a little concerned. At my house, I have two children. My wife's a teacher as well. So we have that kind of educator mindset when it comes to our kids education. But for those of us that don't, it's going to be okay. Just Just trust in the professionals that your children are being sent to every day. And we're going to do what we do every year and that's do our best every single day that you have kids learning to grow.

18:41  
Thank you so much for for being here today for providing that reassurance to our families. I know it's especially reassuring for me to hear, especially because we've heard so many negative things you know about the challenges that we faced last year, but I think it's important that we continue to move forward continue to strike that balance with social and emotional well being as well as academic success. And yeah, I thank you again for being here. 

19:07  
Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. 

19:09  
Thank you for listening to parenting future focus kids. To listen to our latest episodes, visit us at Madison az.org slash podcast.