For Parents
How do we know our child is making progress with academic coaching?Greenwich Academic Coaching provides bi-weekly emails keeping you in tune with what we are accomplishing. These emails contain three documents.
- One document lists everything we cover with your child each day. It lists everything from planning out homework to outlining a paper to discussing what your child’s desired outcomes are for a specific course of action. These are the daily actions taken to stay focused and on-track.
- A second document keeps track of when quizzes, tests, and papers are due, and the grades earned. This gives a concrete assessment of your child’s academic progress.
- A third document tracks your child’s month-to-month responses to scientific questionnaires on happiness and personal strengths. Happiness leads to success. Longitudinal tracking of your child’s responses to these questionnaires gives greater insight into the causes of these changes, and provides signposts telling us that we are on the right track. We use questionnaires on AuthenticHappiness.com - a website owned by our principal's professor at the University of Pennsylvania. This unique service gives a broader view of how your child is feeling about him or her self overall. [Please see the research section.]
What is the parent’s role in this process?
Setting up an environment for your child to succeed is
critical. Often, that environment is to hand over the direction of the
student’s goal setting and academic direction to the coach. That is difficult
for some parents to do. It is crucial. Our coaching is geared to reducing the
stress that is created between parent and child over academics and related
activities. Students respond much better to a coach guiding them and holding
them accountable because he is a third-party. When
a parent is freed-up to be a loving and supportive parent instead of a hawk
over the child’s academics, a new relationship can emerge. Therefore, his coaching
can contribute indirectly to the flourishing of the parent–child
relationship.
What is the difference between academic coaching and
tutoring?
Tutoring is subject-specific teaching after school. If
the student has difficulty in one subject or more, typically the tutor will
re-teach the material to the student at his level and learning style so
he can retain the material.
Academic coaching can include tutoring as well where
necessary, and also addresses academic skills and life skills. A coach works
with the student to develop strategies to achieve academic success, such as
essay structuring & writing, homework planning, note taking, and test
preparation. Other skills are addressed, usually considered “life skills,”
and they have a direct impact on the academic performance: time management,
stress reduction, goal-setting, building motivation, and personal
responsibility.
A coach is also there to keep the student accountable
to what he says he will do. Accountability is key to keep the student on
track when motivation is low. This is achieved through a one-on-one
relationship built over time.
Generally, no. The students tend to be busy high-achievers that do not lack work. Our coaching aims to help the student stay on top of the work and the life he already has. We help the student to incorporate new time management, organization, and self-management behaviors that will eventually become good habits, and thus lower the overall levels of stress and increase school satisfaction.
Copyright © 2007
Greenwich Academic Coaching. All rights reserved.
Revised:
08/24/07
