Success at Prep

1. Parents send their children to Prep to receive an outstanding education. By enrolling their student at Prep, parents indicate that they view their child’s education as a high priority.

2. A Prep education involves homework in all academic courses and some electives most every night. Subsequently, it is impossible to be successful at Prep without completing the daily assignments. Furthermore, Prep students can expect to have tests almost every week. This means that they will need to review material in certain subjects as well as complete daily assignments because students may not be successful if they wait until the night before a test to begin preparing.

3. Developmentally, junior high students are experiencing a period of time (beginning in the 7^th grade) when they are increasingly distracted by or attracted to other influences in their lives. For many of them, the motivation to succeed academically and to please parents (which was present during the elementary school years) begins to compete with other influential forces in their lives.

4. Simultaneously during these years, the curriculum increasingly demands that students not simply memorize facts, rather they should learn how to think critically and to apply knowledge learned to different situations. For many students, this will require that they devote more time and effort when doing nightly work at home.

5. While the school expects students to begin to take responsibility for their own academic performance as they proceed through the junior high years, it should be noted that each student is unique. Each child develops and matures at a different pace. Some students will require parental supervision and involvement for a longer period of time than will others.

6. Parents of students who struggle academically during the first few weeks of a grading period are encouraged to involve themselves in the following ways:
1. Create an environment at home conducive to academic success. A daily study routine in a quiet place with no distractions is ideal.
2. Make sure that your student gets plenty of sleep each night and be careful that he or she is not involved in too many extracurricular activities.
3. Check weekly assignments on-line every Monday evening and coordinate with the family calendar to ensure that there is sufficient time for your student to complete these assignments at home each day.
4. Check nightly homework for completion (not accuracy) and see to it that all work goes into the correct folder and book pack. (It is appropriate to be accessible to answer a few questions, but homework is your student’s responsibility.)
5. If your student is struggling with understanding material in a particular class, require that he or she attend one or more of that teacher’s weekly tutorial sessions.
6. Check weekly grades on-line when they are updated Thursday evening. Affix specific consequences and/or incentives to the weekly grades, paying close attention to the grades earned for routine daily work (homework, quizzes, drawings, etc).

7. Once these strategies have been applied for a sufficient period of time, if there is still no grade improvement, feel free to contact individual teachers or contact your child’s school counselor to arrange a conference with his or her teachers.