Ways to Help Kids Connect Book Knowledge to Real Life

If you are in charge of raising a child, I believe that you are the link that will most effectively connect book knowledge to real life for your child. As hard as educators work to provide the best education for your children, there is often a huge disconnect with school learning and real life. Students become masters at making the grade by whatever means possible, but miss meaningful learning in the pursuit of the grade. Too many students graduate from high school and fall flat on their faces when it comes to functioning well in college or life on their own. And few high schools are taking note of that. Parents and guardians can play a big role in helping kids survive and thrive in life by staying connected with their education and providing opportunities for kids to apply book knowledge and skills in real life situations throughout their school years.

The following are a few ideas (and there are so many more out there) of ways to reinforce the lessons taught at school: 

Math

•At the grocery store, ask your child which size of the same product is the better buy based on the cost per ounce; ask them to figure out if using a coupon on a name brand product is a better buy than the generic equivalent

•At a fast food restaurant, make it a habit for you and your child to estimate what the total would be to make sure it’s correct (& often you'll discover errors on the cashier's part)

•Let your child learn measurements by using a recipe to make some- thing from scratch; doubling the recipe is good practice, too

•Show your teen how much money is wasted in interest paid when the credit card isn’t paid off at the end of each month

•Tell them about the different taxes you pay & the percentages of your salary

•Show your teen how to use a budget & get them in the habit of saving money (the lack of a budget usually hides overspending)

•Make sure they know their multiplication tables

•Make sure they understand decimal fractions; if you teach it using money, they’ll get it

•If you see your child struggling with a certain concept, you make sure they get it so they won’t have gaps in their math

•In a retail store, have them figure out how much an item is on sale, whatever the percentage is

•Have them estimate how much it’ll cost to put a certain amount of gallons in the vehicle when filling up

*If you are planning to provide your teen with a car, require them to earn the first $1,000; they'll take better care of something they've invested in

*Let them experience earning money with a job inside or outside the home

Communication (Reading, Writing, Speaking, Comprehension)

•When your child (at any age) receives a gift, have them write a thank you note to the giver

•Have your child order for themselves at a restaurant

•Have your child handle their purchases in a store themselves, including speaking with the cashier

•If your child makes a mistake, allow them to apologize and make it right

•You and your child read the same book and discuss it with each other (Rotate picking a title)

•Talk about movies you’ve seen, or a current event or social issue to see if they have a good grasp of what’s going on

•See how well your child can write & if it’s not acceptable, do something about it

•From an early age, find opportunities for your child to speak  in front of a group

•Talk about potential jobs & careers;  make sure they know what subjects they need to master in order to be successful in those careers

•Make sure they know the positives & negatives of using technology to communicate, & make them aware of the digital footprints they are creating when using the Internet

•Don’t allow phones, iPads, & iPods at the dinner table

•Assume they know nothing about something they need to know about life until they prove otherwise

•Have them write letters to your elected representatives about issues that concern them (education, for one)

•Be there when they’re talking to you

Social Studies (History & Geography)

•Talk about meaningful historical events, holidays, etc.

•Do a family tree; record family stories

•Create a timeline, or if you have the space, a stack of timelines which stacks the following timelines: world history, U.S. history, community or state history, & family history

•Watch or play Jeopardy together

•Study your community’s history & then visit the local museum, cemeteries, or historical markers

•Talk about countries in the news & their  history

•Learn about new cultures & how they live differently than you do

•Teach your children to appreciate the price of freedom by visiting memorials and events that honor veterans and those who died in service to our country

•Keep a globe or world map displayed somewhere in your home where you can find or mark the countries they are learning about or hearing about on the news (or if someone they know is living abroad or serving abroad in the military)

•Learn about a place before you travel there

•Have your elected representatives’ names posted & write letters/email together expressing your views about certain social issues

Science & Technology

•Talk about how to use technology well & safely

•Try to stay up with your kids; let them teach you, if need be

•Teach them to be their own best filter for the Internet & why they should guard their eyes

•Help them to practice looking outside the box for solutions to problems

•Give them a safe place to brain- storm their ideas

•Give them the space & permission to dream & invent & then go after them

•Help them learn to not give up; that the most important skill when achieving great things is perseverance

•Talk about the problems & needs in the world; in their country, or community, or home, & brainstorm potential ways to remedy them

*Spend time out in nature with your children; watch the bugs and birds and flora; star gaze at night

*Model and teach them to respect nature and to be good caretakers

*Plant a tree or bush or garden together

The Arts

Don't forget to expose your child(ren) to the arts, especially music, art and drama. They open up areas of the brain to the imagination and creative thinking, and tend to improve learning in the other subject areas. 

There are so many other ways to help your kids to learn to think critically, to speak for themselves, and to apply the knowledge and skills learned in school by using them in real life. I've barely scratched the surface! Feel free to share other ideas with me and I'll add them to the post: donna@donnavancleve.com  [And please don't submit as "Anonymous" as my filter deletes them as spam]. Thanks!

The Ones Who Came Before

I drove the van of students to the next historical marker around town, something I had passed by time and time again without a thought to what it was about. We had just completed a study of our county and community's history, which concluded with a field trip to the local cemetery to find the headstones of the pioneers and founders of our town. The children weren't afraid of the cemetery; they were meeting old friends, people they had come to know in the stories they had heard.

I wanted the children to imagine what it must've been like to settle this land before there were decent roads and towns built-- before there were lumber yards and dry goods and grocery stores to provide for folks' needs. I wanted them to know and begin to appreciate all of those who came before who built what we take for granted now: roads, power lines, water and sewer systems, telephone services, school facilities, garbage collection, laws and the court system, businesses to provide goods and services for most every need, houses to live in, churches in which to worship God and love and support each other, and so on. I lived in twelve different houses in my growing up years-- every one of them was built by someone else.

And even though I researched and taught the local history lessons, I hadn't realized how much I had been taking for granted all that came before. Even though we see technological advances, we just assume the infrastructure in our community, state, and country has always been there. Pioneer history seemed so far away. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that the history of our country could be measured in three person's lifetimes, and that's not a very long time. My grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon, and before she was sixty years old, man had landed on the moon. The technological advances in just her lifetime is astounding.

A while back I did some research on the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I thought I'd really do my homework and read some of the previous writings that fanned the flame of freedom, which brought the colonists to the decision to break from England. I learned what the definition of verbose was-- using more words than are needed-- [my dad thinks that describes my writing], but I don't hold a candle to those guys. By the time I got to the end of a sentence, I couldn't remember what the beginning was about. But I'm grateful those men and women had the gumption to stick with their quest for freedom, and we all are the benefactors of their hard-earned efforts.

Braveheart is on my top movies list, but it's painful to watch. I cry every time I see it, but probably not for the reasons you'd think. What brings me to tears is the depth of William Wallace's desire for freedom, and what he was willing to do to attain and keep it.

I fear too many of us know little of that kind of dedication. My generation and younger are entirely too comfortable with complacency. We're too busy chasing the American dream to be bothered by decaying values and eroding foundations. But there won't be another house to move on to if these walls collapse around us.

Every generation must learn the value of freedom and be given the tools and motives to maintain it. Otherwise, the sacrifices of our own countless brave hearts who came before us were for naught.

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Education is Anemic without the Creative Arts

My niece watched me draw a longhorn steer and asked if drawing had always come easy to me. I thought I'd always had a knack for it, but now I'm convinced someone must've led me to believe that I could draw at some time or other. I didn't start off drawing any better than other children my age, but like athletics or anything else, I improved gradually according to the amount of effort I put into it. Some may start off more observant or having a good eye for details and perspective, but for most everyone, the eye can be trained to see better as well.

Some people truly have a gift of certain talents or abilities. When I was doing my student teaching in Lockhart years ago, I remember two students that I believe were truly gifted in art. Neither had training prior to their art class in high school, but their skills were beyond many established artists twice their age. One of the students had already mastered the human body and began painting surrealistic art along the lines of Salvador Dali. The other student had one of the most creative and whimsical minds I had ever seen. She saw imagined things in still life assignments that no one else pictured. I wonder what paths they chose to take in their careers. They should be around age forty today. Both students amazed me.

But for most of the rest of us, the extent of our talents and abilities is directly related to the amount of time and effort we are willing to invest in them. No telling how many talents remain locked inside students and adults because they either never had the opportunity for them to be exposed and expressed, or someone discouraged them in the early development of that talent.

It takes a strong belief in self to continue to develop a talent in the midst of little or no encouragement nor outlet to develop it.

It's so important for parents, schools, and communities to provide those programs that allow our children to put creative application behind those rote skills learned in schools. I was so fortunate to be in several elementary schools that had strong music and art programs, which was the foundation of so much I'm involved in today. One of the schools I attended in Dell City in far West Texas was so small, it only had a six-man football team. But it also had art and music classes which I loved. Our music and art teacher, Mrs. Huffman, taught us how to sing songs in four-part harmony, and provided us the opportunity to compete in UIL meets.

UIL competitions with events such as poetry and prose, voice and instrumental solos and ensembles, improvisational speaking and acting, one-act play, debate, and many others provide wonderful outlets for developing talent and skill. Sadly, athletic competitions far over-shadow the scholastic competitions in schools today when it comes to promotion and funding. But which type of competition actually benefits us more later in life?

An elective course that involves more opportunities to creatively apply learned skills than any other subject in school is journalism, especially in the course of publishing a school newspaper and yearbook. Unfortunately, journalism has fallen by the wayside in too many school districts because students cannot fit this elective into their already burdened schedules, or journalism is assigned to an already over-burdened English teacher. My daughter and niece don't even have a yearbook for their senior year, and it still breaks my heart that the school let it fall by the wayside.

Some consider music, art, and other forms of creative expression as expendable luxuries that are easy to cut funding or even eliminate during budget crunching years. But I believe the arts are the keys that unlock the imagination and enable our children to put meaning and purpose beyond the basic skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. They were for me, they were for my children, and I'm already seeing amazing benefits in my grandchildren's lives.

I can't remember who encouraged me along the way, but I do remember the creative opportunities that were available for me in my younger years, which planted seeds fertile enough to last throughout the lean years in the upper grades. I'm so grateful to those school administrators and teachers who also recognized their importance and safe-guarded the existence of the arts.

Train up a child in the way he should go...

The ceiling was decorated with hundreds of crinkled wax paper tubes hanging from it, which gave the classroom a jungle feel. An Indiana Jones-like character stood partially hidden behind palm branches on the open door, which also proclaimed Learning is a Great Adventure in letters shaped from hand-cut paper bones. Every bulletin board in the room was decorated in the same theme. The atmosphere was mysterious and thought-provoking-- exactly the way I wanted to introduce new concepts and lessons in learning.

Most of the students never got it; many of them couldn't care less.

Within the first couple of weeks, Indiana had to be taken down because some student decided he needed genitals. The crinkled tubes kept students guessing for the first couple of days, then they became challenges for students to jump up and jerk loose from the ceiling. If supplies were not locked up, they were stolen. It seemed to be open season on any student's supplies, too, if left unattended for a moment.

The bulletin boards became barer each month. Some students preferred writing obscenities on them rather than using the information put there for their benefit. Unless students' art works were mounted up high next to the ceiling, pieces were stolen. Manipulatives for teaching lessons became airborne missiles for some students to use against others. It took only a handful of students in each class to terminate a creative lesson for the rest of the class.

The room went through a metamorphosis over the next few months. What began as a colorful and exciting place to learn transformed into a dull, colorless space devoid of any decor that could be stolen, defaced, or destroyed. I never wanted it to come to that, but the energy intended for teaching and motivating seemed to be expended more and more for simply maintaining order, disciplining, and keeping students from hurting each other or destroying property.

They were only fifth and sixth graders, and too many of them were already marking time until they could drop out. How had we already lost them? Some of the sixth grade students were fourteen years old and had been failed the maximum number of times. They knew they would be passed on. They slept through lessons and smiled their way through threats of being held back, and sure enough, they showed up in seventh grade for the next group of teachers to struggle with.

How are children going all the way through school without a clear understanding of education and how it applies to them? Many can mouth the right answers, but inside, they still don't get it. How come intelligent children spend more energy thinking up ways to beat the system or cheat their way through classes rather than use that same intelligence and effort to learn something that will prepare them to become honest, productive citizens capable of supporting themselves, their families, and their community in some way?

What goes on in school is a picture of some of the same behaviors those students will repeat in adult life unless they make a great effort to change the course in which they are heading. Children who steal in school will later do the same on jobs, tax returns, or with merchants or landlords when they avoid paying their bills. Children who have dropped out or cheated their way through school will be dependent on their parents or the government to support them when their lack of taking advantage of a free education means they have few basic skills to survive, much less hold a job. Children who lie to teachers or even fellow students will lie as adults to employers, spouses, or potentially anybody. Children who have no respect for school or others' property will have little qualms as adults about vandalizing or trashing their neighbors' property, parks, community or roads.

School is training for life. The habits students learn in school-- good or bad-- are the habits they will take into life. The home is no exception. What students learn or see or hear at home is training them for life. Character training has to start in the home, and it must be reinforced and taught in both school and home at every age level.

An education devoid of character training just makes smarter wrongdoers. I can't tell you how many times I've seen the names or mugshots of those former students in the newspaper reporting of their arrests for various crimes. It's heartbreaking.

Train up a child in the way he should go...and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

That goes both ways.