Back to School Amid COVID-19: How Parents Can Prepare Their Children for Face-to-Face Lear

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(Newswire.net — August 20, 2020) — The health crisis we’re living through today is unlike anything that any of us have seen before. It’s certainly a scary time for many parents who are wondering how to get their new reader back in the classroom or their High School Senior prepared to move on to college. There is still much uncertainty about the reopening and normalization of schools across the country, but, thankfully, traditional schooling isn’t the only option for keeping your child’s mind sharp. Math tutoring and home learning are great ways to counteract the decline encountered by students who spend this uncertain time at home without practicing their reading and math skills regularly.

Depending on your own schedule, the first option for parents might be to take on the role of tutor yourself. Sitting down every day to complete maintenance work that engages the minds of children desperate to continue learning and growing is crucial to fighting off the cobwebs. While science suggests that the brains of adults tend to become set in familiar problem-solving patterns (although not always), children’s minds are constantly on the move and must be stimulated. Even if your moody sixteen-year-old tells you she’d rather jump off a cliff than work on his math skills for an hour, her brain is actually begging for the practice.

Another strategy here might be a simple incentive system for parents who are climbing up the walls of their kitchen-turned-classroom. Recent studies have identified mood as a strong indicator of creativity and motivation, so offering time at the TV or running around in the lawn in exchange for equal dedication to studying will likely result in boosted happiness and improved cognitive function, as well as a more positive environment altogether. Which we direly need while so many of us remain stuck at home!

These solutions are great for a summer disrupted, or as a supplement to the online services that schools are attempting to put out for their students. But the calculation changes dramatically as we roll into the school year without any signs of dropping infection rates. Interruptions of study could last for weeks, months, or even longer.

This is where math tutoring should be your solution. “Why math?” you might ask. Math skills are a crucial building block for your child’s critical thinking abilities, and math is an essential piece of nearly any job she might hope to work in as she grows up. The ability to add and divide without the aid of a calculator places job seekers at a major advantage over their competition who are reliant on devices to complete simple daily tasks. As your child grows, it will become clear that her math homework presents a series of problems to be solved. But math homework also includes methodological approaches that challenge her to recall and use her natural troubleshooting abilities to individualize the solution she comes to. This is the same process that separates successful entrepreneurs, writers, athletes, and scientists from their more average competitors. Critical thinking skills play a role in everything we do, and improving this branch of our intuitive capacity begins and ends in the department of mathematics.

Finding a math tutor that operates fully online is a fantastic way to keep your child engaged and thinking while a normal school year remains a very uncertain proposition. It’s more important than ever to keep your kids learning and growing during this time of high stress and uncertainty. A commitment to your children’s mental health and education today will pay dividends for decades to come as a generation of job seekers comes to grips with the ripples of this pandemic’s disruptive force.