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information they have, helping them take more ownership of their work. “Sometimes just pinpointing the source of confusion and passing that along to the classroom teacher is time well spent,” Freireich says. Many parents make the mistake of providing the answers, offering shortcuts or explaining what they learned when they were kids, Platzer adds. “These pieces of advice often confuse students, make them more reliant on help and contribute to a lack of self-confidence,” he says. “Instead, parents should help model best practices in terms of process and organization.” Platzer, too, recommends regular routines, checklists, plans and daily rhythms. “Sometimes this means initially helping
students create a work calendar, suggesting ways to break up large assignments into smaller chunks and being available to help students as they plan on their own,” he says. “Other times, it’s just a matter of asking questions like, ‘Can you talk me through your thinking?’ or ‘Did you explain why your evidence proves your point?’” Allyn recommends parents be proactive about homework challenges and willing to discuss how homework ties in with what is being taught at school. If there’s a disconnect, it may be that other students are struggling, and it’s good for the teacher to know that. “Everybody sees the value of the home/school connection,” she says. “But now people are seeing it in a new way.” l
PARENTS AS PARTNERS A supportive environment goes a long way toward helping students study, experts say.
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can build self-confidence by learning how to move forward anyway. But what happens when the lessons are really difficult? Abby Freireich and Brian Platzer, authors of Taking the Stress out of Homework, due to be released in March 2021, and co-founders of Teachers Who Tutor | NYC, say they often hear from parents who feel “ill-equipped to help in a given subject.” “Take math, for example,” Freireich says. “Trying to recall long-forgotten concepts is challenging enough, and now most math content is being taught differently than it was when we were kids.” A different tactic might be to ask students to restate a question and to articulate what