Dealing with Bad Grades

Today I wanted to talk/ rant a bit about Grades, Studying, and Children’s Mental Health in today’s K-12 Education system. As a teacher and as a parent, one’s of the things I fail to remember is that the journey through our k-12 education system is not an easy road. It’s thought being a kid. While there may be more conveniences than every before, the problems some children face are less about external threats than a it is about their mental health and wellbeing. One area where this becomes an issue is with their grades. As an educator, I am not a big fan of how we track and document student progress. There is too much of a focus on the end result, and not enough on the child’s progress and growth. A good grade often makes a child feel “smart”, and a poor grade often makes a child feel “dumb or stupid”. I try to encourage my students to focus more on the process and on the work, than on the end result and I try to encourage their growth and hard work, in an attempt to put the focus on developing grit, than on simply praising them for the a result. If they do well, I try to remember to focus on how and why they got that end result, than just on the result itself. As a parent I try to do the same thing, focus on the work and habits that my children are building rather than just the grade they get. Today I want to share a moment when my child was upset about their grade and how I handled it.