Orchestrating Kids

Like most parents, we want to see our child achieve in certain areas. Sometimes those areas are the result of heartfelt conviction, and sometimes they're the result of roughly formed opinion. Thus, we think it would be dandy if our child learned another language -- French would be good, as would Italian -- or learned to vigorously protect herself -- a little tae kwan do, anyone? -- or could speak confidently in front of an audience -- which is something I can do virtually without effort, and I'm surprised that not everyone can, because its so easy. Well, to me, anyway. Oh, and we want her to be able to work independently, not only 'by herself' but also 'without the support infrastructure of some massive company that could cut you loose without so much as a hearty handshake'. Not that that has happened to either of us, but it could. (You see there one of those roughly formed opinions.)

The latest product of that child improvement factory? Note Taking. I was thinking about how my own note taking skills aren't that great, and how school would have been somewhat easier if I had been able to take coherent notes instead of cryptic scribblings that occasionally made sense and occasionally were completely bereft of meaning. I don't want that to happen to her. I want her to have an edge.

To that end, while we had some time alone, the partner and I,we discussed how we might facilitiate this. Turned out that we really didn't have any ideas. One of us raised the idea that organizations such as Sylvan Learning Centers offer courses on study techniques, and while we thought those might possibly be of use, we couldn't actually believe that they really do what they say they do. Visions of brightly colored placards and slogans in place of black-and white Techniques That Work (not copyrighted, feel free to use it) came to mind. Just a tinge of 'our kid isn't in need of remedial help, she's perfectly OKAY, we just want to buff things up around the edges' also comes to mind.

We need to find someone we can ask, someone we can trust to tell us the truth, and not be pitching a service, someone who knows whats possible and whats not. I'd like to think that in the educational community around here, surely there is someone.... but then again, I was surprised to learn that the organization which runs the after school program, whose name is Learning Center, does almost no Learning; rather, they just keep the kids fairly quiet and busy playing games. They do have a 'quiet time' when kids could do homework, but they don't insist on it. And they certainly don't have any courses intended to supplement and augment what the kid gets in school. So they're out.

We need to give this some thought.