In Praise of the Optional "Family Project"

I so distinctly remember being in the fourth grade, playing out in the front yard, and hearing my mom call out, “You better come in! Your father started working on your mission!"

My father was not one to involve himself in my schoolwork. He did not come to conferences or open houses, he did not help with homework or proofread essays. When it came time for college, he refused to contribute financially (or fill out financial aid forms) unless I signed a paper promising to care for him in his old age (I declined).

And yet, there was something about that pile of cardboard, waiting to be transformed into a three-dimensional model of Mission Delores, that it seems even he could not resist.

There is something so compelling about a school project, especially when you're too old to have to do them anymore! I see the siren song of projects affect adults all the time. Just last week I had to interrupt two different tutors who had taken over a 7th grader's extra credit African mask. There they were, bent over in focus, carefully maneuvering the glue gun, while the student sat nearby, doodling. "She’s afraid of the glue gun!" one tutor exclaimed. "The way she was doing it was so messy!" cried another. But she has to be her work, I argued. She has to be involved. In fact, she has to be charge: it’s her project!

As a “homework professionals” we have many strategies for helping without doing. I like to ask a lot of questions, both at the planning phase, and as the project progresses. I have learned, “So, how do you plan to attach those wheels?” is one of the most critical questions I can ask: they almost always intend to just glue them, even when they are supposed to turn! Some questions are practical: “Have you thought about how that’s going to fit inside that box?” Others are aesthetic: “Would you like to use the hot glue gun so all that tape doesn’t show?”

Sometimes those questions elicit just the response I'm looking for (a search for a bigger box, a dash for the glue gun); other times it doesn’t. We also learn to drop suggestions as projects progress, “So, I think it might sturdier if you placed the first cubes in the center and worked outward” or “I think if you want an A, you should type those captions and then glue them on.”

But it’s a fine line. I can't tell you how many projects have walked out of here, captions typed and proofread, but cut out jaggedly and glued on crooked. I can't tell you how often I have bitten my tongue as a project, brilliant at conception, devolves into a mess due to procrastination or a student just running out of steam and attention to detail. So many projects that really could have been so beautiful!

And, it turns out, it’s even harder with your own kid. My girl just wrote a Dr. Seuss inspired poem for a school contest. I confined myself to asking questions: Are you missing a rhyme there? Do you think it should maybe have a ending? But oh! The clever rhymes that came into my head! The small ways that the meter could have been perfected. So many suggestions right on the tip of my tongue! We could have had a winning poem for sure!. But, my girl cares nothing for meter. I could only fix it by fixing it myself and, somehow, I resisted

And so this week it was like the school felt my pain. We got an extra credit project: "Leprechaun Trap- Family Project"! An official family project! And so on this past rainy Saturday afternoon, we settled in. We gathered craft supplies and constructed a box. She chose can of leftover spray paint and I sprayed while she built the sparkly stairs.

The trapping mechanism was key. She wanted the leprechaun to climb some stairs, then step on a platform that would lower, pulling the door shut with some string. I got the general idea but pushed for specifics. How will the string pull the door? "The platform will go down and pull the string," she responded. I couldn’t picture it (and my experience with kids said that she didn't really know either - I suspected there was some magically thinking at play here), so I tried to figure out how to make such a mechanism work. I set the newly painted box on the table with the lid hinged at the top. “No Mom," she told me, "The lid goes on the bottom.”

I told her my idea about how to get the trap to close. I suggested attaching the back of the platform to the back of the box, so it would fold down when the leprechaun stepped on it, pulling strings and pulling down the lid down. No!, she insisted. She wanted the platform strings to go through the top of the box, wrap around, and pull the door up. Once I got my head around it, she was right; it would totally work. And, wielding the box cutter, I was able to help her execute the design that she had in her head.

Mechanism complete we pulled the strings to close the box, and I was proud. She was stuck,"How do we keep it closed! He can walk off the platform and the door will open!" I thought that, you know, once a magic creature is caught, isn't that it? You don't have to hold him. Isn't it the act of catching him, even momentarily, that matters? Um, no. The box needed to stay closed. "Velcro?" I suggested. "Magnets," she declared. And, so with the magic of magnets, the trap stays closed.

And by the time we finished, she smiled, "Mom, I think I'm about halfway with the engineering." I'm still not sure what that meant, but I think she was proud of herself.

So, sure, without the rain, we might have struggled to find the time to get this trap together. It would have certainly been less fun to build at 9pm the night before it was due. And sure, she's an only child and I'm sure one more project, family or otherwise, is just not what a lot of families need on top of sports practice and chores and everything else. But I’m super grateful for this explicit family project. I think it built up my strength to resist "helping" too much on future projects that are meant to be hers and hers only. And not only did we both have a good time, we both learned a lot about traps and about working with each other. Family project=success.

And now it should only take about 6 months to get the glitter out of the living room rug.

Why does homework only count when you have to turn it in?

When we work with students on homework, there's a clear trend. Only work that involves putting pen or pencil to a piece of paper they have to turn in is "real work." When they are "required" to do silent reading, they only do it when they have to write down their times in a reading log that gets turned in. And studying for tests? Those conversations go something like this:

"Did you study for your science test tomorrow?"

"Can you quiz me?"

(After quizzing on three terms or topics, about which the student knows nothing) "Why don't you study and then someone can quiz you."

"How can I study if no one is quizzing me?"

When forced to "study" without someone to test them, they will page through a book (even a math book, just perusing, no working). Or, if they have a study guide (usually filled with terms they should define and questions they should answer), they'll call it studying when they stare at paper. Often, they won't even write on the study guide unless we force them to ("But we don't have to turn this in!  It's just for us! To study!" they'll complain.)  Even things as simple as studying for spelling and vocabulary tests are activities that require just looking: students stare at the lists as if some kind of magic will imprint the information onto their brains. We have to cajole them to write the words out, make flashcards, or otherwise engage the material in a way that might push them to learn.

And this is why my girl was in her room crying on Thursday night.

She had lost her morning TV for the next week and just by a hair. She has a spelling test every Friday, so Thursday nights we go over the words -- words that have gotten progressively harder as first grade has progressed. Every week, I ask her to study the words during homework time at STAR (her after school program). Almost every week she forgets. She missed 2/10 on the last test before Winter Break -- dropping that last t from both "stretch" and "scratch." So, this week, the first week back to school, I reminded her that she had to study.  She finished her entire homework packet at STAR on Monday. Her assignment (from me) for Tuesday: write and practice the spelling words (they are working on long A so the 10 main words were pretty easy, like "skate" and "take," with a few irregulars like "right," then a sentence: "We skate on the path," and three bonus words: "deliver," "shouted," and "tiptoed").

My overall goal, as you can imagine, is too teach her how to study -- and to teach her to responsible for her own studying, instead of reliant on someone else to quiz her in order to prepare for an exam.

When I asked her to write the words out on Tuesday during homework, she said that the STAR coaches wouldn't let her just write the words because it wasn't "really" homework, so I wrote a note: "Dear STAR, Please let Quinn write out her spelling words so she can study them during homework time. Thank you."

At that point, I felt like I as the only one in the world who could even conceive of the idea that reviewing her spelling words was actual homework.

And so the week went:

Tuesday night: did you study your words? No, she forgot.

Wednesday night: did you study your words? No, she skipped homework because she had basketball and wanted to go to story time (plus, she was done with her homework anyway).

Thursday night: did you study your words? She grinned, "I wrote them."  Then she added slyly, "I just copied them." Sure enough, in her folder was one scrap of paper, with each word (not the sentence, not the bonus words, just the first 10 words) written once.

I flipped the paper over and started to quiz her. She got the first 10 right. I read the sentence. She hesitated, "Shoot, I didn't study the sentence or the bonus words."

I warned her then and there that there would be a consequence if she did not get them right.  She got the sentence. After a tense moment, she got "deliver." She even got "shouted" after a long whispered debate about "is it o-w like 'shower' or o-u like 'about?'" And then she spelled tiptoed with an extra letter: "tiptoued." Had she even written the word ONE TIME over the course of the week, she would have gotten it, but she didn't.

I told her no morning TV for a week (she usually nabs about 15 minutes of "Lion Guard" or "Liv and Maddie" each morning while she eats breakfast) and asked her to write "tiptoed" 5 times.  About halfway through, the tears started pouring out, and then she went to her room to really sob.

In part, kids just don't get how to study. In part, they are just deeply resistant to doing it. That my girl chose not to write the sentence or the bonus words, when she knew that both I and her teacher expected her to know them, is case in point. She was not studying to learn or to improve her knowledge of the words, but to satisfy the bare minimum of what she had to turn in to me.

The challenge for us, as educators and parents, is to convince kids that studying, even when you don't have to turn anything in, is useful, and that reviewing material can refresh your memory and improve your grades. My girl is clearly not there yet. She stuck, both too lazy and too cocky to want to study. But, we're in for the long haul and I'm hopeful that by the time she gets to middle school, I won't be repeating the same debates we have with our middle school students.  I'm hoping that, by then, she will have realized, for herself, that there's a benefit to studying, even when no one else can see the work that you're doing. Fingers crossed!

Negotiating Consequences with Kids?

Yesterday, a mom came up to me in the hallway, "I really liked the way you handled that. I was listening and … I just really like the way you handled that." And it was funny, because what she overheard was just policy here at EdBoost. But, while it's something we teach every tutor, it's something I had to learn the hard way -- and which I know is one of the hardest parts of parenting.

What she, the parent of a 6th grader, overheard, was my conversation with a 7th grader and his mom. The 7th grader has been working on fairly complicated pre-algebra: doing multi-step conversions last month, and moving on to percent increase and decrease problems this month. None of the work is simple, and we find that a lot of it is not at all intuitive for our middle schoolers.

In the last unit, the 7th grader learned to use dimensional analysis, a technique in which students can perform multiple conversions by multiplying an amount or rate by fractions that equal to 1. So, if you want to convert 50 feet per hour to inches per minute, you execute a problem like this:


\(\require{cancel}\dfrac{50\cancel{ \text{ feet}}}{1 \cancel{\text{ hour}}} \times \dfrac{1\cancel{\text{ hour}}}{60 \text{ minutes}} \times \dfrac{12 \text{ inches}}{1\cancel{ \text{ foot}}} = \dfrac{600 \text{ inches}}{60 \text{ minutes}} = 10 \text{ inches per minute}\)


As adults, we might remember doing something like this in chemistry, it probably had something to do with moles, but while a useful exercise (and one I teach in SAT prep) it's not common or simple. Our 7th grader told us that his teacher allowed him to use a calculator for these problems. So, we had him write the problems out (which often took a long time and multiple attempts) and then we let him use a calculator to find his final answers. But, when he got the test back, he lost several points on each problem (despite having correct answers). He told me, "My teacher said I used the calculator too much." So, my decision was easy: no more calculator.

As we moved into percent increases and decrease, the no calculator rule made even more sense. While the student was starting to understand that in order to find percent change, he needed to write a \(\dfrac{\text{change}}{\text{original}}\) fraction and then divide (these concepts are still getting solidified in his mind), we found that he struggled mightily when it came to decimal division. Not only were the mechanics of long division hard for him, but he struggled to get the decimal in the right place, and only set up the division problem correctly about 50% of the time (like so many of our students, when writing long division in a "house" format, he tends to put the divisor on the inside of the house rather than the outside, essentially doing the problem backwards).

Overall, he was struggling.

And then, last Thursday, Sunny caught him using the calculator on his iPad. He read him the riot act. And then Kaitlin caught him using the calculator on his iPad, and that was the last straw. Sunny told the 7th grader: you're staying until 6:30 for the rest of the month, so you can do extra work and get this math nailed down.

Friday was a holiday, so on Monday, Sunny let the tutors know that the 7th grader would be staying until 6:30 for the next two weeks. At 3:00 the student's mom came up. The 7th grader had no homework and had asked his mom if he could skip coming to EdBoost. Sunny explained the situation. The student came up to argue: his teacher said that he could use a calculator, and he really does know how to do the math, and he's allowed to use a calculator, and his teacher said so.

Sunny got called away, so I held the line, "You need to know how to do this math -- whether your teacher lets you use a calculator or not, some teacher in the future will not, and a significant part of the SAT will not, so you need to be able to do this work accurately, and right now you can't. So, us not letting you use a calculator is not about punishment, it's about making sure that you can do the work."

Then he switched tacks, "I don't have any work, I have nothing to do today."

"You can review the math."

"But my teacher said we CAN use the calculator."

"We asked you not to use the calculator and you did. You said that you were allowed to use a calculator and then you said that the teacher said that you used it too much -- I don't know what I can believe from you. I promise that knowing how to do the math without a calculator will not harm your ability to do it with a calculator, so this is how we're going to do it. "

"But my teacher said…"

We went about 10 rounds. Maybe more. I just kept repeating myself: this was for him, to improve skills which he would need, and we would simply not change our minds.

In the end, he stayed until 6:30.

And mom had our backs. "What they say is what you must do!" she said to him. She also reiterated, "You know I don't let you use the calculator at home." But she had come up without him at 3:00. She had let him stay in the car. He had convinced her that he did not need to come. She'd come, essentially, to ask us for help -- she wanted us to force him to stay, which we did. But she was not able to do it on her own. His tenacity with me showed me how often his ploy works: he wears people down. And he's good at it.

Like so many kids, he can beat his mom. But, he's not our first super-stubborn student. He can't beat us nearly as easily.

In 15 years of running an after school program, here's what we've learned. Think hard about the punishment you're about to mete out BEFORE you say it. If you can't enforce it (or simply don't want to) don't say it. Come up with something else.

But, once you say it, commit 100%. If they learn nothing else from adults, kids learn how quickly we cave. We give up; we wear out; we forget. Don't be that adult. Dole out "punishments" out of a deep concern for their skills, be compassionate and understanding about what they can handle, both academically, and emotionally, but once you declare a punishment, stick to it. That's how kids learn that you mean what you say.

To my own kid's frustration, this is one parenting skill I have honed. Though I've learned that all of this is much harder when talking to your own kid, I've come up against some very worthy opponents here at EdBoost. All the negotiating that gets attempted here has done a lot to strengthen my resolve. I think very hard before I threaten my daughter with any kind of consequence: have I already put a deposit down on that treat that I'm threatening to take away? Am I willing to disappoint the other kids/parents involved if I take away that playdate or sleepover? Will I be home tomorrow when she loses TV or am I actually punishing my husband by taking away screen time? I think before I speak. But once I speak, I try my best to hold the line.

And, I was proud when my daughter came to tutoring this summer and, when she goofed off, and her tutor said that she'd have to talk to her mom, my daughter said, "Please no!" and shaped up. I want her to be just a little bit scared of me being upset with her. And dealing with middle schoolers for so many years has really helped me practice being the parent I hope to be. 

The Heavy Topics - Too Much for Little Kids, or Just Right?

"Mom," my five year old asked, as we stood in line to board a plane in the New Orleans airport, "Can we talk more about Hitler?"

I stuttered, trying to think of a response that would sound normal, but would also signal to everyone around us that we'd just been walking past the WWII museum and our interest in Hitler was purely historical.

But over the following months, I found that her interest in Hitler was persistent.  She still asks, out of the blue, and always in terribly inappropriate places, for me to tell her more about Hitler.  She's also interested in Japanese internment camps (I highly recommend Fred Korematsu Speaks Up for a very accessible book on the subject), Anne Frank, slavery, and (very recently) the Donner party.

And, so, I wonder, am I a bad mom for talking to her about these things? I'm lucky: my kid does not get nightmares or get queasy or obsessive when she learns about these subjects.  I know that, for some kids, just a discussion about concentration camps would lead to weeks of sleepless nights. Not so for my girl. But, I had to show my six-year old Schindler's List (she was riveted) because I simply could not remember anything else about Hitler or the Nazis to tell her! And what kind of parent shows her kindergartner Schindler's List?

It makes me feel guilty. And then I come to work and my middle schoolers and high schoolers don't know what the internment camps were. They are not sure who the bad guys were in World War II. They are totally shocked to learn that slaves were brought to the United States by force.

As shocking as their gaps in knowledge are, it's easy to see how kids miss information -- or misconstrue the information that they do learn. The other day, my girl asked me to confirm that slavery doesn't exist any more (and, of course, nerd that I am, I had to explain that it's illegal in the United States, but that there are still people who are held against their will...). I confirmed that slavery is illegal and she followed up with, "That's right. Because we don't use cotton anymore."

"That's right," I almost agreed with this very sensible-sounding statement. Hold up, what? "We don't use cotton anymore, so we don't need slaves," she explained.  We were on the tail end of African-American history month.

I was proud that she knew that slaves often picked cotton, but we clearly needed to review, "What do you think your shirt is made of?"
"Fabric."
"Where does the fabric come from?"
"The fabric store."
"Ok, yes, but what is it made of?"
Shrug.
She was very surprised to learn that it was made of cotton -- and that the cotton balls we use to clean her ear piercings are made of cotton.  As we walked home, I was able to disentangle the existence of slavery from the existence of cotton in her mind.

But I had to wonder where this idea came from.

I can only figure that they must have talked about slavery in passing in class (it was African-American history month, after all), but I suspect the teacher didn't want to get into it too much.  And, where the teacher left off, my girl filled in the blanks, completely incorrectly.

Our kids do this all the time. There are topics that we find so important, that we don't talk about them.  We wait for the right time.  We wait until our kids are ready. Sometimes, at least, in the meantime, the kids "figure it out" for themselves, and not always correctly.

The other day, a co-worker asked me when students should learn about jury duty.  We tried to puzzle out if kids would learn about it before 12th grade civics. We sure hoped so. But our middle schoolers and high schoolers knew almost nothing about juries. Surely some of their parents must have been called to jury duty, but they did not transfer that information to their kids.  My girl knows about juries because I had to serve a few months ago and I talked about it incessantly. She learned about jury duty just by listening to me when I had to spend a week calling in and trying to predict if I would have to go to the court.  Imagine what she would have learned if she had been a sentient human the time I actually served on a jury! Just by talking to her about my life, about a truly boring, but important aspect of my civic duties, I was able to teach my kid a civics lesson that we expect all citizens to understand -- and which a whole lot of young people know nothing about.

As adults, I think we often forget to talk to our kids. And sometimes, we deliberately don't talk with them because we don't want to get things wrong, or we want to avoid bringing up topics that we worry they are not ready for. But there are two worse alternatives: they never learn about "the important stuff," or they learn the wrong way.  I think, for all the times she embarrasses me asking about Hitler in public, I will continue to err on the side of talking when I can.

Empathy Education: It can come from books!

A small selection of incredible books that transport kids out of their bubbles.

I grew up in southern Orange County, California. There were two Latino kids in my grade level (hi Ernie and Michelle) and one African-American girl (hi Tammy).  When John moved to our neighborhood, from China, not speaking a word of English, the school assigned me (who knew only 3 words in Chinese, and a different dialect to boot) to be his buddy, because my last name made me the most-Chinese kid they had to offer. In the '80s, I was exotic because I was biracial, but because I knew almost no other kids of Asian decent, I usually just considered myself white.

I dearly loved history. But in conservative South County, I was taught that the Civil War was not about slavery, but rather about railroads and states' rights. I was taught that Manifest Destiny was an unfettered good. When my award-winning History Day project, "Casualities of the Westward Trail," won only third place at state level, dinged by the Native American judge who wondered why I only included white casualties, everyone assured me that he had been terribly unfair to me.

And yet, when I got to UCLA and read Zinn's People's History of the United States for the first time in Sociology 1, I understood it immediately.  The notion of looking at the world and history from various points of view made perfect sense to me. Why? How could this Orange Country girl, who had really only been taught one view of history and power, so easily accept looking at the world from another angle?

I "got it" because, without realizing it, I had always seen history from a variety of angles. Cassie from Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry taught me about sharecropping and the Jim Crow South. Karana from Island of the Blue Dolphins taught me about native Californians and surviving off the land.  Laura Ingalls Wilder completely won me over with her portrayal of homesteading life.  Anne Frank taught me about the horrors of the Holocaust. And while Scarlett and Melanie taught me about privileged white life in the pre-Civil War South, Mammy and Prissy taught me about slavery. I learned the "women's point of view" from the main characters of the scores of YA historical romances I read growing up, from pre-Revolutionary indentured servants to Lowell Mills girls to Suffragettes. These characters quite often wore beaded bodices on their book covers, but from the pages, they told the stories of actual girls living in other times. I can see now that many of the mental images that these characters gave me were far from perfect. Far too many were wealthy (and dreamed mostly of silks) and the soldiers and blacksmiths who swept them off their feet were often far too progressive to be realistic. Nor would I ever recommend studying Prissy to someone wanting to understand the cruelty of the Antebellum South. But, every book added up. Every character was a friend of a sort. I grew up in an almost entirely white world, but through my books, I grew up with friends and confidantes of every color and class background, and every historical period.

Our country is deeply divided and increasingly segregated. It's no wonder we don't understand each other. We don't know each other. We can't move kids from neighborhood to neighborhood to teach them about difference and diversity (And yet, it would help so much!  How many of us have changed our minds about some class or group of people after befriending a member of that group?). But, we can share books.  And we can talk about books. And we can share discussions of those books -- bringing together a diversity of voices, about a diversity of topics.

Through books and discussion, we can teach history and culture, and we can foster empathy and compassion. Books help us to step into another person's shoes and see the world through their eyes.  Let's spread that experience as much as possible. (And, as I write this, here at EdBoost, we're formulating a plan to do just that....).

For now, here are a handful of my favorite children's and YA book recommendations:

I Am Malala by Malala Yousefsai: Everyone should read this book. It's an amazing window into Taliban rule, and the people who initially welcomed it, through the eyes of a truly inspirational young woman (the "Young Readers" version of this book is not quite as historically and geographically detailed as the full version, but it's a great read for the 5th-8th grade set).

Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo: Welcome to rural Florida. See it through the eyes of kids who not only have very little in terms of material goods, but in terms of compassion from their peers. And see how a couple of outcasts build a happiness of their own (for slightly younger kids, Because of Winn-Dixie, in the same setting, is also a great read).

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis: This book, by the author of The Watsons go to Birmingham, is set in a tiny village of runaway slaves, just over the border into Canada, just after 1850.  Elijah, the 11-year-old main character is so likeable and his adventure so interesting, that the historical import of the setting just seeps into you as you read. 

Trash by Andy Mulligan: The poverty of the third-world trash heap is overwhelming.  But see how these scrappy kids survive on what the rest of society discards -- and enjoy a gripping and thrilling mystery to boot.

Sold by Patricia McCormick: From America 2016, it's easy to take for granted that "women are equal" -- but watching Lakshmi, a 13 year old Nepali girl, sold into marriage puts it all in perspective.  Learn about her world and also her tenacity.

Cut also by Patricia McCormick: Many of us know someone who suffers from anxiety, depression, or some kind of self-harm disorder. But it's so hard to know what's inside people's heads.  Why do people act the way that they do?  Why is it so hard to help people who are suffering?  Cut takes you into the heart and head of a cutter and it really helps you see mental illness from the inside.

What books do you recommend to kids who want to broaden -- or burst -- the bubbles that they live in?

Why I Enable (Encourage?) my 5-year-old's Pokemon Go! Obsession

The cover of the "Pokemon Book" the girl is "writing"

"Mama is a softie."
"Hope we can have fun with real people, not Pokemons."
"I would not hand my phone over to a 5 year old. Heck, it's not even paid for yet."

Yes, according to grandma, Mama is a softie for letting the girl, just starting kindergarten, play Pokemon Go! on her phone. And, if you get the subtext, not only am I crazy to let the girl walk around with my phone, but I'm encouraging a "video game mentality," where kids interact with computers and shun people.

So, why do I, the mom who has let her kid play very few video games (I recently learned that she is embarrassingly behind her peers when it comes to using a PlayStation controller) let her walk around the neighborhood playing Pokemon Go?

The more we play, the more reasons I find.

First, it makes her want to walk.  We're a walking family and we live in a walkable part of the city. But, while the girl is a good walker, she often used to preface her Friday night restaurant choice with, "Which places can we drive to?" Now, she nixes all the driving places, often preferring a walk much longer than her dad is willing to take when she's moving at a Pokemon-playing pace. A few weekends ago we took a 3-mile round-trip walk to the thrift store to pick up some books. It was 2:00 on a sunny California afternoon, and the thrift shop has parking; even I considered driving! But she wanted to walk, so we did. Thanks Pokemon Go!

Pokemon Go! also adds a crazy techno-innocence (and cheapness!) to our outings. Our big adventures this month? To the La Brea Tar Pits to catch Charmanders and to the Santa Monica Pier to catch water-type Pokemon. We were outside, everything was free, we met all kinds of random people (many also playing Pokemon). Fun, cheap, easy, entertained. What more can a mom ask for?

And, far from stripping the girl of her imagination, Pokemon Go! feeds it. There are Pokemon everywhere in my house. She catches them on the street (even when she's not actually playing Pokemon), kneeling down suddenly to coax a Pokemon into her hand, pushing me out of the way so she can sic one of her Evees on a Rhython blocking our path, or handing her Pokemon "case" to me when I drop her at school, so I can take them to their "Pokemon day care." She tells me that you can collect baby or adult Pokemon, but she prefers the babies because "the adults pass away much more faster." And, she always reminds me, if I carry the Pokemon case too close to my body, the Pikachus might poke me. They're naughty. They do that.

As an educator, I can't help but notice the small, but important, academic skills she learns while playing: while many of my very smart test prep students don't know the words "combative" or "lure," my child now speaks obsessively about "combat power," "lures," and "evolving" and "revitalizing" her Pokemon, not to mention raising the "prestige" of red gyms.

Pokemon Go! also tackles a perennial problem for our younger students: place value. It's hard to get little kids to conceptualize the difference between 100 and 1,000 -- to them, it's just "a lot." Many of our students get bogged down saying long numbers correctly and comparing multi-digit numbers (why wouldn't a number that starts with 9 automatically be bigger than a number that starts with 1?).  Thanks to Pokemon Go!, my girl can tell you that her Vaporean, with a CP of 1614 can "easily defeat" an Arcanine with CP of 950. Oh, and as for sight words, she can now identify fire, water, psychic, ground, bug, and grass type Pokemon. She can't read all of the info in her Pokedex yet, but she sure is more motivated to learn to read than she used to be.

And don't get me started on alphabetical order.  Now that no one uses dictionaries, alphabetizing is a lost art (my very smart tutors spend far longer than they should filing student folders!), but my child scrolls through her Pokemon, looking for a "Geodude with a G" like a pro.

And yet, my favorite part of Pokemon Go! is that it teaches economy in a way that is direct, tangible, and free. I have found it impossible to convince my child (or our students) that spending $4 on junk food (or coin-operated rides at the mall) diminishes their ability to buy something they might really want later on. They simply cannot resist the instant gratification. For my girl, purchasing opportunities are too rare, and everything she buys with her own money is a luxury anyway, so she rarely feels the angst of wishing she had that $4 back. Thus, money spent, no lessons learned.

But, a kid who uses up all of her raspberries on weak Pokemon regrets it when faced with a 900+ CP Snorlax that she desperately wants. And, a kid with bad aim will quickly learn that foregoing Pokestops (where more pokeballs can be acquired for free) in order to catch more Pokemon, means an empty stock of Pokeballs just few blocks later. A player who squanders her stardust or candies on unworthy Pokemon regrets it almost immediately. My girl has gone from someone who blithely uses up her resources for a measly Ratatta, to a girl who carefully considers which Pokemon is "worth" an Ultraball. It's a lesson I have been trying to teach with money for a year and which Pokemon Go! has deeply imprinted in just a month.

It's not a perfect game, for sure. I worry that my kid -- or one of my EdBoost kids or staff members (yes, we all play) -- will get run over crossing a street while also catching a Paras or a Pidgey. But, as a new trend in video games, I like it. And, I think it goes a long way towards teaching through hands-on experience -- something we are constantly trying to create for students. Why not take advantage when it's built into something they WANT to do? When parents ask me my opinion, as I know they will, Pokemon Go! (in moderation, of course) will get my thumbs up.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go walk some kilometers and hatch some Pokemon eggs (oh, and did I mention that my kid now measures distance in kilometers?).

"I'm Paying for it Myself."

A parent on a Los Angeles parent list posted today, "We wondered what other parents are giving their teenage children for 'allowance'...we just want to know if we are giving our daughter too little or too much." The parent noted that the child drives herself back and forth to school and they gave her $60 a week to cover gas and "lunch" (in quotes, because the student always waited until she got home to fix lunch). The parent also noted that the student always seemed to be asking for more money come the weekend.

Another parent sympathized with the quandary. "I am torn between wanting to pay for them to go out to eat with their friends because I love seeing them out having fun vs. what should they pay on their own to teach them responsibility."

It felt like the parents really wanted to give their kids enough money to enjoy life. It was sweet and generous. One parent explicitly asked for advice and stories, but no "judgement." And yet, the judging side of me could not help but recall spending my teen days at the mall, running on a single $1 Hotdog-on-a-Stick because there was no way I was spending more than that (back in the day, when I made $3.10 an hour!) on food.

Reading these posts, I felt stuck between wanting to be a generous parent and wanting my child to suffer (you know, just like I did!).

Then, my 5:30 SAT tutoring appointment was a few minutes late. It's not uncommon. Students walk in late all the time. Traffic in LA can be rough.  After school activities run late.  They lose track of the time.  They oversleep.  No big deal. But Alejandra came rushing in, breathing hard, "I'm sorry... the bus!"

She wasted no time getting to a desk and pulling folders out of her backpack.

"Did you do your work for me?" I asked, as I always ask. "Of course!  I'm paying for this myself!"

At that moment, it clicked. This is why the generous side of me should NOT prevail; we should not give Quinn spending money. Most of my students cruise in, take a few minutes to get their work out, stop in the bathroom, and then want to answer their texts during tutoring.  They do their homework about 50% of the time. They want SAT prep -- they definitely want to raise their SAT scores! - but they don't value the time like Alejandra does.  Alejandra who spent winter break chasing kids around the L.A. Live ice rink so that she could come to EdBoost and work on her SAT scores.

I also thought of Jessica, one of our star students, whom we recently hired as a tutor (and who, I am proud to say is universally both loved and feared by students!). We're doing college applications together, and unlike so many other students who apply willy-nilly, she thought carefully about every school she added to her Common Application.  Her family is low-income so almost all of her application fees have been waived, but she'd be covering the cost of the extra SAT reports. "Oh! That's not bad at all!" she exclaimed, surprised but grateful to learn that she could cover a school ($11.25) with just an hour of work.

I think I'll pay Quinn's college application fees. I paid for all of my own gas, entertainment, and food out (though I had free range of the pantry for me and my friends!) but my mom covered SAT and AP costs and college app fees. That still seems fair to me. SAT tutoring? That's a harder one.  I'm considering the tack taken by another recent student's family. I complimented him for ALWAYS doing his homework.  He laughed, "My mom says if I miss even one assignment, I have to pay for my own tutoring!" He never missed a page.