This is especially important during online learning.
Online learning has provided an opportunity for parents to have a more direct influence on their child's day-to-day academic experience. While this may seem like a positive thing, it actually has the potential to negatively affect your child's education. This is because parents are getting overly involved with their student's academics and playing the role of a teacher and a parent. We interviewed some of our Genie Academy teachers and all of them found faults and potential problems that come with either rushing through the lesson plan or going ahead of it.
You Might Be Teaching Them Incorrectly
We know that you know the material that your child is learning. With that, it's been a while since you were in school learning it for the first time yourself, so this may cause a problem. Also, we all learn a bit differently. Maybe you're a tactile learner and your child is a visual learner. Without knowing this, understanding it, or even considering it, you are already doing your child a disservice in the way that you are teaching them. Even if you happen to be teaching your child in the learning style that suits them, you may not be teaching them in a way that your child can understand, despite your best efforts.
This Potentially Leads to Re-teaching
Occasionally, you will teach your child something incorrectly. This may confuse them. In the worst case scenario, turn them off to a subject. Or, they may learn something the wrong way. Then, the teacher will have to unteach them something, then reteach them the same thing. This will cause a huge delay in your child's progress within their book. Keep in mind that this is a delay that could have easily been avoided if you and your child stuck with the lesson plan that the teacher assigned.
Rushing and The Problems With It
You may encourage your child to rush through the book because you want to push them academically. We understand that you are pushing them because you want them to do even better and learn more material, faster. Though, when you go ahead of the lesson plan and keep rushing your child to do more, more, more, this will actually result in them learning LESS, less, less. Their little brains can only take so much in one sitting and retain what they have learned. When you push them too hard, they are more likely to remember nothing at all.
When you and your child rush through the pages, you will likely skip over important skills that will reinforce the content that helps to push these skills into your child's long-term memory. When we fail to complete things, we are not fully learning them. As mentioned, when we rush, we don't learn, nor retain what we have been working so hard to remember. This will result in less progress.
Class Focuses on Overall Development
As a life skill, our collaborative abilities and team building connections are not only essential for the classroom, but also to help us develop into successful adults. When you permit or even encourage your child to move ahead of the lesson plan, you are not teaching them the importance of collaboration and how to succeed in a group setting.
As students build a relationship with the teachers, it's important to be on the same page. Lesson plans are specifically put in place to serve your child in the best way that we can. We have been shaping young minds for over twelve years, so we're confident in saying that we know a thing or too about the best way to present education to our students.
Teachers Can't Keep Track of What Students Actually Know
If your child is consistently going ahead, the teachers won't have enough time to check over all the extra pages your child did for homework. Teachers are only responsible for checking assigned homework pages because there is only so much time the class allows for the teachers to spend on checking homework. With that, if a student says that their parent or guardian checked a page for homework that hadn't been assigned, it is difficult for teachers to make sure everything is actually correct, due to the time constraint of the class period.
When students do extra homework pages, the parent should not expect the teacher to check these pages. This would be unfair to the other students. Plus, the teacher would probably not be able to equally distribute their time among students within one class period.
If we don't know what students actually know or don't know, this will hurt the student's progress and confuse the teacher. It will also greatly disrupt the flow of the class. It will waste time that could be spent on teaching your child more material, faster.
Do your child a favor that will affect both their short-term and long-term success. Keep them on track with their lesson plan. Don't have them complete more or less than what is assigned by the teacher. Check their homework for accuracy each week, and inform your teacher of anything they got wrong on their homework or struggled with.
We are here to support your child through every step of the way in their academic journey. We know they have the potential to be a genius, and it's important to follow the rules and lesson plans set in place by your child's teacher.
With that, we hope that you will stick to the lesson plan.
-The Genie Academy Team
