We happened to find a great article from the Washington Post regarding the anxiety that parents feel about teaching their children while attempting to keep up with evolving educational standards. The U.S. Department of Education continually changes and reinvents learning curriculums, which can leave parents at a loss when trying to help their children meet growing pressures and expectations.
Thankfully, the National PTA is taking steps to ensure that parents can support their child’s learning, without having to be curriculum experts.
In her Washington Post article, National PTA President Laura Bay outlines the new “Be a Learning Hero” program, which aims to show parents how to be stable educators for their children, throughout and after the school year. “Be a Learning Hero” is a public service partnership comprised of the National PTA and organizations such as Scholastic, GreatSchools, Common Sense Media, and the National Council of La Raza. Each organization lends their educational expertise to the Be a Learning Hero website, which presents a variety of steps that parents can take to empower themselves and become great support systems for their children.
In her article, Bay describes a five-step system called the “SUPER 5,” which is outlined on BeALearningHero.org. The SUPER 5 steps are as follows:
- Learn what the specific learning goals are for your child’s new grade.
- Know where your child excels, and where there is room to grow.
- Spend time in your child’s school, and be in regular contact with his or her teacher. Given that not all parents’ schedules align with the school day, parents can also use phone calls, text messages, emails, and school websites and apps to keep in touch with their child’s educators.
- Promote your child’s emotional intelligence – it matters for academic success.
- Make home another space for learning, and get tools for boosting your child’s math and English skills at the kitchen table.
These steps are specifically designed to help reinforce a strong supportive connection between parents and their children while keeping parental stress levels down. If you are curious to learn more about the National PTA’s Be a Learning Hero program, take a moment to visit BeALearningHero.org. The site offers steps to success like the SUPER 5, comprehensive breakdowns of each state’s required exams and educational expectations, and useful study tools to help prepare for state exams.
No more feeling left in the dust by a state’s educational standards! Take the time to learn your child’s learning standards and requirements. You can be prepared to help them along the path to great knowledge and success even before you know what the path will look like.