Wednesday, December 16, 2009

How Parents Can Use Clickademics.com

Or...I didn't get Geometry when I took it twenty years ago. How I am I supposed to help my kid with her homework now?

School is harder now than it was when I was a teenager. A number of people agree with me that we could not get into our colleges if we were high school students applying now. With more content, more demands, and more standardized tests, kids are given too much to do. To be successful, most kids need to learn at home as well as in school. That means they either need to do extra reading in the textbook (yeah, right), get a tutor (at $50-$100 an hour), or ask mom and dad for help.

The problem is that most parents' academic mastery tops out around 10th grade - for Math it is often 8th grade.

One of the reasons I started Clickademics.com was to help the parents. We are increasingly required to help our children with homework even though we have not seen the content in years. That means that most parents have to read the textbook before they can help with homework, which usually does not fit in their busy schedule.

The pressure is even greater for families that homeschool. Many parents feel confident teaching their children in the early grades but worry when the subjects are more advanced. I wonder how many families homeschooled through elementary and middle school but enroll their children in high school for academics, even though the social and societal pressures in high school were one of the reasons they homeschooled in the first place.

I wanted to create a place where parents could watch short lessons taught by great teachers with their students. After all, a parent should be nearby any time their child is watching something online. When the parents and students watch together, the parent can easily answer questions or check the homework when the student is finished. It is also nice for parents to be able to share some time with their kids and keep up with what they are doing in school.

It reminds me of my years in the classroom teaching 8th grade English. When I covered grammar and punctuation, one or two parents each year would say, "My writing is terrible. I wish I could sit in one your class." Now they can.

Try our most popular unit on Pre-Algebra for free. http://www.clickademics.com/g4/