Summer reading is a fact of life for honors and Advanced Placement students. Parents dread the looming clashes to complete summer reading. Students dread summer reading period. Yet, the assignments inevitably are finished–perhaps not the quality expected, but done.
Here’s a few tips to reduce the stress:
- For students & parents: know what type of work and the quality of the work the teacher expects to be submitted. Then, parents can better “remind” your children about their assignments (and possibly relax about the work being completed), while students can effectively plan for the effort needed to complete assignments.
- For students, admit now that summer reading is a pain and the last thing you want to do on vacation. You’ll free yourself from believing you’ll get everything done before July 1.
- For parents: work to accept there may be a “last-minute” dash to complete assignments before the first day of school, given summer reading isn’t a high priority activity and your student is calculating the consequences of waiting with the teacher’s expectations.
Learning to manage summer assignments is an on-going process, that the wisdom of experience shows parents the curves and pitfalls, while the idealism of youth says, “No problem, relax, mom and dad.”
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Jill Yoshikawa, Ed M, is a University of California and Harvard trained educator and Partner at Creative Marbles Consultancy. You can contact Jill at [email protected] or, read her short biography.
