So Jared has been bugging me to do a follow-up post to our weekly PowerSchool pow-wows with the girls. I have to start by saying that I absolutely adore individualism and I love situations that allow our girls' different personalities to show through. Our little PowerSchool meetings with the girls definitely show the stark contrasts in their personalities.
Brita figured out pretty quickly that we were serious about going over her school progress with a fine tooth comb every Thursday night. She lashed back a little at first and there was plenty of defensiveness when we questioned her about assignments that weren't turned in…she doesn't like being put on the spot, especially when the spotlight exposes a flaw here and there. After a couple weeks, the A's emerged and they've pretty much stayed constant. She's getting tired of us asking about the science test she took weeks ago that brought her grade down to an A- and last time we checked in with her she reminded us, yet again, that no, she cannot do anything to bring that test grade up. But it's the only thing we have to pick apart, so I guess we'll do it every week until her current work can bring her grade up to an A!
Lest anyone might think we are pushing too hard and being sticklers about an A-, I want to explain our philosophy. Jared and I believe that if our kids can do better, then they should do better. Even if they are receiving A's in their classes, we still have our kids show us the individual scores for tests and homework for each class. We scan each assignment/test for 0's and if anything hasn't been turned in, we have a problem with that…even if their overall grade is an A.
Jared and I believe that turning in all assignments and studying for all tests is the minimum that should be done and we are baffled by the attitudes of not only our girls, but also their friends and other youth we know who don't feel an urgency to meet these minimum standards. As far as we are concerned, that's an attitude that doesn't fly in the real world and we have a vested interest in doing what we can to raise our girls to be successful, responsible adults.
So like I mentioned earlier, Brita seems to have gotten her act together and is organizing herself well enough that her homework is getting turned in on time and her test scores are good. Now I also need to mention that Brita seems to have been born to be organized. I find lists all over the house that she makes. She makes a list for everything--stories she should write, daily routines, stuff she wants to buy, jobs she wants to get done, goals she is working to accomplish. It's just natural for her to make a list and cross things off. And she doesn't forget a lot of stuff either. So this system of meeting homework deadlines is a pretty natural fit for her.
I already indicated that our weekly meetings show the "stark contrasts" in our girls' personalities. So if Brita was born to be organized, then Leah, well…wasn't. I don't want to incriminate any of our girls on this blog and I certainly don't want them to think I don't believe in them, and I hope Leah won't feel like I'm picking on her by announcing to the world that she isn't a real organized person. I'm pretty sure she already knows that and if she doesn't, she will remember it tonight when she jumps over the piles of shoes, backpacks and Easter candy that blocks the pathway from her door to her bed.
I'm comfortable "outing" her mostly because I don't think it's a bad thing to not be organized. It's just a personality thing and some people have it and some people don't. Not to mean that it can't be learned, but just that for some it comes more naturally than for others. And I'm not the most naturally organized person myself. In college, one of my roommates had to teach me how to organize some of the stuff in my room because I couldn't control the papers and junk that was coming in.
Leah is amazing in other ways and I can't imagine how our family would function without her. I could write too many blog posts about the things she is good at, but instead, today I'm writing about how we're trying to help her gain a skill. It's not going so well yet, but we have hope because it's getting better.
For a few weeks, our PowerSchool chats with Leah were real painful. She'd mostly yell at Jared and me because she hadn't completed her assignments. We finally picked up on the fact that she was having a hard time turning in her assignments because she didn't have a system for keeping track of due dates and for remembering when she hadn't completed work in class that she should do at night.
Leah's school provides all the students with a planner at the beginning of the year so they can track all of their assignments. Jared and I are a little slow to the game as we are just learning this…but hey, better late than never, especially since all hope is not lost at this point. So I told Leah that every day she needed to write down the assignments she didn't complete in class and needed to finish up at night, as well as any homework assigned by the teacher including upcoming tests/papers/projects. Then she nearly freaked out when I broke the news that I was going to check her planner every day. I explained that we'll just do these daily checks until she gets the hang of it.
So last week was her first full week of filling in her planner and it went something like this:
Monday
Me: "So how did it go recording everything in your planner today?"
Leah: "Good."
Me: "Great! Will you show it to me?"
So "good" must mean that she wrote down mostly everything, but didn't quite get it all. She wrote down homework for periods 1-5, but forgot about the last two periods. She wrote down a project assignment but didn't write the due date and had forgotten when it was due.
Me: "Okay. That's progress. Just talk to your teacher tomorrow and write down the project due date and remember to record homework for all of your classes."
Leah: "Okay."
Tuesday
Me: "So how did it go recording everything in your planner today?"
Leah: "Good. I remembered to write down something for every class."
Me: "That's awesome! Let's take a look."
Me: "Okay, so I see that all seven periods homework is in here, but I still don't see the due date for your project. Did you find out when that is due?"
Leah (throwing her head back): "Ugh! I forgot!"
Me: "Please remember to ask your teacher about that tomorrow."
Leah: "Okay, I promise."
Wednesday
Me: "So how did it go recording everything in your planner today:"
Leah: "Well, I lost my planner."
Of course she lost her planner. Because after all, she was just starting to make some progress and I was hopeful that this would be the day everything would come together.
Me: "What happened?"
Leah: "Well, instead of keeping it in my backpack, I've been holding it in my hand so I don't forget to write everything down and I think I left it in one of my classes. I hope I can find it tomorrow because if I don't, I have to buy a new one and they'll charge me $5."
I wanted to laugh, cry, and pull my hair out. I get easily frustrated with stuff like this sometimes, but I'm trying really hard to see where she is coming from. And when I see things from her perspective my heart wants to break. I see a kid who is is easily distracted, who is trying so hard to remember stuff and to acquire a skill that is so outside of her comfort zone and her natural tendencies. But in her attempt to hold her planner in her hand so she can remember, she actually forgets. And it never occurred to her to keep track of her assignments for the rest of the day on another piece of paper.
Luckily she did find her planner on Thursday and she stayed after school that day as well to make up a bunch of assignments in Utah Studies. That's the thing about Leah - you'll never find a kid who will work as hard and just hang in there for as long as hanging in needs to be done. But I SO want her to get everything caught up so she can know how it feels to stay on top of all of her assignments and school work. I want her to know that she CAN do it. I want her to believe in herself like I believe in her.
There are plenty of things we (especially things that I) start and they just kind of fade away, but this isn't going to be one of those. Jared and I are committed to sticking with this until we help Leah figure out a system that will work for her. It's hard to know how to help when we don't struggle with forgetting like she does, but we are trying our best to be loving and patient as we work through this together.
By the time Leah gets to high school, we hope she has a system in place that will work for her. A system that will aid her in her transition in to adulthood, and I pray every day that we're not screwing things up too bad in the process of helping her find something that works. I'm sure we'll know someday if we're doing any good, but if she is completely off her rocker by the time she becomes an adult, I think we'll easily be able to trace everything back to PowerSchool and the damn planner.
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