5 Tips to Help Your Son Get Ready for School

The following is a guest post by Executive Editor Christina Parisi about preparing boys to start school.

As a parent of two boys, I can’t help but notice all the press about how boys are not doing well in school. While recently signing my eldest up for kindergarten, I was given a packet of information 30 pages long listing everything he was expected to know before entering–from his personal information, to tying his own shoes, to basic literacy. Not only are kids expected to already be reading simple words before they enter kindergarten, but by the time they finish first grade they are expected to write poetry. I’m not talking about a super-special kindergarten either. This is my town’s public school system.

According to some research, girls’ brains are built differently than boys’ are, and those differences help girls learn to read faster than boys. While the boys can eventually catch up, during those first few years of school they get progressively behind, which affects their work as well as their self-esteem and interest in school.

Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind, suggests this is a critical stage for boys, because if you don’t get the early literacy part right and get the boys interested in school, they will have trouble later on, as is already evident. Higher-education consultant Tom Mortenson put together a report tracking men for the past five years. He has found that “for the first time in American history, young men today are less likely to be college-educated than their fathers.” And if you’re watching the economy, you can see that their job prospects are affected by that. At one point in the recession, nearly 80 percent of the job losses were among men. If boys are not getting the education they need now, how will they get jobs in the future? As parents we have to be more involved so that our sons stay engaged in school.

Here are five quick tips for busy parents to help their sons succeed:

1. Read to your son. Boys especially like adventures. Have him read to you or better yet, trade off characters where you are the bad guy and he is the good guy. This is less intimidating to him than alternating reading a page and then having you read a page. If your child is too young to read, then have him pretend to read to you or to a younger sibling after you have read him the same story. This will help engage him and improve his memory, attention span, and narrative abilities, which are all related to basic literacy.
2. Have your son make up stories about his favorite characters. This can be done anywhere, at any time. The key is to get him talking and telling stories. It also provides you with the opportunity to teach him new vocabulary in a context he is more likely to remember.
3. Ask him to show you his work, not just his homework. Ask to see what he did in the class and what they talked about. This shows that it’s not just important to go to school and to get the work done, but that you are personally interested in what he does while he is there.
4. Talk about the things you loved about school and why. Or if you hated school as a child, talk about why education is important and the kinds of things you can achieve through education.
5. Have him practice a routine that will help him be successful. This includes preparing his bag and clothes the night before, getting up on time, eating breakfast, and considering his schedule the night before. These basic routines help relieve anxiety about being unprepared and will help him transition into taking care of himself.

Taking an active role in your child’s literacy and school experience will help him learn the skills he will need for later success. The American Management Association prides itself on teaching skills to keep America working, and we support programs for kids to learn such skills early. But arming your kids with skills for them to succeed later depends on a partnership, and that begins with you. Good luck.

Christina Parisi is an Executive Editor at AMACOM and the Director of AMA Self-Studies. She has been with AMACOM for 12 years and acquires books in management, leadership, training, HR, and general business. For submission guidelines, see our website.

Random Quotes From New Books This September

Sometimes wandering down a bookstore aisle is like wandering along a buffet table. You want to everything, so you have to sample a little from each. If you fancy a nibble, we continue our Random Quotes from New Books series this September.

The 11 Laws of Likability: Relationship Networking… Because People Do Business with People They Like by Michelle Tillis Lederman

“Early in my career, I was trying to get a foot in the door at a major bank. I met an employee there named Roberto, who passed along the name and contact information of the training-department head, Kristi, and said I should use his name when I reached out to her. I did so, but got no response. A friend and former co-worker was also working at the bank, and several months earlier had offered to pass along my name if I ever wanted him to. I decided that the time had come to take him up on his offer. He re-introduced Kristi and me, and this time I heard back from her almost immediately. She said ‘I have been hearing your name all over the place.’ Apparently my name also came up in an HR forum that she was a part of. It wasn’t until she’d heard my name from multiple sources that she e-mailed me back.” (page 167)

A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams by Yael Zofi

“Cross-cultural workplace conflicts resemble car crashes. Sometimes they are minor events involving a couple of cars, and sometimes the damage is greater. Conflict situations are hard for all of us. But in the daily rush hours of our lives, when we add cultural differences to the constant traffic of heavy workloads, multiple deadlines, and occasional roadblocks, ‘crashes’ are inevitable.” (page 131)

Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind by Richard Whitmire, Now in Paperback

“In the end, I don’t view feminized classrooms as the source of the problem. Elementary schools have always been staffed with nearly all female teachers, including during the times when boys were doing far better in school. (I should mention that higher education consultant Tom Mortenson, the dean of the gender gap experts, disagrees with me on this one, maintain that today’s female teachers are schooled in a feminist dogma that leaves them resistant to the idea that boys need to be taught in different ways.)” (page 97)

Administrative Assistant’s and Secretary’s Handbook by James Stroman, Kevin Wilson, Jennifer Wauson

“The tradition lines between copyediting and proofreading have blurred with the use of computers in business. Many administrative assistants must edit and proofread their own documents before they are distributed. In some large offices, a technical writer or documentation specialist may edit report that will be distributed to wide audiences within the company or communications destined for outside the company.” (page 341)

The Diversity Index: The Alarming Truth About Diversity in Corporate America…and What Can Be Done About It by Susan E. Reed

“As a result of Lockheed’s Plan for Progress, Ferguson moved into complex electrical installations. He became one of the company’s first black supervisors to manage both white and black employees, installing 30,000 wires of an all-weather landing system in one plane at a time. ‘I would keep up with the development of the airplane, the new systems of the airplane, and that made my job easy,’ he said.” (page 81)

Fundamentals of Project Management, Fourth Edition by Joseph Heagney

“Until around 1958, the only tool for scheduling projects was the bar chart (see Figure 7-1). Because Henry Gantt developed a complete notational system for showing progress with bar charts, they are often called Gantt charts. They are simple to construct and read and remain the best tool to use for communicating to team members what they need to do within given time frames. Arrow diagrams tend to be too complicated for some teams. Nevertheless, it is often helpful to show an arrow diagram to the people doing the work so that they understand interdependencies and why it is important that they complete certain tasks on time.” (page 82)

Customer Service Management Training 101: Quick and Easy Techniques That Get Great Results by Renee Evenson

“Your number one job is to make sure your employees get the results you need. When you commit the necessary time to monitor team, employee, and personal results, you will stay on track to achieve your goals. Since your customers are the ones who are responsible for keeping you and your team employed, your number one goal should always focus on customer satisfaction.” (page 157)

What are you going to add to your plate?

Early Trade Buzz: The Black-White Achievement Gap

One of our new titles, The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It Is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time by former U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. Rod Paige and Elaine Witty, Ed.D., has been attracting some early trade buzz that we would like to share with you.

“In this clarion call, Paige, a former secretary of education (2001–2005) and his sister, a noted educator, pursue two threads of thought: the quest for authentic African-American leadership and the black-white achievement gap….Their last chapter, ‘The Way Forward: A Call to Service,’ concludes with a useful, thought-provoking list of suggestions.” –Publishers Weekly

“Providing a wealth of level-headed insights on the phenomena levied as responsible for the achievement gap… The Black–White Achievement Gap does not enter into the fray of this contentious debate. Instead, it sounds a clarion call to today’s leaders of all races to put the nation’s children before party politics and confront head-on this towering obstacle to social justice, rightly considered, in light of the devastating consequences of academic underachievement, ‘the greatest civil rights issue of our time.’” –ForeWord Reviews

“Paige and Witty do offer real and practical solutions on every level from individual to organizational in a call to arms to address the issue at the last frontier in the civil-rights struggle. This is a passionate, well-researched look at a troubling—but solvable—social problem.” –Booklist

Thank you to all the great reviewers and publications!

Early Trade Buzz: Why Boys Fail by Richard Whitmire

One of our new titles, Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind by Richard Whitmire, has been attracting some early trade buzz that we wanted to share with you.

“Sound advice—recommended for parents, educators, and others advocating for innovation and flexibility in their educational situations.” –-Library Journal

“Whitmire, a highly respected former USA Today education writer, creates a thorough, thought-provoking look at the increasing achievement gap between boys and girls…This engaging read, reminiscent of a highly polished op-ed piece, offers arguments that could be used by librarians, social workers, teachers, and other youth advocates to fund literacy and related programs for boys.” –Voya Magazine

“Unless educators and parents recognize that boys are in trouble and give them the help they need, the scenario that Whitmire outlines in the book may come true: ‘One day, possibly soon, thousands of mothers—mothers with sons struggling in school or daughters unable to find ‘marriageable mates’—will wonder why the gender gaps were ever considered controversial.” –ForeWord Reviews

Thank you to all the great reviewers and publications!

Author’s WSJ Op-Ed Highlights College Admissions Discrimination

On November 2, 2009, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights announced an investigation into college admissions discrimination directed at women (InsideHigherEd; Chronicle of Higher Ed; WhyBoysFail.com). Citing reporting by Richard Whitmire and U.S. News & World Report, the commission said it would direct its probe mostly at independent colleges which have far higher admissions rates for men than women.

That practice, which is widespread and includes some public colleges, is done to compensate for the shortage of high quality male applicants. Despite this admissions discrimination, women still make up 58 percent of the B.A. earners and 62 percent of those earning associate’s degrees. These college gender imbalances are the most obvious manifestations of the “boy troubles.”

The interest in this issue is strong. Within a week of the announcement of the investigation, The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind (January 2010), on this issue.

Read the op-ed HERE.

Learn more about Richard Whitmire HERE.