Part 2: Not Replacing Parents

The following is the second part in a series of posts about Tree of Life’s Evaluation Service. The aim is to help you as parents help your children to get the most from our courses.

In the first part of this series, I discussed the heart of our evaluation service: growing students and caring evaluators. Our goal is to come alongside real students in their learning, and to provide support and feedback for their honest work. Evaluators are different people with different backgrounds, but their common focus is to assess (=sit beside) the students’ accomplishments. The end result is greater confidence and competence in the knowledge and skills developed through our classical Christian curriculum.

I felt the human aspect of Evaluation was important to begin with because I never want this service to become robotic, impersonal, or monotonous.  Learning of all sorts is deeply human, the activity of souls.  And as our world becomes increasingly dominated by technology and online media, we must resist the tendency to “turn off”, let the technology take over, or assume that all screen-time is productive learning time. This requires thoughtful engagement in the educational process for the student with the assistance of the parent. This post and future ones will give specific ways parents can help their children use evaluated courses with Tree of Life.

Our Evaluation Service does not replace the oversight and involvement of Parents in homeschooling. Instead, parents can help students apply their best efforts in coursework and receive feedback thoughtfully.

Evaluated assignments, essays, and tests are the nuts and bolts of academic work at Tree of Life from grades 4 to 12 (especially high school courses in gr. 9-12). Each item gives some opportunity for the student to apply what they have learned and/or to demonstrate a particular range of skills. Obviously, involvement in your student’s learning will vary according to the subject, grade level, age, and student needs, and we recognize parents are often busy with other children and use our course services to lighten the load. However, all homeschooling parents carry God-given authority and perspective over their student’s learning, from simply checking-in through the week with a mature high school student, to being more closely involved with those younger.  Although evaluators are devoted to reviewing written work from students, they are largely unaware of the learning conditions and specific circumstances in the homeschooling context.  They just see the end product, not the tears, the apathy, or the exuberance.  For these reasons, the homeschooling parent still plays a vital role in helping the student successfully navigate his/her courses.

One of the best ways you can ensure your child is successful as they work through various courses is by viewing the list of evaluated assignments for a given course in advance. These lists are found at the end of any printed course outline/manual as well as within the course page in NEO (the student login site). Such information is also available in all course samples on our website (see bottom of product information for any course). Notice: How many assignments and tests are there? Approximately how often do these occur in the suggested schedule? What kind of preparation is necessary to complete the assignment (eg. a week of research and writing, or just an hour of review)?

You can assist your child by overseeing their progress through the learning material on the way to an assignment or test. As an example, it is possible for a student to be under-prepared for their logic, math, or science test. If you can “step in” before the test is taken and help guide the student to effective review, he or she may have a better experience with their evaluated work. As another example, you can check on the student to ensure the written assignment was completed according to the course instructions. Perhaps the student could be taught the habit of checking with you before submitting anything for evaluation, at least to start the new year.

Once an assignment has been evaluated and returned, you can help the student make some sense of the feedback and corrections.  Ask: What was done well?  Is there a particular issue or weakness or common mistake that shows through?  What thinking process or idea needs to be considered for future writing?  Was the work especially short, incomplete, or unsupported?  Or does the assignment reveal some issue in how the student has moved through the learning material?  Sometimes, it is just ‘good job….check this question over….keep going….you did what you were asked to do’!  Obviously, all of this will depend on the grade level, subject, and specifics.  But the point is to listen and consider what has been offered in the evaluation.  In many cases, feedback will be subjective in nature, and may only address a few aspects of the work (especially if Johnny has a long way to go).

A secret fear I have when marking academic essays is that the student will never give second thought to the comments I am providing, and that their numerical mark is all they care about.  However, for the evaluation to be useful, the feedback needs to be considered and applied.  This is where the parent might be most helpful.  Perhaps you can encourage the student to jot down the most important comments in a part of their notebook for reference when preparing the next assignment.  You might also print out copies of written work with the annotations in the margin for later reference (depending on the format of the assignment file).  This step doesn’t need to be time-consuming, but it will bring  long-term improvement and that is what we are after!

To conclude this post, let it be said that learning happens best when we are working together.  Tree of Life evaluators are eager to support student learning through focused feedback, and this service will prove most valuable when the parent still maintains some oversight and involvement.

For now, let us know if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback on this post by commenting below.

Next Month: Part 3 – More on Writing Evaluation