36. Set Up a Home Office for Your Student
Children need different kinds of environments to help them focus on homework. Some need quiet and solitude; others need parental supervision. Some children like to spread books and papers out, others do fine with just a small area in which to work. Often the ideal homework conditions seem impossible to attain in a small home or a busy household. And even if you have a pretty good system going now, things may change as your children progress from grade school to middle school to high school. So if your child has a hard time focusing on homework, or is reluctant to get started on it, what can you do to help her?
Growing up in a small house with six kids and two parents, I found it almost impossible to find a quiet area to do my homework during grade school and high school. I remember doing a lot of projects lying on my bed in the room I shared with three sisters. This literally was the only space I had to myself. Other times I would wait in line for the family typewriter and type up my reports at the kitchen table late at night. Conditions were less than optimal, let's say, but all in all I was able to maintain a good grade point average and I always handed assignments and homework in on time. It was at that time of my life when I had to develop my own organizational style to keep up with my school work.
When I went away to college I thought I had achieved homework nirvana. I only had to share the room with one other person and we each had our own built-in desk and shelf at the entrance to our dorm room. For graduation I had received a typewriter, so no more waiting in line for me! I was living large. I quickly turned my study cubby into a functioning office. I had my textbooks on a shelf and my school supplies either on my desk or in a milk crate below it. There was plenty of tabletop space to spread out and I used the “left-to-right” system. Homework to be done was placed on my left, and as I completed it, I stacked it to my right.
In the story above, it was only after I had the space to set up an office in my dorm room that I felt I had a functional homework area. In fact, one of the motivations for me to move away to college was the homework factor. I couldn't imagine how I could focus on college-level work in a crowded, busy, and noisy household. I was a student who needed quiet and my own space to do my best. As parents, you can help your children now by understanding their needs and setting up a homework area that meets those needs as best you can. By doing so, you will be setting them up for success in their schoolwork.
To begin setting up the optimal homework environment for your children, first you have to define their needs. This can be done by asking questions and observing what they are doing now. For example, with regard to the area in your home where they like to do homework, is it a quiet, solitary space? Or do they like to be in the main living area of the house with parental supervision and interaction? If you're not sure, have your child try a week in each type of location and see what goes better. How about noise level? Do they need absolute quiet or can they easily tune out other people talking or the television? Again, if you and your child are not sure, try a week doing homework in quiet and another week with moderate background noise. See in which environment your child is better able to focus.
Once you know a little about the environment your child prefers for homework, how about the physical items she needs? Here are a few suggested items that students may need, depending on their grade level, and their school:
Find out what your child or children need and then accumulate all those items in one place. This will give you an idea about what type of storage you need in the designated homework area.
Now that you have a good idea about what your student needs, you, the parent, can decide what room in your house works best to fit those needs. Is it the kitchen, the dining room, the child's bedroom, a spare room, or a portion of the family room? These are all possible areas that can be set up for homework. All you need is a table or desk and an area to store the other materials that your child needs to do her homework. If you are using a common area of the house, it doesn't always have to look like a school desk. You can be creative about where you store your supplies. It's a good idea to ask your child to clean up the homework area when she is finished with the work for that night. Here are some specific ideas about ways to set up a home office for your student:
Kitchen or Dining Room. Most families have a table for eating in either the kitchen or dining room, so this may be the simplest place for children to do their homework, especially when they are younger. If they do their homework after school, this area is ideal because a parent can make dinner and supervise at the same time. If you are lucky, you might have an extra cabinet or drawer for storing homework supplies right in the kitchen. If not, you can either put up a shelf on the wall, or have a basket or bin on the counter for these items. Another option is a cupboard in the dining room or a small bookshelf in an adjacent room for storing all the homework supplies. The key is to have the supplies all together, accessible to the children, and in a place where they can be put away once the homework is finished so they don't clutter up your eating space.
Family or Living Room. You may choose to stay away from the eating areas in your home if you have the space for a desk or table in your family room. This would keep the children in the main living area of the home but give them their own desk to keep set up for homework. The desk doesn't have to be anything fancy. Actually, a small desk or table with a few drawers is perfect. You can put supplies and extra paper in the drawers and a small bookshelf on the wall to hold any reference books. If your desk does not have drawers, you can purchase a set of plastic drawers at any home store and slide it under the table and out of sight. Just make sure all your supplies will fit before you buy the drawers. If your child needs a calendar, place one on the desktop or hang one above the desk. If you have a computer on this desk, make sure there is still room to write and have a separate table or shelf to hold the printer.
Photo courtesy of The Container Store
Your Child's Bedroom. The same setup that was used in the family room can be used in your child's bedroom. If your child needs a desk, I recommend getting an older desk from a secondhand shop. These usually have a narrow drawer for pencils and pens, at least one small drawer for papers or books, and one file drawer that you can use for hanging files or for holding school work and artwork that comes home throughout the year. If you use it as holding place, at the end of the school year, clean it out and only keep the memorable pieces. Some pros to having the homework done in the bedroom are that your child could be more comfortable with a bed or chair for studying and reading, and it is a quiet area. Also with this setup, your child takes on the responsibility of keeping this area clear and functional.
Spare Room. If you have a spare room in your house, it can be a great place for the student who needs quiet and fewer distractions in order to concentrate. It is also ideal if your older student needs a computer for her homework because you can set it all up in one room: the desktop space to write, the shelves or drawers for storing supplies, and the computer and printer tables for doing research and typing up reports. You can probably get all this in a small area of the room and still have space for a single bed, a lamp and a chair to make this a guest room as well. It's also ideal if your child needs to leave some papers hanging around for long-term projects or weekly assignments. These can be placed in a wall bin or in a two-pocket folder that is kept on the desk. You may also have the wall space in this room for a bulletin board or calendar to be used for visual reminders about schoolwork.
No matter what room you decide is best, make sure there are limited distractions for your child and optimal lighting.
Now that you have defined what your child needs and set up a little area for homework in some room in your home, you'll want to discuss the homework-area system with your child.
The system is basically how your child or children are to use the homework area and how they are to maintain it. If you have multiple children using the same area, each child needs to be respectful of the other children. In some cases, you may have to make a time schedule for when each child gets to use the computer or writing area. This shouldn't be too rigid, but it may just be that one child uses the computer after school, and the other uses it after dinner. Or if you have younger children who play while the older ones do homework, you may have to direct them to another room. Another part of maintaining the homework area is keeping up with all those papers that fly back and forth between school and home.
Teachers in elementary school are usually very clear about which papers can go home and which need to come back to school. Students themselves should know by the time they reach middle school and high school what can stay home and what needs to stay in their schoolbags. As a parent, it's a good idea for you to help your child develop a system at home for papers she wants to keep. In order to do this, you'll need to consider the Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? of filing school papers.
Who (as in who files the papers): Parents can direct and let the child do the actual filing. This teaches your child good organizational skills and helps her remember where things are.
What (as in what papers to keep): I recommend keeping all graded papers that the teacher sends home. That would include quizzes, tests, and projects. If you are seeing a trend with your child getting things marked wrong on classwork or homework, you should also save those papers. These can be used as study guides for future tests, to mark a trend, or to seek help from the teacher. If everything is fine with ungraded classwork and homework, look at it, then recycle it. In the younger grades, children may be bringing home a few pages of classwork each day. It's unrealistic and usually unnecessary to save every one.
Where (as in where to keep the papers): If your child has her own desk with a filing drawer, create hanging folders for each subject she has this year. If you do not have a file drawer, use a milk crate (preferably with wheels) that can be kept in the homework area. If you have an especially interesting classwork page, or a great test grade your child is proud of, you can treat it like artwork and post it on the refrigerator for a while, then file it.
When: Filing of school papers can be done on a daily basis. If you have already spoken with the teacher about when your student can clear out her binder or accordion folder — after a unit test or after a grading period, for example — that is another time to file. This will help lighten the load in your child's backpack.
Why: Saving graded papers is especially helpful if your child takes a final exam at the end of the year because the tests from each chapter or unit can serve as a study guide. If you have a question about your child's grade on a report card, these paper files can also be used to support the grade she deserves.
How: To set up the filing drawer or box in the beginning of the school year, keep it simple: one folder for each subject. Only subdivide into “Classwork” and “Tests” if the file gets too full. Have your child clearly label each hanging file. If she likes to color code, use a different color for each subject. Let your child arrange the files however she wants. Alphabetical may seem logical to you, but she may want to organize in the order of her class schedule. As your child is doing homework you can quickly flip through the papers that have come home that night. Sign any tests that need to go back to school, and sort papers that are coming home based on the criteria just described (what to file). Make two piles: Recycle and File. Let your child take care of the piles after she finishes her homework for the day. At the end of the school year, go through all the papers with your child and only keep a few memorable projects for the memory box (see Chapter 31).
Although I didn't use a typewriter until high school, today most children will be using a computer as early as elementary school. You'll want to help them save some of their projects on the computer (at least temporarily), so let's talk about an electronic method of filing. First of all, each child in your household should have his or her own folder on the computer system. Within that folder, you can set up subfolders named by the subject and year, and then leave each individual report or paper as a document.
For example:
Like the files in your file drawer, computer files can be deleted at the end of the school year, unless you have a reason to save a report for a younger sibling. Make sure each child knows where her files are, both on the computer and in the homework area. Show them where they can find materials such as the dictionary, paper, and art supplies. And make it a rule that all these materials go back to the correct container, drawer, or bin each night. By keeping up with organization on a daily basis, the children can prevent clutter from accumulating and items from getting lost. Use this system until it stops working. If your child's needs change, or there is a change in your household, go back to step one and reconsider your homework setup.