School Program Teaches Parents How to Help Their Children Learn

When 5-year-old Michael brought home his kindergarten report card filled with poor marks, his mother decided that it was time for her to go back to school.

Susan Jordan joined a group of parents who meet monthly at Meadowvale Elementary School to learn “megaskills” to help their children succeed in school.

Dorothy Rich, a feisty former teacher who developed the program, stresses 10 skills she says youngsters need to succeed: confidence, motivation, effort, responsibility, initiative, perseverance, caring, teamwork, common sense and problem solving.

The parents learn how to give their children the right feeling, attitude and behavior to spur them on to successfully tackle the rigors of schoolwork.

“They are the kinds of skills that you can’t teach,” says Meadowvale Principal John D. Roschy. “You have to live them. You have to model them.”

A large percentage of the 563 pupils at Meadowvale in this city near the Delaware border are from low-income families. Their parents often are illiterate and become easily frustrated and intimidated by the school bureaucracy.

They feel helpless when their children begin to fail, says teacher Delores Richardson.

“This is a course of study that’s not academic. It’s practical and common sense,” says Richardson, who was instrumental in bringing the program to Meadowvale and about 11 other Hartford County schools with programs targeted for disadvantaged children.

The national education goals set by President Bush and the nation’s governors underscore the role of parents in education. By the year 2000, they say, “every parent in America will be a child’s first teacher.”

Rich, too, believes the family role should be stressed in education.

She founded the Home and School Institute Inc. in 1964. The idea for the program dates from her experiences as a high-school teacher and the problems she had with some troubled students.

“My colleagues said, ‘That’s because the junior high teachers didn’t do their job.’ The junior high people said, ‘It’s because the elementary school teachers didn’t do their job.’

“Needless to say, it got right back to the family,” Rich says.

Rich says her megaskills program isn’t a parenting program.

“It’s an education program,” she says. “I’m an educator. I am not a therapist, although a lot of therapeutic stuff happens.”

Parents are encouraged to try activities, called “recipes,” at home. For example, parents can teach their youngsters about fractions by having them fold paper towels or napkins.

Older children can learn directions by using bus and subway maps to plan a family outing, or how to manage money by doing the grocery shopping and finding the best buys.

The Meadowvale program is funded in part by the Parent Teachers Assn. Organizers are seeking a $60,000 corporate grant to cover more of the costs.

About 70 parents signed up for Meadowvale’s free, eight-week workshop. A recent 90-minute session focused on learning the proper way to praise and reward children.

“Praise for the effort, not necessarily the finished product,” program coordinator Violet Staley told the parents seated around a movable blackboard. “Effort is just as important as mastery.”

Staley’s assistant, Joyce Hoy, added that as the children get older, the amount of praise and rewards should be decreased because you “want to help kids get to the point where the praise will come from within.”

“You’re right,” responded Norma Fickens, as if a light had just clicked on.

Fickens, who has six grandchildren in Meadowvale, recently went back to work. Praise from her supervisor spurred her to learn how to use a computer.

“If I’m tickled with praise, I know the grandchildren would like praise. You can do something you don’t know how to do,” she said as others nodded in agreement.

Principal Roschy says there’s been a “tremendous difference” in the pupils in kindergarten through fifth grade since the megaskills program began. Fighting, once a problem, has decreased, he says.

“Children not understanding each other socially, lack of motivation, coming to school unprepared for work, being argumentative with the teachers about doing work and other negative behavior” were other problems, he says.

Once the workshops began, Roschy says the percentage of pupils referred to the principal’s office for disciplinary problems dropped from about 45% to 8% within a year.

“We’ve almost completely changed our discipline program, going from negatives to one which is now more positive,” Roschy says. “The children are reinforced for good behavior and showing kindness to each other, and expressing themselves in positive ways in the classroom, cafeteria and throughout the building.”

Richardson, who works with preschool children at Hall’s Cross Roads Elementary School in Aberdeen, Md., says she also noticed “a better attitude of the parents coming to the school for the training” and “saw principals get excited as they saw what was happening in their schools.”

Harriett Stonehill directs the MegaSkills Education Center, which has trained 1,200 workshop leaders from 34 states. The workshops have been conducted in schools, libraries, stores, day care centers, prisons, housing projects and businesses--assisting more than 16,000 families nationwide.

To document the success of the workshops, Rich notes that a Memphis State University study that found the percentage of children spending six hours a week on homework doubled from 12% to 24%, while those spending less than one hour decreased from 12% to 4%.

Overall, more than 70% of the parents taking part report positive change in their children’s school attitudes and performance, Rich says. The average time parents spent with children each day increased after the workshop, from 2.02 hours to 2.25 hours.

Rich says the 12% of the parents who said they “never” check their child’s homework fell to 1%.

Michael’s mother says she already sees progress.

“He’s doing pretty good now,” Jordan says. “He’s picked up a lot, learned how to do better in school. A lot of it has to do with attitude.”