Lisa Endlich's Blog, page 445

Average Students: Finding Success, One Class at a Time

Stress in high school is not limited to the college-bound. This teacher sees how average students feel great pressure, too.

We hear a lot about the stress that high school students are under. The pressure to get good grades, to achieve high test scores, and to participate in a wide variety of clubs and activities can be overwhelming. Because of the pressure to get into prestigious colleges and earn scholarships, we often associate high school stress with high achieving kids as opposed to aver...

Harvard Admissions: Mourning the Death of a Dream

I wished I had been able to find a more private space. Instead, I had staked out a corner of a common area outside the classroom, where I faced the room prepared to glare at anyone who approached. My crying student, oblivious to his surroundings, was still clutching the second to last tissue. Lunch was over, the usual debris of empty chip bags and crumbs scattered across the big tables. The room felt too ordinary to host the worst day of someone’s life, the day Harvard admissions decisions we...

How to Stay Close as a Family Over Time

Once upon a time, long, long ago, all of our children, my husband and I lived under the same, familiar roof. As we knew they must (and leaving me with conflicted feelings of sadness for myself and excitement for my children), they have begun to forge their own adult paths, one leaping off the branch enthusiastically, another requiring a bit of a nudge, and a third still in high school but clearly exerting ever-increasing degrees of autonomy.

While I recognize this progression toward independ...

Senioritis: How Expectations For Seniors Can Be So Wrong

Senioritis sets in once spring semester begins, but one high school teacher knows that this is when some of the real work begins.

Last week, on a daily basis, my seniors counted down the days and minutes until the end of the semester. Daily they reminded me that school would cease to matter in 5, no 4, no 3 days and 100 minutes. Daily I reminded them that I begged to differ.

But I and they knew the truth. Second semester of senior year is something to be cherished. It is something to be glori...

College Readiness: How to Know if Your Teen is Prepared

I sent three kids off to college with barely a thought about whether they were ready. When I saw what were clearly some red flags in high school – missed homework assignments, poor time management – I chose to ignore those problems rationalizing to myself that there is a lot of growth that goes on between age 17 and 18 and these issues would work themselves out.

I reasoned that if my kids were accepted to a college, they must be ready. They seemed to recount their entire life stories in those...

10 Best Valentines Gifts for Your Teens and College Kids

Valentines gifts and cards created by little kids are epic, 3D art projects: red hearts cut from construction paper glued onto doilies with feathers or shiny stickers added for extra love. Paper scraps mount on kitchen tables before, one by one, prized cards and personalized mailboxes emerge from the mess. If your kids are now teens and college students, you might not miss the glitter and glue cascading down to the floor, but don’t you occasionally long for a day filled with whimsy and sweet...

Why Cheating Hurts Students Now and in Their Future

As parents, we talk to our kids about drinking, drugs, sex, and anything else we think we need to in order keep them safe and healthy. But how many of us talk to our kids about cheating? If we aren’t, we should be. Cheating is an epidemic in America’s high schools and colleges. Everyone cheats. Okay, maybe not everyone. But today more students are cheating than not.

Students cheat because of the pressure to succeed. They cheat because they’ve seen it modeled by politicians, athletes, and cor...

Study Abroad: What Parents Need to Know

Study abroad is a bit of a misnomer, though make no mistake, it can be one of the most educational experiences your child will have. It’s just that 99% of that learning will happen outside of a classroom setting. When I traveled to Copenhagen in the fall of 1983, it was the best part of my college experience, hands down. Armed with little more than traveller’s checks and the name and address of my host family, I was off on the adventure of a lifetime.

Now I am a mom with two daughters who hav...

College Daughters and Mom Falling In and Out of Love

When her college daughters came home for a break from school, this mom grew weary of the vacation. Her daughters had a bone to pick, too.

I heard Alicia Keye’s song, Fallin’ on the radio:

I keep on fallin’
In and out of love
with you
Sometimes I love ya
Sometimes you make me blue
Sometimes I feel good
At times I feel used
Lovin’you darlin’
Makes me so confused

During the last vacation from school, all I could think about was my daughters and how ready I was for them to go back to col...

High School Stress: What This Teacher (and Mom) Sees

As parents, we all want the best for our children. So when we nag them about getting higher grades, and when we lose sleep at night worrying about test scores, extracurricular activities, community service hours, and the whole college admission process, it stems truly from the best of parental intentions. But as a high school teacher, daily I see the burden of all this parental, societal and high school stress on the faces of my high-achieving students. And as a mother, I fight the urge to ga...