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Ten
Ways You Can Help Your Child Succeed At Rockbridge Academy
by Leslie Collins
1.
See yourself as their first teacher.
We are commanded to train our children to think
with a Christian world view
all day long (Deut. 6:4-5). Rockbridge Academy was founded
on the principle that while all parents are given the responsibility
of education, many parents do not have all the resources
to provide such an education. Rockbridge seeks to assist
parents in fulfilling their responsibilities through delegation.
However, delegation is not the same as abdication—shirking
your responsibility by handing your job over to someone
else. Don’t just send your children to Rockbridge;
let them have a sense that you are directing their steps
educationally.
Debrief at dinner, dialog during driving, demonstrate your
devotion by actively listening to your children.
2.
Discipline your children according
to God’s Word.
Rockbridge Academy strives to create an orderly and warm
environment because the children are trained to display kindness
to others and self-control in their conduct. While many parents
are attracted to this type of an environment, there is a
temptation for some families to seek out a school which will
provide the type of discipline and training that they are
unable or unwilling to provide themselves. This will inevitably
lead to difficulties in the school-family relationship because
the child is not trained consistently. God’s Word,
the Bible, provides all the encouragement, wisdom and practical
understanding we need as parents to adequately train our
children for life. If you feel that this is an area in which
you may need to improve (and who doesn’t), we encourage
you to seek wisdom from the scriptures, in addition to reading
an excellent book about biblically training children called
Shepherding a Child’s Heart, by Tedd Tripp. For parents
of older children, an excellent book about shepherding
young adults into adulthood is Age of Opportunity, by Paul
Tripp.
(For your convenience, both are available for sale in the school office, as well as other books that are mentioned here).
3.
Become a lifelong learner.
Let your children see
you learning, reading, and discovering. Your children will
assume the view of education that they see in you. If
you
think
of education as something that happens at school, then
they will begin to think in this way as well. But if
you think
of education as a lifelong pursuit of wisdom and knowledge
and understanding, then they will begin to pursue this
as well.
4.
Read to your children.
This can
hardly be emphasized enough. This one task can help your
child improve
his
self-control, imagination, creativity, vocabulary, writing
skills, and
auditory processing. Fostering a love of books will lead
to your child becoming a lifelong reader, thus a lifelong
learner. By ages three and four most children are capable
of learning to sit through short novels such as The
Chronicles of Narnia, The Little House on the
Prairie, The Adventures
of Homer Price, etc. If you would like to learn more
about what to read to your child, Honey for a Child’s
Heart is an excellent resource and is also available
in our school
office.
5. Communicate with the
school. Communication is the
weakest link in any organization whether it’s family,
church, or school. Communicating our appreciation, concern,
fear,
and disappointment should be a natural and regularly
occurring event in the classroom, hallway, or on the
phone. Doing this
within the parameters of scripture will enable us to
bring glory to God and build up others instead of tearing
them
down. An excellent book on communicating with others
is The Peacemaker by Ken Sande.
6.
Develop friendships. Rockbridge
is not just a school, it’s a family. We rejoice
in the good in each others’ lives.
We mourn with those who mourn. If you want more out of
your school than an educational environment, then take
the first
step to develop relationships. Serve brunch and invite
other parents. Have a Bible study to parallel what your
children
are learning in their Bible class. Develop a reading
circle and read books that are on our high school reading
list,
or start a parent-child reading circle and read books
that are on their level. Be creative. Rockbridge has
several arenas
for this. Be on the lookout for information regarding
our Rockbridge Support Team and other volunteer groups
in your child’s backpack.
7.
Establish priorities for home life. The first school
your child will
experience is home. At home your child will learn how to
play, work, worship, relax, eat, and interact with others.
While these activities do not involve grades and exams,
they are measured in
the daily application of faith to life. It is crucial
to the
Christian life to understand how to perform these activities
in a way that celebrates and brings glory to the Lord. “Whatever
you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory
of God” (I Cor. 10:31). Childhood flies by in an
instant. In our culture, there are so many choices and
activities
available, there is a great temptation to fill the day
running from one activity to the next. The children who
are the most
successful at Rockbridge or anywhere else come from homes
that have made family time a priority by limiting extracurricular
activities. Godly home life is not something that can
be appreciated in rare tropical storms of spiritual teaching.
If we are to be effective, it will be accomplished by
keeping
the relative spiritual humidity very high.
8. Establish consistent
sleep habits. Sports and activity
schedules, with the additional responsibilities of homework
can lead to children staying up far later than their
bodies are intended to. Sleep is very important to the
healthy
development of children. Parents who want their children
to be successful
would be wise to carefully select extracurricular activities
and make sure that sleep is a priority.
9. Get involved. Rockbridge would not function without
the help of parents who volunteer their time and skills
to assist
our teachers and staff. Parents have helped start and
maintain our library, clean our classrooms, put up
bulletin boards,
assist students who need individual reading time, even
grade papers. Teachers need the help of the parents
in their classrooms.
Parents who volunteer their time in their children’s
school feel more connected to what is going on, more appreciative
of the overall goals, and better able to positively affect
their child’s education. Ask your child’s
teacher how you can help.
10. Develop and maintain
good homework habits. Many parents
are thrilled when they learn of our homework policy.
We believe that family time is important to our success
as
a school.
To assist families, we have made it a policy that only
homework that is essential to the child’s mastery of a skill
or concept should be assigned. This should not be interpreted
to mean that we are “light” on homework or that
homework is optional. We expect and require that assigned
work be completed in a timely manner as determined by the
teacher. And some students may need to do more homework than
others because they work at a slower pace in class. With
this in mind, parents may benefit from the following suggestions:
Students do their best work when in a consistent environment
with good lighting and proper seating. A personal study area
that is free of distractions works well. Parents should keep
in mind that homework is designed to increase independence.
If a child is unable to do his work independently, this may
be an indication that there is a deficit in his skills which
should be discussed with his teacher. Or it may mean that
he is having difficulty transferring his skills from one
environment to the other. The best course of action is to
relax and attempt to change directions given and vocabulary
to make it more consistent with the teacher’s if possible.
Share your concerns with your child’s teacher the next
day. Parents do well to encourage their child to be independent,
even if that means making mistakes. Ordinary children doing
their work heartily and making their mistakes with integrity
while receiving ordinary grades brings as much honor to God
as an exceptional student receiving straight A’s.
Above all, relax and enjoy your child, let him become
what God
has made him to be, and enjoy the incredible adventure
you are beginning!
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