When asking students this week about their biggest challenges to off-site learning they shared a variety of responses. However, some themes that were repeated were:
- Lack of self-motivation and self-discipline
- Time management
- Poor sleep schedule
This is not surprising when working with teenagers during a crisis. Your child may consider this time to be similar to long school breaks or summer vacation, but it is not exactly the same. “Unlike summer vacation, this break is sudden and unplanned, and the time away from school has not been specified,” says Dr. Gallagher. “This can be difficult for children to understand. In general, people don’t do well when they are unsure about the future, even in an area as simple as the schedule.”
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The experts reiterate that students do better with:
Structure and Organization
- Setting a daily or weekly schedule for family time, devotions, academics, physical activity, hobbies, free time, meals, and bedtime.
- Having a study space to work in
- Organizing assignment due dates and setting a schedule to work on each courses’ learning activities for the week. (Feel free to use this resource created by Mrs. Andrews)
Avoiding Procrastination
- The internet and other home activities may tempt students into procrastinating. Some teens also find excuses to fail because they just give up learning.
- Procrastination can add to anxiety as student are aware of what needs to be completed and are not able to celebrate the completion of a task, before another is assigned
- Students who truly feel overwhelmed, should discuss it with their teachers, parents, or guardians.
Not multitasking while learning
- Assignments take longer to complete; each time one comes back to an assignment (from Instagram for example), one has to familiarize themselves with what they were doing, find their spot, and think about what they were going to do next, etc.
- Students are more likely to make mistakes; distractions and switching between tasks tires out the brain.
- Students will remember less; when the brain is divided, one is less able to commit what one is learning to long-term memory (because it isn’t encoded properly into the brain).
Exercise, Leisure and Social Contact
- “By keeping active each day, everyone will be calmer and will sleep better,” Dr. Gallagher says. “Get involved by taking walks, playing games with your kids, riding bikes, and getting out in nature. Make certain that a good portion of leisure time activity is active, both mentally and physically. “Passive observation and watching of content is fine within limits, but don’t let your child’s mind go numb by consuming content that does not require thought,” Dr. Gallagher says. “Teachers and school provide kids with more than six hours of mental exercise. Try to match that.”
- Pursue creativity. Try to paint, bake, write, play the guitar – any activity that fits one’s passion. When possible, do these activities as a family.
Communicating and processing the real-life concerns, stress and anxiety that the ‘new reality’ has caused.
- One way is to come up with two lists.2 One for gratitude and one for loss. Naming loss helps us be honest about grief and keeps us from minimizing or trying to ‘silver-line’ the situation. While naming gratitude prevents us from drowning in sorrow.
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Resources used
See also:
Webinar:
“Managing Life Stressors.”
An encouraging conversation validating the stress and reviewing helpful tips + tools to manage stress and anxiety during this time filled with many uncertainties.
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QUARTER 3 REPORT
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n accordance with the BC Ministry of Education’s mandate for reporting student learning, as scheduled, the Secondary Campus will be sending out Quarter 3 reports in the afternoon of Friday April 24th. Reports are accessed by logging into the student or parent portal of MSM. Parents and students are reminded that these interim reports indicate how a student is doing at the mid-point of Term Two. This information may be particularly helpful for students who are at risk of failing a course and highlighting the need for improvement in the final quarter. As mentioned in the Off-Site Learning web-page for the Secondary Campus, students will not be writing final exams at RCS this year. Consequently, weighting of assignments for course marks has been adjusted and will determine calculation of students' final grades for all courses.
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WEEKLY SCHEDULE: APRIL 20-24
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Want to escape and enter another world and read for fun? Check out the
Secondary Campus Library Blog
with links to resources to online books.
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Mrs. Johnson misses making the Secondary Campus announcements, so she has been practicing at home. Mr. Johnson has been very good at listening, and following her instructions.
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