Category: College Portfolio

Will Your Student Lose Their Best Chance to Address Learning Gaps?

7/6/2022

Struggling students can take advantage of the summer to move forward on academic goals and independent projects.

Summer is upon us. Many students with learning differences risk losing academic momentum during this time. To complicate things, students are still facing the task of overcoming learning losses from the pandemic.

According to studies conducted by McKinsey & Company, Harvard University, Stanford Graduate School of Education, Government Accountability Office, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, National Bureau of Economic Research and The World Bank, to name just a few organizations, learning interruptions via school closures have taken a significant toll on academic skill development for a generation of learners.

If your child is falling behind or in danger of doing so, they may develop ongoing challenges. For example, they may:

Fall further behind.
Leave poor study habits unchecked.
Doubt their academic abilities and potential.
Reinforce routines that lack planning or organization.
Struggle to stay engaged in classes that do not seem relevant.
Lack a vision for how to remain competitive with other college applicants.

Fortunately, struggling students of any age can use summer to dramatically improve academic capabilities. With support, they can:

Close skill gaps and begin the fall term on more solid ground.
Become a stronger writer, or complete college essays early.
Research an area of interest while in middle school or high school, bolstering multidisciplinary problem solving skills.
Build a unique college portfolio that will distinguish them from other applicants.
Develop stronger independence and academic life skills to support an easier transition to college.

Read more about how your struggling student can ace their summer.

Don’t let your struggling student lose momentum over the summer! Learn more, or book a free consultation now.

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Five Ways to Ace Your Summer

6/20/2022

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Summer is a great time for struggling students to get caught up, plan ahead, or try something new!

Summer is a great time to relax, but students with learning differences can use the break to make progress in a variety of learning areas.

1. Ace Your Learning Gap: Academic Coaching and Tutoring

Is your student scholastically disoriented due to the pandemic, or prone to the summer slide? Summer break is an ideal time for struggling students to get the help they need to bolster lagging academic skills, get a jump on fall semester concepts, or make summer school a success.

2. Ace Your Mindset: Experiential Research - for Middle and High School Students

A coach or mentor can guide a learner to use hands-on methods to pursue a research idea or project that highlights the student’s interests, encourages experimentation, celebrates innovation, and provides structure needed for completion. This can be the “secret sauce” that allows a student to view themselves as someone who can succeed in an academic environment. Click here to learn how your struggling student can use their summer to develop independent projects as a way of engaging experiential learning.

3. Supercharge Your College Application: Experiential Research & Portfolio - for Rising Seniors

Students with learning differences may struggle with standardized testing, or lack a competitive GPA. College applicants must position themselves to stand out from other candidates. An online portfolio that chronicles independent research is a unique compliment to a college application. Documenting an original project in a portfolio differentiates students from other college applicants.

4. Ace Your Essay: Writing Coaching for All Ages & College Essay Coaching

Does your middle or high school student always lose points on essays? Help them learn what teachers expect, make friends with the outline, and articulate ideas with confidence.
Does your rising senior plan to wait until fall to write college essays? Summer is a stress free moment to begin the college search and write unforgettable personal statements.
College and graduate students who struggle with organization can learn to write essays and dissertations with clear and structured arguments.

5. Ace Your College Transition: Independence and Life Skills Development

Does your teenage or adult student rely on adults to wake them for class, locate their homework, or track their medication schedule? Do they need reminders to do laundry, eat balanced nutrition, or remember appointments? Help a rising senior or high school graduate learn greater independence, organization and planning before heading off to college.

Help your student take advantage of the summer to move forward on their academic goals. Learn more, or book a free consultation now.

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Secret Sauce to Improve a Struggling Student's Confidence

6/20/2022

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Make learning relevant for a struggling student by helping them research and explore a topic of interest.

Does your struggling middle or high school student find school boring, fail to see academics as relevant, glaze over during lectures, tune out theoretical and abstract info, or complain that none of their assignments feel possible?

Students with learning differences may get frustrated when learning is packaged in formats that are a mismatch for that student. Scholastic achievement may go undetected and unrecognized, giving the student an incorrect, repeating message that they are not cut out for academic settings.

Traditional approaches to academic coaching have mixed results when students don’t formulate a connection between tools they are given and how they can apply them in new learning scenarios. Fortunately, experiential learning via a topic of interest can revitalize a learner’s engagement.

With support, students can leverage their passion for a favorite topic to fuel exploration of a research project of their choosing. Solving hands-on problems using a variety of analytical, creative, and communication skills helps students strengthen academic capabilities, which can later translate to improved focus and performance in school setting. Experiencing mastery bolsters a student’s image of themselves as a learner who is able to achieve something concrete, original, and systematically organized.

Help your student take advantage of the summer to move forward on their academic goals. Learn more, or book a free consultation now.

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Are You the Missing Link in Helping Your Student Achieve Academic Success?

5/27/2022

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Independent, hands on research projects make academic exploration relevant to struggling students.

This One Thing Can Transform a Student’s Future

Do you have children with learning differences who are struggling to stay motivated in school? This may sound familiar. Your child is bright and capable, yet teachers tell you that they are not engaged during class. Their attention wanders and they struggle to complete assignments, or even pay attention.

You’ve done everything you know how to do. You’ve tried tutoring, reasoning, nagging, bribes, family rules, consequences, time outs, and nothing seems to work. You wonder when your child is going to start pulling in the grades you know they are capable of. Meanwhile, the end of the term is looming, along with a disappointing GPA, and you wonder if your child is going to consistently fall behind their peers. Will they have the same college and career options you hope for them?

You Do Not Have to Live in Fear of This Outcome.

The good news is that a more hopeful scenario is available. If this has slipped through your radar of possibilities, you are probably like most parents and don’t know what has been missing. Here’s the truth: students don’t automatically encounter real world applications of their personal interests in a school context. Because of this, young people with learning differences are often not able to draw a connection between the academic skills they are learning in school, and how they will matter later. They don’t foresee how they will need some of these problem solving tools when looking to advance academically and professionally.

Yes, this gap in perspective matters even at the middle school level. Why? Because young people need to visualize themselves interacting in a real world context, ideally with people who are doing things they find interesting.

How Can You Help Your Child Do This?

Whether your child is obsessed with designing skateboards, raising birds, weaving tapestries, tinkering with machinery, or sketching, hands-on career exploration gives a student concrete exposure to passions that can later grow into real world occupations in unexpected ways. A sketcher may end up designing computer games, a weekend gardener may end up majoring in environmental biology, and a jazz drummer may earn tuition money playing gigs in Vegas in between semesters of college.

A young explorer may ultimately go in a completely different professional direction, but the skills they hone while engaged in these activities - networking, creating, collaborating, testing, troubleshooting, refining, etc. - may translate into academic or professional capabilities they will need later on. They will practice applying a variety of cognitive tasks in a joyful context, and may later call up these abilities when tackling assignments.

The act of doing something engaging in itself can motivate a student by surfacing ways in which their school work might prove to be relevant in the long run. Hands-on career experience helps a student's focus and motivation by providing a much-needed reality check: they can finally visualize themselves years from now, and begin to understand how the skills they are developing while mastering academic challenges may in fact be a key that allows them to achieve personal and professional goals.

What Can Hands-On Career Exploration Look Like?

Perhaps your child would like to attend a performing arts camp, sign up for an outdoor adventure for students their age, or design and build a treehouse? Or, would they prefer a work experience that would allow them to delve into a special interest, such as a part time job at a game store, a bike shop, an art gallery, or a plant nursery?

If they are not quite ready to plunge headlong into an experience, fear not. Students can conduct career research by interviewing family contacts who work in an industry they are interested in, by browsing job postings to see what kinds of tasks, education and experience are associated with a desired role, or by searching for videos that show a day in the life in a work environment they are considering.

Specifics may vary student to student, but hands-on career exploration can consist of internships, guided internet searches, volunteer stints, interviews with professionals in their desired field, shadowing a potential mentor, visits to work environments they are interested in, classes, independent projects, online portfolios that showcase their talents, etc. There are a variety of ways a student can investigate whatever makes them curious!

When Is My Child Going to Find the Time for More Activities?

If you are concerned that your child is already busy with a variety of activities, consider that they can integrate hands-on career exploration into their schedule after school, on weekends, or during school breaks. Many teen programs are available during breaks, and this is also an ideal time for students to pursue an independent project. Most students are eager to carve out time during the week to do something inspiring.

The idea is for them to find ways to manageably enhance their school routine and round out their life experiences, without taking on anything overwhelming. While academics come first, and your child may also be active in sports and other activities that demand much of their time, it is often possible to fill slower times of the year with an enriching experience that will usher in a new perspective.

Why Does Hands-On Career Exploration Work?

Many students are peer driven and benefit from being surrounded by people who share similar passions. They also need like minded mentors who think the way they do, who care about the kinds of things they also find interesting, and who can help the student envision a successful future path. They thrive from interactions with professional role models and advisors who know the lay of the land and ideal training programs in a particular industry.

How Does Hands-On Career Exploration Work?

Concrete interaction with their passions can provide a welcome contrast to theoretical and abstract content young people are constantly bombarded with in a school environment. For a learner who struggles with attention challenges, applied learning opportunities are especially vital.

When students have fun, challenge themselves by tapping different parts of their brain, and apply concepts in practical ways, they are more easily engaged. They have opportunities to practice connecting a wide variety of cognitive dots. This translates into better concentration and focus.

Being creative, solving problems, and engaging with others who share their interests boosts their brain chemistry in beneficial ways. They will be absorbed and make associations between what they are being asked to do in school, and how they might need to use these skills later on.

What Makes YOUR Child Happy?

Playing board games, writing songs, raising dogs? It makes no difference. You may not personally enjoy these pastimes, but it is important to allow your child to find their own way.

If your child is encouraged to have in depth exploration of something that gives them joy, and become truly engrossed and inquisitive, this will exercise the parts of their brain that know how to stay focused on a challenge or task. It will also help them understand why what they are being asked to learn in school might become relevant when it comes time to translate their goals into academic and professional activities.

Want help creating hands-on career exploration opportunities for your child? Book a free no-obligation session now!

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Ace Your Learning Blog
Easy Study and Life Hacks

Will Your Student Lose Their Best Chance to Address Learning Gaps?

Five Ways to Ace Your Summer

Secret Sauce to Improve a Struggling Student's Confidence

Are You the Missing Link in Helping Your Student Achieve Academic Success?

This One Thing Can Transform a Student’s Future

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Ace Your Learning​ BlogEasy Study and Life Hacks

Will Your Student Lose Their Best Chance to Address Learning Gaps?

Five Ways to Ace Your Summer

Secret Sauce to Improve a Struggling Student's Confidence

Are You the Missing Link in Helping Your Student Achieve Academic Success?

This One Thing Can Transform a Student’s Future

Subscribe

Blog Categories

Blog Archives

Who Am I?Why Do I Care?

Ace Your Learning Blog
Easy Study and Life Hacks

Who Am I?
Why Do I Care?