Brain Candy, Tips From TCF Members – Staying Engaged With Your Kids School Work w/ Othelia Sierra

This week on Brain Candy, Othelia Sierra of The Math Mentors gives us three tips on staying engaged with your child’s schoolwork.

Learn more about The Math Mentors and their offerings here.

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TRANSCRIPT

Anne Kirby 
Hi and welcome back to Brain Candy. I’m Anne, brain candy is brought to you by the candy factory a coworking and social club here in Lancaster. Check us out at www.coworkinginlancaster.com. Today we have the founder of the math mentors. Hi, Othelia.

Welcome. We’re gonna be talking about staying engaged with your child’s schoolwork. Yes, great, excellent. But first, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Othelia 
Sure. I’m Othelia. I’ve been a member here The Candy Factory for going on five years. And I love the space of the community here. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to meet people that I have been able to have more students. Because of this, I’m a private tutor, my company’s called the math mentors. And most of the students I work with our children between the ages of like eight to seniors in high school, and then occasionally I have a college student or adult learner.

Anne Kirby 
Got it? Yeah. Excellent. Well, wonderful. Well, thank you for joining us today. Absolutely. So we’re talking about staying engaged with your student’s work schoolwork, which can be a challenge for many parents, absolutely. Some of the tips that you have that we’ve discussed, the first tip would be.

Othelia 
So first tip that I have would be to stay engaged and on top of the online resources that are available with the school. So most of my students that I work with have Schoology accounts or something like Schoology, and their assignments are listed on there, available there. Over the years, it seems like more and more teachers are putting most of the assignments that they’re going over, in class, online, also. So you can download the PDF and check it out online. So stay on top of those things. If there’s also like a separate thing where the grades are checking out their grades, you know, whatever frequency like works for you, if it’s weekly, bi-weekly, you know, every so often keeping up to date with those things. Yeah,

Anne Kirby
so I know with my son’s system that their school uses his school uses is I can get notifications. So I get an email notification when there’s been a new post by a teacher or if grades have been listed. And so it’s really nice to be able to see that information. And I think it’s become more obviously relevant with the pandemic. So it’s nice to it’s nice to have that. So online resources staying up to date with that the second tip.

Othelia
So second tip I have would be to ask questions to your student. And not just how was your day at school? Just that one question when they get in the car after getting off of school. Just ask them more questions. Ask them what was their favorite part of the day? Was there something fun activity that they did? What was their favorite subject? Did something silly happen or challenging happen? Yeah, or was there anything even negative that happened? Did you have any bad interactions that day with a fellow students? So just asking them more than just how was your day got questions?

Anne Kirby
Now, what if your child isn’t ready to have a conversation? Maybe they’ve had a bad day as we all do?

Othelia
Sure. That definitely happens. So I advise to just allow there to be some space between the two of you or however many students that you have, you know, let them have that space to, to let their day process if they just got off of school, and give them a few hours, even if that day isn’t the best day to like, fully ask them about how every single grade is going then just put it off. But as quickly as you can get back to them and say, you know, do you want to talk through what happened today? Maybe there’s a way that I can help or like my third tip is a way that your teacher can help the situation.

Anne Kirby 
Okay, so communication with the teacher. Tell me a little bit about that. Yes, absolutely.

Othelia 
Absolutely. So um, sometimes it might feel like you’re bothering the teacher or something. And they don’t feel bothered for the most part. They’re wanting to engage with parents, and they’re happy to get emails and respond to specific things that are going on with a student they like when the parents are involved, you know, so don’t hesitate to send an email or call up your students, your child’s teacher. If you have questions about specific assignments or they had poor, poor grades on something, or just anything that might come up that you need a third person to talk to about,

Anne Kirby
This is great because I think the communication early on if a student is struggling, that teacher can help them navigate things better and then maybe even look into a tutor if they need it. Especially for Math. So excellent all wonderful tips, thank you for sharing.

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