5 Ways To Help Students Be Their Best: How parents can help their kids succeed at school

Every parent wants their child to succeed at school, but this isn’t as easy as it may seem. After all, you aren’t in the classroom with your child, so how can you ensure they are going to succeed? Here are some tips to help you think through ways you can mold your child into being the best student they can be from outside the classroom. 

1. Help Improve Their Self-Awareness. 

At the Academy, parents are invited onto campus for formal events and teacher meetings throughout the school year. These visits are valuable to the parent’s involvement in the student’s school experience and relationship with their teacher.

If you don’t have a chance to be actively involved in the school’s PTO or other volunteer programs, make sure to talk with your child about the in’s and out’s of their school life. Who’s their favorite teacher? Why do they like the kids they hang out with and what role do they play in their circle of friends? What subjects do they enjoy, and which ones do they struggle with? This will help you help your child, by asking more focused questions that can help them better process their experiences. School can bring out a lot of insecurities in a child, and not every child is gifted with the intrapersonal skills to make sense of it all on their own. Asking personal questions and helping them talk through their thoughts and feelings can hopefully bring them some clarity concerning how they think about certain situations. Elementary aged students may be more prone to being open and vulnerable than middle school or high schoolers, but it’s never too late to start. Share with them ways that you’ve seen them change, and how they are growing. Self-awareness will help make them be their best as they will know how to better approach situations based on how they know themselves.  

2. Give Them Opportunities to Explore

Part of students learning about themselves involves exploring new interests and figuring out what types of things they are good at or enjoy.  Every child is different. What may be the most boring thing in the world to one child, may be seen as wildly interesting to another. Providing strong emotional support will help students be more willing to try new things, as it builds confidence knowing that they will still be loved and supported even if they fail. It will give them the encouragement they need to further explore certain interests which can help build self-confidence as they begin learning more about themselves. This shapes their mindset and can help them develop as a student. 

3. Develop their Strengths

When you see a child has a knack for a skill, provide opportunities for them to develop it. If they are athletic, try to get them on a sports team, or if they are musically inclined, enroll them in a music camp. Encourage them to find ways in which they can enhance the natural skills they have. As they develop these talents, they are also developing their minds as they learn the ins and outs of a skill. This not only boosts their confidence, but will help shape the way they view themselves. They will be more okay with their weaknesses knowing that they have strengths.  

Parent-teacher meetings are welcome and encouraged at the Academy. Our teachers invest into a partnership with the students and parents in order for the student to have a successful learning experience.

4. Overcome their Weaknesses

Everyone has weaknesses and the sooner they are addressed, the sooner they can be caught up to speed with others. While no child is going to want a tutor, if they are falling behind in a certain subject then it may be an appropriate way to help them succeed. However, before hiring a professional tutor, you may want to try other options first. While children may react differently when their parents try to teach them, if you can find the time you may be able to tutor them yourself. If not, see if there are friends who are skilled in that subject who could tutor them. Other options may be hosting some of their classmates for a group study session. By opening your home to allow students to work on group projects or study for upcoming tests, you are encouraging both healthy academic and social practices. Getting students to be comfortable having weaknesses and being willing to face them head on is beneficial both in and out of the classroom. 

5. Challenge Them

Another way to help your student become the best they can be is by making sure they are challenged. This doesn’t just have to be in a purely academic sense, but by getting them out of their comfort zone and participating in activities they would rather avoid, it can stretch their familiarity, expanding their willingness to try things they would otherwise shy away from. When this attitude is applied to their academics, it helps students approach new topics with greater optimism even if it is in a subject they are weak in or unfamiliar with. 

How to Thrive in High School

1. Learn How to Study

School is for learning and to learn you need to study. It’s not just about what you can absorb while in the classroom, but how you interact with the material outside of the classroom as well. Studying may look different depending on the subject or project, but it is something you need to get good at. Find out how and where you study best.  A few tips are to rest or get a snack before studying, so hunger or tiredness do not distract you. Also, finding a good study environment is key. Don’t study in your bed as your mind associates it with sleep, or a place where there are too many distractions, whether it is in the form of television, music, or people-watching. We won’t cover all of them here, but there are plenty of blogs and websites with lists of tips and tricks to help improve your study habits, so go check them out. 

2. Make a Study Schedule

When making a schedule, we often plan out how we’ll make time for our extracurricular activities, but sometimes we forget to block off enough time for getting homework or projects done. One way to manage your time better is to create a study schedule at the beginning of the year and stick to it. Even if you do not have homework in a certain class, you can organize your notes, review the content, and prepare questions for your next class. It may sound like a drag, but it will make paper writing and studying for tests much easier, and will save you time in the long run.  

3. Trust Your Teachers

At the Academy, this should be easy. Their genuine smiles and love for God and others make them the perfect people to deserve your trust. Your teachers have your best interest at heart, so don’t be dismissive if they offer correction or discipline. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Teachers are there to help you learn, and they want to make sure you do. When they give you advice, be sure to listen, because they are saying it for your benefit, not theirs.  

4. Be a Friend

Like the old saying goes, “if you want a friend, be a friend,” which is almost just a reverberation of the golden rule applied to friendship. Remember that your classmates aren’t your competition, they’re your teammates, so be sure to show them the respect, kindness, and forgiveness that you would want shown to you. Having a good set of friends, makes the good times better, and the hard times easier. If you have a hard time making friends, then ask someone you know for advice on how to be a better friend. Of course, being a friend isn’t always easy, but the work you put into it is definitely worth it.  

5. Get Perspective

Learn what does and does not matter in the long run. There are a lot of things in high school that seem like they are such a big deal, but will hardly be remembered a year or two later. Whether it was a trending style, an event you did or did not get to attend, or an embarrassing situation, you’ll soon find out that some of these things are not near as big of a deal as they seem in the moment. Other decisions you make will have a big impact on your future, even if they only seem as simple as turning in an assignment on time or being obedient to your parents. Gaining perspective will keep you from being overly dramatic about unimportant things, and keep you focused on what matters most.

6. Honor Your Parents

What does honoring your parents have to do with surviving high school? A little. So why are we bringing it up? Because it has everything to do with thriving during high school. Having a healthy relationship with your parents can make all the difference during your high school years. If you are stressed with all you are trying to do in high school, consider how much more they are responsible for every single day. You can be a blessing to them by ensuring to respect and obey them. This will not only make your parents happy, but God as well. Stress at home affects our school life and can negatively impact your academic performance. How do you expect to succeed  at school if you are unable to do well at home? 

7. Don’t Forget God 

If you are not spending time connecting with God, then don’t be surprised if you are having trouble staying afloat in any aspect of your life, let alone high school. God’s Spirit helps us to stand firm in the midst of trials. By remaining connected to the vine, we are able to be full of the wisdom and life God gives. This will help us walk according to his ways, so that we do more than just get through every day, but that we live it to the fullest for God.

Biblical Education Put into Practice: Monthly Service Project Highlights

At least once a month, Jr High and High school students have the great privilege of serving those in need in our community and the greater Nashville area. It’s a practical way our students are learning to put the biblical education they receive in the classroom into practice.

This month, students served both on our school campus and neighboring communities. It is such a joy to see our students work together, strategize, and display teamwork to meet needs. Here are a few highlights:

Life Care Center- A group of students went to the Life Care Center, an elderly home in Madison, TN. They sang three worship songs and played bingo with the residents. One of our students even got to call out the bingo numbers for the game! The presence of youth brighten the day for the residents, and it’s a blessing to see our students shine in this way.

Hopewell Neighbors- A group of students also planted flowers at an elderly woman's home across the street from our school and raked leaves in one of our neighbor's yard!

School Playground & Elementary Students - Students weeded our elementary playground and the memorial garden to beautify our school campus.

Parents Day Out and Pre-K - Students weeded around the Parents Day Out Program building to beautify our entire campus.

Ugandan Students - Students wrote letters to our home education students in Uganda and encouraged them in their studies with midterms taking place. They were so precious as they have felt more and more connected to these students over the years and looked forward to connecting with them in this way.

The Elderly at McKendree Village & Chippington Towers - Students used their time yesterday to plan for a Christmas party at McKendree Village and Chippington Towers. This is a highlight for the residents each year!

“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” - Matthew 5:16

Exploring the Visual, Auditory and Physical Styles of Learning: The Benefits of Various Teaching Styles

Simply put, learning styles are the different ways in which a person intakes information. While there are multiple ways to analyze this, one of the easiest ways to break this down is through our senses. Students learn through seeing, hearing, and handling the subject matters taught to them. Some children are more prone to retaining information when presented in a certain way, and thus one student may learn more quickly through hearing a teacher’s lesson while another may better grasp the concept if that same information is formulated into a graph. With that said, here is a quick breakdown of some of the learning styles and how they can be used.

Visual: Here are some ways in to use visualization to your advantage: Use multiple colored pens when taking notes to color-coordinate certain ideas, create graphs, charts, webs, and illustrations to depict the information you were taught, make a mind-map to see how various ideas connect to each other, or put facts on images and make a review collage. 

Auditorial: Some people prefer learning through hearing the information, so here are some study ideas: Listen to energizing but not distracting music while studying, memorize facts by putting them to the tune of a popular song, download lectures and re-listen to them in the car on the way to soccer practice, read through your notes out loud, or take turns with a study partner re-teaching each other the information by putting it in your own words. 

During a lesson exploring the digestive system, students participate in hands-on experiments to guide their understanding of the course material.

Physical: Get moving! This style of learning requires you to use your body: Act out what you are trying to learn as if rehearsing for a play, read your notes while walking or chewing gum to keep your subconscious busy with movement to help your mind focus on what you need to memorize, put choreography or dance moves to the information you are trying to memorize, or place index cards of facts around the room and connect them with string. Anything that gets your body moving in sync with your brain as you digest the information can be beneficial for a kinesthetic style of learning.

For rather obvious reasons, the smelling and tasting methods are rarely used. While delicious, writing your notes in icing on a cake and then eating it is neither practical nor efficient, even if you do technically digest the information. 

What’s a way to wrap all of this into one useful study tip: draw your notes. Edutopia explains how drawing while notetaking can increase retention rates by utilizing multiple learning styles at once. The student is intaking the information audibly by listening to the lecture; by depicting the information in charts, symbols, or pictures, they are constructing visuals; and by using their hands to draw, they are keeping their body physically active. 

While certain learning styles may come easier to some than others, we should avoid pigeonholing anyone to a specific style. If not understood correctly, a student may lay blame on the way a topic was conveyed rather than trying to take responsibility for trying extra hard to understand the concept. Rather than looking to strengthen a weakness, they may turn it into a handicap. This may be why the developer of the multiple intelligence theory, Howard Gardner believes it best to leave behind the term “learning styles,” even though he does highly encourage educators to “pluralize” their teaching methods. 

SOURCES: 

Northern Illinois University Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. (2020). Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. In Instructional guide for university faculty and teaching assistants. Retrieved from https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide  

“Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences.” Northern Illinois University. (visited 24 March 2022)

https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences.shtml  

Cherry, Kendra. “Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences.” VeryWellMind.com. July 28, 2021 (visite 24 March 2022) 

https://www.verywellmind.com/gardners-theory-of-multiple-intelligences-2795161  

Terada, Youki. “The Science of Drawing and Memory.” Edutopia. 14 March 2019. (visited 4 April 2022)

https://www.edutopia.org/article/science-drawing-and-memory

New Year, New Logo: Here’s what it represents.

Our logo just got a wonderful makeover for our 10th year, and we couldn’t be more excited about it. This emblem shows off some core values of our school. The new logo is a silhouette of a phoenix head in front of five blue flames, all above an open book. It looks amazing, but what does it mean? Well, let us explain…

The Flames:

The five blue flames are representative of the five goals set in our mission statement, the first of which is providing holistic education. There are also five categories which make up holistic education: academic, emotional, social, moral, and spiritual. The next is implementing this holistic education to teach children how to be responsible, kind, and ethical neighbors. The last three also deal with how we strive to shape students into being ones who are competent persons, who are globally conscious, and who are historically relevant.   

The Phoenix:

The Phoenix serves as the school’s mascot, but was chosen so due to what phoenix’s are known best for: resurrection. We believe resurrection is a core element of our faith in God. The resurrection of Jesus reveals that God is the final judge and that life in him can triumph even over death. It is the epitome of hope, and is essential to our walk of faith. Our desire is to instill this undying flame of perseverance in the students,  teaching them to stand firm in the fact that their hope in God does not disappoint (Rom. 5).

The Book: 

The open book in front of the Phoenix is from where all our values derive: the Bible. It is not a closed book left on a shelf only to serve as a reminder of ancient traditions, but it is one we constantly open to study, so we know how to maneuver an ever changing world. Through meditation and study, we derive principles and lessons that can be applied in a relevant way to a watching world, allowing us to be a light in a world too often characterized by darkness.

A special THANK YOU to Genovations Media for the fresh design. Your team is always a pleasure to work with!