Like millions of families, mine marks back-to-school season with a time-honored ritual: We go out and shop for the trillion and one things our cash-strapped schools ask us to buy — Kleenex, sandwich bags, copier paper, hand sanitizer — as well as for some actual school supplies. To accomplish this, invariably we visit more than one store. “Because XYZ Elementary has a community supplies philosophy” — code for “the families that manage to buy everything on the list are subsidizing the families that can’t or don’t” — markers must be a particular brand and folders a specific hue.
We come home exhausted, but that’s never the part of the process that leaves me feeling truly dreadful. No, that occurs when we spread out our compasses and three-ring binders at home and start trying to repack everything in my sons’ backpacks. Said backpacks, of course, having been retrieved from the exact spot where they were left at the end of the last day of the last school year. And still full of the grotty tailings of last year’s community supply chest.
This year’s pre-first day of school purge: Three mostly gone, mushy, blackened glue sticks; five mate-less mittens; a little Hallmark photo album inscribed by its owner inside the front cover but devoid of photos; seven spiral-bound notebooks containing painstakingly sketched comics even an adoring mother must concede suffer repetitive, convoluted plotlines; and at least a dozen permission slips and other vital forms that never made it into my hands much less back to school, thus explaining why a teacher might think I am the kind of slacker who can barely lay in school supplies.
In my own childhood, each pristine box of factory-sharpened crayons promised a fresh start, a different year ahead with benevolent teachers, kind classmates, and humiliation-free recess periods. That might have been a hopeless fantasy, but helping reorganize my boys’ backpacks is an overdose of reality: I will never, ever, ever come anywhere close to keeping up with the modern, achievement-oriented American public school on its quest to be all things to all people. I already know that by Halloween I will have missed two full rotations of the snack roster, and the more organized room parents will have written me off as a perpetual no-show.
Thank heavens, then, that when those backpacks come home from the first day of school, they will contain the tools to help my boys keep up despite their dubious parentage. They will have day-planners and checklists and books with hints for managing both the tasks they have to do during the school day and the daily hour of homework each can expect. The older boy will likely have participated in a panel discussion in which the fifth-graders in his program share tips for staying on top of things with the fourth-graders.
Truly, staying on top of things has become a tall order, even for grade-school pupils. And in my experience, the packing and unpacking of the backpacks is the least of it. We wring our hands a lot about the sorry state of American education, and far too many kids are lacking in the most basic skills. But for the fortunate among us, the classroom can be an intellectually challenging place — so much so that I am often at a loss to help my grade-schoolers with their homework.
They know about the lives of individual settlers at Jamestown; confusing this with Jonestown, I wondered why the teacher thought suicide by Kool-Aid belonged in the curriculum. Their literature critiques delve into metaphor and allegory; a professional writer, I know most adults react to this kind of nuance by reaching for the remote. Their math causes me actual physical pain; sometimes I glance at a sheet of homework and am reminded of the deranged rantings of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I am, most definitely, not smarter than a fifth-grader.
My solution? Set out a big plate of cookies and turn for assistance to that most cherished institution, the modern self-help and leadership development publishing industry. Yes, the very same folks who brought us seven habits (and then, because billionaires can always use another best-seller, an eighth), the deceptively simply titled Getting Things Done, and that impenetrably stupid little allegory about reacting constructively to the disappearance of our cheese.
Okay, so I’m kidding about that last title, but only to make a point: In 2009, in the United States of America, some of the smartest personal development literature on the shelves is aimed at readers who need Mom’s or Dad’s permission to buy it. Not only are many of the books on organization and time management for kids terrific, handing Junior his own guide can go a good distance toward quieting the power struggles that make homework such a potential evening-slaughterer.
The best of the dog-eared resources at my house are published by Minneapolis’ own Free Spirit Publishing, whose works live up to the company motto: “Helping kids help themselves since 1983.” The volume that brought the most immediate relief to my household is a slim guide targeted to kids ages 8–13, entitled, cleverly, Get Organized Without Losing It. Author and mother Janet Fox developed the ideas within in an effort to help her son, who is dyslexic.
“Today’s environment is highly competitive,” she notes. “Kids who can’t find their homework, their planner, or a decent pencil are at risk of failure before they can even demonstrate their capabilities.”
Get Organized contains a template for a daily homework checklist as well as a model planner for managing after-school time. Also covered are coping with distractions, keeping long-term projects on track, and effective note-taking. (Curiously, like cursive handwriting, study skills seem to fall into the category of things schools now expect will be taught at home.) My lone quibble is that the photocopier-ready planner templates in the back don’t include a space for a parent to sign off that tasks have in fact been completed — a step that is still necessary at my house, where youthful intentions are often better than follow-through.
The Free Spirit catalogue includes dozens of helpful titles on topics from service learning to social skills, including the particularly good The Survival Guide for Kids with LD (learning differences), How to Do Homework Without Throwing Up, and for parents How to Help Your Child With Homework. And several Franklin-Covey books aimed at kids finally — finally! — succeed in distilling the seven truly useful habits from the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People into a bearable two pages.
I have to admit, when my oldest first came home with the planner supplied by his school, I swallowed hard. Like many parents, I worry that my kids are growing up in a culture that’s overly obsessed with achievement and prone to over-scheduling children. But as I watched my boy practice the rituals associated with managing his time and materials, it occurred to me that the practical skills he’s acquiring as a grade-schooler are no different from habits I’ve struggled to master at different times in my life. How far ahead of my generation will he be if they’re second nature when he hits college?
Who knows, perhaps my kids won’t come to see each fall’s not-yet-started, smudge-free planner like my untouched boxes of crayons: a carton of promise and possibility for the school year ahead. Better yet, maybe my organized kids can turn me into a more on-the-ball parent. Maybe, just maybe, one who’s capable of planning for her family’s turn in the snack rotation.
Beth Hawkins is a Minneapolis writer.
