Many students will have their vacations interrupted because they have to attend summer school. These are the students who failed one or more of their courses during the regular school year. They can either moan and groan and make life miserable for themselves and their parents or they can make good use of this experience so that summer school will never be necessary again. The first thing to do is to figure out what went wrong during the regular school year. The following are just some possibilities to explore. Did the student decide not to do any work in the class because he took a dislike to the teacher?
Or, even if he liked the teacher, did he decide to demonstrate rebelliousness by talking back and thus become a hero to his peers?
Summer school is an excellent opportunity to practice teacher-pleasing behavior mainly because the classes are usually smaller.
If so, the student needs to understand clearly the relationship between his behavior in school and loss of his summer freedom. Another possibility is that the student does not know how to make use of the teacher's expertise to help him to succeed. Early in the semester the student should describe to the teacher his learning style and what works best for him.
This step is especially important if the teacher's style is very different and perhaps incompatible with the student's.
For example, if he cannot do long, written assignments but can orally give a report, he should tell the teacher and try to reach a compromise. The compromise for a student skilled in art might be to employ that medium in his report.
He should enlist the teacher's aid early so that he can use his strengths to succeed and not always be penalized for his weaknesses. If he cannot sit still for a long period of time, he should tell the teacher this and work out some system whereby he can move about either in the classroom or by going outside. If he is taking medication which makes him seem tired and distracted , he should inform the teacher so that she does not interpret his yawns as disrespect. The student who is easily distracted should ask to sit in the front row preferably away from the door. The student who is a poor test taker or does not do well on timed tests should tell the teacher and ask for help. The student who has difficulty finishing homework assignments because of poor study skills should seek the teacher's aid in learning better skills. In general, the student should always make the assumption that the teacher's job is to help him to succeed. That is why they are paid and what they are trained to do.
Most teachers really want their students to succeed. However, the teacher can only help if the student tells her why he is having difficulty. Instead of asking for help, many students just give up or resort to misbehavior when they are failing. Summer school is an excellent opportunity to practice teacher-pleasing behavior mainly because the classes are usually smaller. The student can practice how to talk to the teacher in such a way that he takes advantage of all the expertise she has to offer. It is also an opportunity for the student to begin to pin-point the basic problem that makes him unsuccessful in school. The problem could run the gamut from his not knowing how to study to a physical problem such as an auditory processing deficit which would make it difficult for him to understand classroom lectures. Since the student is already going to summer school, in addition to the course he is repeating, he should take skill courses like typing and computers.
These skills ease the mechanics of completing assignments, yielding better and more readable papers, resulting in improved grades.
All in all, summer school does not have to be viewed as a disaster. It could be the saving or making of a future scholar.
First published in 1996
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