Tips for parents to help their kids grades improve

Schools are back in session for most students around the Valley and here’s three tips parents can do to immediately help their kids get better grades.

First:  Parents should reach out and establish a relationship with their child’s teachers.

“I would never be upset with a parent calling and asking me, ‘My student’s not being successful what can I do to solve it,’” said Arizona’s 2015 teacher of the year, John-David Bowman. “But what I often see is a parent might call the last week of school.”

Now that kids are getting back to school, it is a great time to reach out to teachers and learn more about the expectations and requirements of their classes, he said. Find out what’s going on, and ask how you can help.

Second: Convince your kid to turn everything in.

“If your student just does what is asked of them, typically in a lot of school classes there’s a lot of free points,” said Bowman who teaches at Mesa’s Westwood high school.

 

You just do it. And you’re going to get credit.

“And then if you don’t do so hot on the test, you might still work a ‘B’ in there,” he said. “It sounds silly but at the end of the semester when a student has an 89, but they had 4 missing assignments that easily could have been a 90. I think showing your kids that, that it really is that simple.”

Finally:  Monitor your kid’s educational progress, daily from your mobile device.

“I know most districts now have parent portals,” he said. “They can go in and you can check the grade of your student.”

Each class. Each assignment. Parents can monitor kid’s progress daily from their device.

Follow @CorbinCarson