The Golden Hour: Part 2
Hello!
As promised, this is the continuation of our two-part series on The Golden Hour, that magical time in the last six weeks of the school year when you can get a really solid snapshot of how your child has been doing this year and what supports are working (or not). It’s also the time when you can make sure that your child is set up to have an amazing year next year, without having to start back at square one in the fall. If you missed the first installment, pause and head over to read that here.
In the last post, I talked about the first three steps to using the Golden Hour to your advantage:
Get organized -- Pull together any goals and progress documents for your child from the last 12 months.
Request a meeting with your child’s homeroom teacher or advisor. If you’re a homeschool parent, put a meeting on the calendar with yourself! (Not kidding.)
Review and highlight -- Highlight any goals in yellow and any successes or wins in green. If you were going for bonus points, you might have already put these things into the chart we mentioned:
Your next three steps pull the whole thing together and put you on the road to a much easier fall.
Ready? Grab those highlighters and the chart and let’s get to work.
☐ Step 4: What’s Missing? Put a star ⭐ next to any goals that don’t have a
corresponding success -- you’re going to ask about these in your Goals and Success meeting.
(Example: Your child had a goal of “persevering through a challenging task” but the teacher never mentioned whether or not your child has grown in their ability to do this.)
☐ Step 5: Prep for and have your meeting. Remember that meeting we had you schedule two weeks ago? It’s time to prep for it. Even if it’s still a few weeks away, get ready today and then you can pull out everything you need when it’s go-time.
Are you a homeschool parent? You’re going to walk through these same steps. You may want to also add in doing some benchmark testing, just in literacy and math. It adds to your snapshot and can give you some concrete skills to work on next.*
That chart? That’s the perfect place to take notes during your meeting.
Your list from Step 4: Ask the teacher what the progress has been on each starred item.
Ask about strategies: Those goals your child met? You want to ask the teacher what strategies helped them get there. Write these down in the “What Worked” box and if you have any strategies to add that work at home, put them on the list, too.
Plan next steps: Those goals your child hasn’t met? Decide what’s important … to you, to their success in the next steps of their education, to their future. The ones you want to prioritize need a plan. Work with the teacher on what your options are for support -- during the summer and next school year. They may know who your child will have next year and have specific recommendations based on their teaching style. All of these actions go in that last square in your chart.
☐ Step 6: Follow Up! Nothing you did above will have the impact you want it to have if you don’t follow up. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but you do want to do these three things:
Send a thank you email to the teacher with a summary of the meeting. Quick bullets of open goals, strategies that work, and next steps.
Take Action! Those next steps? Start working towards them now.
Make a calendar note for early August. You’re going to send an email to your child’s new advisor / teacher with the summary and asking for a 20 minute meeting in August, just before school starts. At that meeting you’ll review accommodations, talk about parts of your child’s learning plan that have been tricky, and build a relationship from a place of trust and optimism.
It may seem simple, but it works. Following these steps helps to ensure that your child’s teacher is thinking about them and their specific needs in the last few weeks. And it means you have specific things to focus on for the summer and fall rather than suffering through with low-grade anxiety, wondering if everything will be ok.
This checklist is a surface overview of the steps we take with clients to put a bow on this year and prep for the next. There’s so much that goes into each piece that it would be a novel if we went into details, but there’s definitely enough here to get you started! You don’t need to wait to have it all perfected. Each year is a growing process, and each time you do this you’ll understand a little bit more about your child and about yourself as an advocate and communicator.
And if you need clarification or support at any point along the way, we’re here for you! We have a great parent community you can join over in Facebook -- pop a question in there and someone from our team or the community will chime in within a few hours! And if you want more direct support, book a free consultation today to get some quick help or learn more about our 1:1 coaching.
*Not sure what we mean by benchmark testing or if you need it? Book a quick call with us and we can help you make a decision and send you in the right direction for your family.