Recently, I began working with a Silicon Valley educational company as an English and writing tutor. Along the way, the company asked me to teach kids how to excel at "executive functioning". In a nutshell this means that I teach kids how to study efficiently. I help them to organize their study space and materials, and offer tips on how to remember which assignments are due and what activities are on the horizon. In other words, I teach students how to remember what is happening when.These skills have always come naturally to me and as I get older, so far so good. For one thing, my Dad was an assistant principal who was supremely organized and expected the same of me, even when I was tiny. As a six year old, I learned to take and organize his telephone messages, and if I asked, "Daddy, where is the is the milk?" his favorite joke was, " In the refrigerator under M."
My Mom, at ninety, retains her bookkeeping and account management skills and knows where all the tax returns are and when the doctor's offices and health insurance companies have overcharged--and by how much.
My parents developed these skills before the digital age, and they taught them to me--so how hard could it be for kids to get organized? I mean now my students have laptops and i-phones and planners. With self driving cars on the way, they may not even have to learn how to drive. I was skeptical from the start--and why such a fancy name for this so-called challenge?
Then I saw their backpacks.
If you are the parent of a school age kid or teen, you can skip this paragraph.
But for those who have not looked into a backpack lately, you will find within: sports attire; snacks; multi-subject, multi pocketed binders that look more military than academic; pens, pencils; Gatorade; art projects; math worksheets; permission slips and maybe, though rarely, a textbook. If there happen to be loose math worksheets or returned homework papers flapping around, none of them will have a date on them. Some may be from 2016.
Identification of worksheets and homework is futile. If you randomly select a stray worksheet from a backpack and ask a middle schooler the question, "What''s this?" you will get the answer:
STUFF
Older kids will proffer the slightly more formal but equally non-committal answer:
I HAVE NO IDEA.
21st Century Stuff
I naively thought that online education would enable us to have, well, less, STUFF.
Instead, online education, at least at this point, is a supplement to our stuff.
Online education systems such as EDMODO and SCHOOLOGY used by local school and college districts, often supplement paper assignments--they do not replace them. Students may be checking their grades online, and taking interactive online quizzes, but there are still paper sheets of homework, that they forgot to physically hand in, sitting at the bottom of their backpack, often under a melting unwrapped snack bar.
Part of my job these days is to help students to manage their actual reclaimed redwood or IKEA faux wood desktops, AND manage their laptop desktop, which hopefully is coordinated with their i-phone. If Mom and Dad control passwords or block access to some sites, well then you hope that at least one of them is home.. .and that they remember the passwords.
Many schools insist that kids have a physical paper day planner--in fact, some schools provide them. But the kids often prefer online calendars. What ends up happening is that they then have to remember to put STUFF on both of their calendars. There's a lot of what the tech world would call (or used to call) parallel processing.
Now maybe its easier for me, because I am old enough to have begun with an all paper system and then migrated online. I could figure out what online systems would make my life easier, and which would not. I still have both a paper and online planner---recording first on paper and then transferring everything online--which may not be the most efficient way to do something--who knows? But it works for me. It reflects my organizational evolution. At least that's what I tell the parents and they seem to be impressed. Maybe I have just invented a new term.
Not only does stuff happen...stuff moves!
That's another problem--er...challenge, as we say in the educational business.
Silicon Valley houses are BIG and kids are mobile.
STUFF moves from room to room and there are a lot of rooms.
A lot of kids are still doing homework at the dining room table within earshot of a parent, if the parent is home. Food gets on the homework. Juice spills on the laptop.
I actually suggest putting STUFF in a plastic basket with a handle, like the ones you get at Walgreens or Trader Joe's. This provides a little protection from drink spills, and the STUFF can be carted from bedroom to dining room.
I guess kids could also use an actual shopping cart, but first they would have to learn how to steal one.
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| Me and my stuff--in repose Note clipboard |
SOLUTIONS
I am new to the executive skills game and solutions vary from student to student. But beyond helping you to develop empathy for overloaded kids, I do have a few suggestions. So here goes:
1)Encourage your kids to put dates on their print and online notes and worksheets. In fact, they should put a date on every single piece of paper that they touch. Will they do this? Probably not. But keep insisting. It may sink in by college. If you can get them to add a location: MATH CLASS JANUARY 30th--so much the better. That way, when they are ready to study for a test, the papers can do in order, hopefully by subject. Go to Staples and get a date stamp if you think that would be more fun. Remember, to change the date stamp...um...daily.
2)Use clear plastic pencil cases and cosmetic cases inside backpacks. Put pencils, pens, snacks and anything else the you need to see and that could possibly leak, within. If you travel a lot, you already do it for yourselves. Give you executive functioning kid a business class experience.
3)If you are supervising a kid or kids' homework and test schedule--get a big whiteboard or whiteboard calendar. Have your student enter important dates or help them to enter the dates. Look at the whiteboard every morning and every night. Color code your kids. I mean, color code multiple schedules. Then everyone in the family, hopefully has a sense of what's going on. Sure you could synch online calendars with your kid, but we should live so long.
3)Someone is gonna screw up, miss a date, miss a deadline, or forget to sign a form.
When that happens, and it will, FIX IT FAST.
Don't waste time yelling at your student, reverse engineering, or pointing fingers.
Don't question every single decision you have ever made as a parent.
Just get your e-mail out to the teacher or coach and say, "Hey, I/we screwed up. Sorry. What can we do to fix this, make up the test, reschedule the meeting. Thanks for understanding.
Do not under any circumstances immediately blame the teacher!
Do not immediately blame your kid!
Do not immediately blame yourself!
Instead, schedule a meeting to talk about ways to improve executive functioning.
Schedule a meeting with an executive functioning consultant--ME!
And then remember to show up.
