More progress?

One of my professors said that he was surprised how personal my blog was and that he felt like he was reading a diary. He’s right; my insights have been fairly personal especially for me because I’m usually a very private person. I hope by sharing some of our struggles that other parents and educators gain something from our experiences.

Last night started quietly with me trying to do my homework and my son sitting on the couch madly typing on his laptop with the tv blaring. I didn’t do very well being the positive parent. Looking back I think that he was trying to push my buttons for some reason. I ended up in lecture mode cross-examining him about his homework and work that hadn’t been completed. Then I started asking questions. By the end of the evening I hadn’t gone through the rest of my data for my action research project, but I have a much clearer view of my son.

He had been giving me hints for a long time but I just wasn’t ready to put the pieces together. Last night he said that he would rather take a zero on an assignment than do a bad job. He feels that his teachers hold him to a higher standard and that they are disappointed when he doesn’t turn in something that is incredible. He wants to write something that is amazing, but he didn’t know how to define amazing. I told him that everything that is written is a work in progress, websites are never done, and nothing is definite.

He said that I hadn’t read his postings in deviantART and wouldn’t say it, but he wanted me to. I told him I had looked for it, but he was very good at hiding and I knew he would share when he was ready. I read all of his postings at lunch today; very moving for a 16 year old. I now understand what he views as amazing.

After he went to bed looking like someone who had just been through a long battle, I pulled out my Michael D. Whitley book and reread the section on Hidden Perfectionists. My Action Research project has taken another turn. I’ve already googled perfectionism and will start working through some of the information for help.

As my husband pointed out last night I am really working on two projects – my action research project and my son. This stage of my research project will end soon; my other project is a work in progress.

Progress?

Last week it felt like we were making some progress. His grades were going up (he’s passing every class now) and he seemed to be in a little better mood. This process has helped me talk to him more and take a different look at how things are going.

I also thought we were making progress because he seemed to be making slow adjustments to major changes at school and a disruptive schedule before and after Spring Break.  His school built a new building and they moved from the old building into the new section during Spring Break. The week before Spring Break was moving week and most of his classes had different schedules and were chaotic. He has always said that he liked change and even thrived on it, but he definitely wasn’t thriving.

Going back to school after the long Spring Break gave me insight into how much he depends on things being consistent. He talked about how much he hated the new building, how he was afraid he couldn’t find his classes, and how he wished they were back in the new building. He even got sick the weekend after the first week back and missed two days of school. I suspected it was stress and let him stay home. Its been several weeks now, and he is very slowly adjusting to the changes. I’ve learned that he hates having change forced on him and this period has given me a new direction in my action research project.  I’m going to look at change and how people cope with changes.  Maybe I’ll be able to understand him a little better.

He was also struggling with a project in art class. He loves to draw and often when he draws he hums. I know he’s happy when he softly hums while he works on projects and most of the time that is when he is drawing. In art class he is trying something new – he’s learning to paint.  It hasn’t been easy, but mostly he has enjoyed the process.  He had seemed restless for a couple of weeks and I noticed he was doing less homework and I knew something was bugging him.

I finally asked him what was going on and he told me that he was struggling with a painting in art and didn’t know what to do. After discussing his options he decided to talk to his teacher and see if he could move on to another project. He said that Art was starting to feel like Geometry (which he hates) and he wanted to have fun in Art again. We actually had a good conversation about the creating process and why he was struggling and what he needed to do to get unstuck. It felt like a little progress.

Just a thought

I finished my literature review and learned quite a bit about motivation.  I also learned that there is still a lot for me to learn.  Life has been crazy with all of our activities, school and work.  I’m working on a project for one of my classes and being meticulous again. It has been taking all of my energy and time. 

Funny how things happen in life to jolt you back to what is really important.  One of my co-workers took his 8 week old daughter in for a routine doctor’s appointment today thinking everything was going well.  Instead of coming to work they were referred to a cardiologist at Children’s Hospital to “check” things out. 

My son has his issues, but I am very thankful that he is healthy and we haven’t had any major medical surprises.   

Still working on the literature review…

It was a long day.  Went to work, took off early to talk to the accountant about taxes, cooked supper and then put in over 4 hours working on my literature review.  In the last several weeks I’ve read so much about motivation, the evils of rewards and punishments and why kids underachieve that my head is spinning.  My son’s grades are holding fairly steady for now which is good except they need to improve.  This time I’m not the one pushing him.  He says they have to improve.  He knows he has to get a C or better in Biology so he can take Chemistry next year and he really wants to take it.  He also has to get his grade in Social Studies up to a C to take Psychology.  It’s strange sometimes what triggers his interest.  So I’m trying to take what I’ve learned in the last several weeks to help him achieve his goals.

Tomorrow he meets with the school counselor to discuss his PSAT test scores, his grades, where he stands for graduation and various other things.  He told me he has it under control, but then is that just something to get me to leave him alone?  Lately I keep asking questions, give him specific comments about the things that seem to go right for him and sit and watch how he reacts.

He told me last week that he had always thought that intellect was enough and that grades weren’t important.  He’s brought up the topic several times when he talks about going to college and how tuition keeps increasing.  Something is going on with him and I guess my job for now is to listen, keep asking questions that get him to reconsider some of his current beliefs and be patient.

It looks like it’s going to be another long day tomorrow.

Literature Review

My son loves broccoli. He has loved it since he was little and couldn’t say broccoli. We solved that problem by calling it “little trees”. I used to tell him he could have broccoli as a treat if he ate all of his meat. This was before he decided that he definitely likes steak and won’t even try to understand why someone chooses to be a vegetarian.

How did I get him to eat broccoli? My husband commented last week that it is a strange choice for a teenager’s favorite food and I wondered how I had influenced him. This week I think I found a possible answer.

I’m working through “Punished by Rewards” by Alfie Kohn. Fascinating read on the affects of rewards and punishments and how they promote control. More later.

Overdue Update

I’m almost embarrassed at how long it’s been since I posted last. Several things have happened since the last update. I went to parent teacher conferences; always a thrill. I’ve participated in conferences as a teacher and as a parent and the parent part is much harder. At least now that he is older the tone of the conferences has changed. His teachers now don’t infer that I’m a bad parent because he is a challenging student.

Changes:
1. The number of zeros has decreased some – they are spread out to all classes now.

2. He told me one night while we were cooking supper that he has never thought school was important and that’s why he didn’t do the work. It just wasn’t a priority.

3. My attitude has changed a lot. I get frustrated that he limits himself and that he doesn’t have enough confidence to shine, but I’m not yelling and I’m in a better mood. Now if winter would just end, Hillary would drop out of the race, and I would become a morning person life would be really good!

4. He actually said that he knows he makes small choices that catch up to him. He’s not to the point where he’s figured out that he can/should change his choices, but we’re getting there.

5. He still pushes his step-dad’s buttons. I’m trying to convince my husband that getting angry hasn’t helped in the past and it’s not going to fix the current situation.

6. He is starting to talk about going to college and what he want to have as a major. Surprise, surprise – he’s thinking of majoring in psychology! He’s also willing to take ACT prep classes.

7. He admitted that he lies because it seems easier at the time, but in the end it really isn’t. I’ve caught him in a couple of lies, but it’s getting better.

8. He has a reduced schedule because of CSAP (doesn’t have to take them because he’s a junior) and he’s starting on several projects that are due in about a week. This is a big change especially the part of him going to get the supplies and getting enough for two projects at the same time.

I’m working on my literature review and have come across a couple of interesting books. I’m mainly looking at motivation and focusing on non-gifted students and motivation. I’ll let you know what I find.

Problem Statement

I’m using this blog to organize my thoughts and document the progress in this process with my son.  I have defined my concern as  “How do I encourage my son to decrease the number of zeros he gets on schoolwork?”

Why I’m concerned is more complicated.  I am concerned because he is not taking responsibility, he is establishing patterns that are self-defeating, he is making decisions that will limit his choices in the future, and his confidence in being successful in school is low.

When he was young a counselor told me to remember that I couldn’t control or change his father’s behavior; I could only change how I reacted and what I said and did.  That idea keeps coming to me while I read about the Action Research process.  My goal is to change my own practice and not concentrate on his behavior. 

So the next step is figure out what I value.  I value responsibility, honesty, learning, and independence.  So that leads me to ask if I am showing those values when I deal with him.  Am I being responsible? Am I being honest to myself and him? How is that affecting my practice with him?

Changes

So, what is different this semester? I took the advice from the book and made some small changes in our daily routine and my expectations of my son. First, I’m trying to be a “totally positive parent”. It is described as a combination of Mr. Rogers and Columbo. Very calmly talk with your child, but keep asking questions. So how is that going for me? It’s tough! After a lot of years of trying to get information from my son he knows exactly which buttons to push to get me to explode. I am working very hard on calmly discussing problems with him and clearly stating what I expect.

So what does a day after work sound like at my house now? Before I start on my homework, I sit down with my son after supper and we go through his whole day, class by class. I keep a notepad and ask him six questions about each class. 1. What he studied that day 2. Any homework assignments 3. Grades that were handed back 4. Any zeros he got that day 5. Upcoming tests 6. Long term projects. I take notes and ask questions to keep him moving through his day. During the week I look at the parent portal and see if he told me the truth. The first week didn’t go so well.

So what happened when I found out he had been lying about homework? At the end of the first week, Friday night, and after I gave him another chance to tell the truth, I handed him print outs of his classes with the zeros circled. I then told him the new rule in our house. As an adult when you have something to do and you put it off, it doesn’t magically disappear. With homework when he decided he didn’t want to do it and then didn’t hand it in it just magically disappeared – he didn’t have to do it. That has changed. That weekend even though he couldn’t hand in any of the assignments, he completed all of the assignments and gave them to me. That’s the new rule – all work will be done. No excuses. So he sat at the kitchen table from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm (I gave him a lunch break) he sat and complained and did work he had refused to do the first time.

How is it going now? The last time I checked he was passing all of his classes and in some classes he even had grades higher than a D. The other changes I’ve noticed are more subtle. He loves to write and is taking Creative Writing. He has a wonderfully quirky teacher who seems to understand him (he’s actually getting a 97% in the class) So after he is done with his homework, for fun he writes short stories. The newest development is that he is starting to share his writing with me. He has a wonderfully fluid style that I love to listen to. His understanding and use of the rhythm of language has always amazed me. Sometimes when he tells me about his day he forgets that he isn’t suppose to be excited and becomes fairly animated and laughs about some of the crazy things that happened at school. Lately he shares more than I am ready to hear, but I guess that is a good thing because he is actually talking to me.

He registered for his fall classes today and was very excited about taking psychology. His biology teacher semi-forced him into a honors chemistry class, and he accidentally signed up for an honors math class. His math teacher told him he was capable of doing the work and signed the paper. He was a little miffed with himself for not noticing the level of the class before he signed up. Overall for his senior year it is a pretty heavy load.

I think we’ve made progress but we have a way to go. The first 6 week period ends on Friday so I will see how he is doing. But I still have no idea why he sabotages himself and I don’t know if he understands how some of his little decisions have big consequences.

More Information

My background is in Education, specifically Special Education. I have always been fascinated with how people learn, why some people sail through the public school system and then as adults struggle, why some people excel and what can be done to help people improve how they learn. I taught Special Ed for about 5 years and then worked with a behavioral optometrist working with children and adults with learning disabilities, head injuries and visual problems. I was also able to address my problems with daily headaches and finally get relief which changed how I approached my own learning.

When I taught middle school Special Ed, I had students who were mainstreamed and consistently failed or barely passed those classes. They all had problems of doing homework and then not handing in the homework, refusing to do homework, lying about assignments, and having an inaccurate idea of how they were doing in their classes. I would work with them on assignments and watch the students put their work in their backpacks so they could give it to the teacher the next day. Most of the time those assignments were never given to their classroom teacher. After checking with the classroom teacher the students still assured me that they had given the assignment to the teacher. After questioning the student they continued to stick with their story and got angry or made excuses about why they hadn’t handed in their assignment. Every couple of weeks I would have the students clean out their backpacks and lockers and it always amazed me how much partly finished and completely finished assignments (never graded) were stuffed into those portable black holes.

I would talk to the parents who were either very frustrated and didn’t have any answers or were just not interested. We set up contracts, agreements, sign off sheets and a lot of other strategies that didn’t seem to work. I brought in the district psychologist for suggestions, support or some kind of answer and we just didn’t make progress. During all of the strategies I kept thinking that somehow the student had to take responsibility, but didn’t know how to force the issue.

When my son was in elementary school I started seeing the same patterns that I had seen in my Special Education students. The only difference was that he usually scored in the top of his class in the CSAPS, in the 90th percentile in standardized tests (especially math) and when he was in a bind he pulled the highest scores on tests and assignments. So again I was trying contracts, agreements, talking to teachers regularly, and kept asking the teachers for ideas or answers. I was told he was an enigma and that teachers who had taught for close to 30 years had never really had a student like him before. I felt that my son was dodging responsibility, sliding through and letting everyone else worry about him.

So what has changed?

A little background

I thought a little background information would be helpful before I describe what techniques I’m trying with my underachieving son. My son has had some incredible teachers and some teachers that shouldn’t have been in a classroom. He has always pushed limits and definitely marches to the beat of a drummer that no one else even hears or imagines. When he was younger with the help of the teachers his grades were fairly good, but mosly because of the efforts of his teachers and me and his stepdad.

When he got in trouble at school for not doing work, not turning in assignments, or just pushing the limits we grounded him, took away video games, took away tv priviledges, and at one point took everything out of his room except clothes and a bed. We’ve yelled, bribed, begged, tried to reason with him and hoped that he would somehow magically change.

He was open enrolled and then enrolled in a charter school, with me driving him to school every morning and his stepdad picking him up in the afternoon. This past fall we enrolled him in his home school. We finally decided that everyone else was more interested in his education than he was, so it was time for him to take some responsibility.

He passed all of his classes the fall semester, but just because he got high A’s on his finals. That brought his overall grades up enough so he had D’s. He was fairly confident that he would pass his classes because as he says, “I test well.”

Starting this semester I let him try things his way for the first 3-4 weeks. I have access to his grades in most of his classes through the parent portal, so I kept checking on him. At the start of week 4 I printed out the reports from his classes and started planning what techniques I would use to start with. (for a quick summary of the techniques suggested in the book and what we are trying, check back!)

Debra