Don’t Miss This District-Approved Tool for Parents

By Guest Author Erin Lillie-McMains

Educational platforms that offer rapid feedback and a way to track your child’s progress on tests, quizzes, and assignments are part of the landscape at most schools.  When parents start interacting with these platforms, their natural first line of questions often centers around what I would call, the “nuts and bolts.” “How do I set up the account? How do I access the data I desire?”  After a couple months however, most parents start to ask questions such as, “How often should I check the platform?”, “Is it good for my child to feel like I’m watching his every move?”, and “How do I keep my anxiety over a missing assignment in check so I don’t cause a spike in anxiety in my child?” 

This past Spring, I wrote an article calling on schools and parents to consider how to establish healthy tech boundaries when using rapid feedback educational platforms.  This flier and infographic is a follow up to that article.  It is simply a list of tips and guiding questions for parents to think about as they start interacting with educational platforms.  It might be useful as a hand out at a Curriculum or Back-to-School Night for 6th grade parents, who are just starting to interact with these platforms.  It could also be included with other technology forms and agreements that get sent out at the beginning of the school year.  There are several potential uses and of course, I encourage schools to modify and customize the flier in order to meet the specific needs of parents in their community.  

Here it is:

Confident Parents, Confident Kids is so grateful to Erin Lillie-McMains for her time, expertise, creativity, and initiative in following up on her article which elevated an important school problem to create a tool that can help solve it! Fantastic! We celebrate you!

Erin Lillie-McMains is an L.C.S.W. and middle school social worker in the greater Chicagoland area.  She has worked with adolescents for twenty-four years and helped a school based team implement Social Emotional Learning curricula. Most importantly, she is a parent of two high schoolers and one middle schooler.