Teachers see it all: students who soar, students who struggle. We wondered what the successful children have in common.
All parents hope their child is the smartest, most beautiful, most talented student in the entire school. It’s just a natural instinct. And if they are not feeling it yet, they’re certainly wishing it starting from the first day of preschool. So is there a magic formula to achieving good grades, popularity, and admission to the finest schools? We asked some of the area’s top educators—James Economon, English Department chair at Metro Academic Classical High School; Jerry Estes, vocal teacher, Wydown Middle School; Joseph Gleich, associate headmaster/director of studies, Saint Louis Priory School; Karen Kieffer, executive director of learning and support services, Rockwood School District; Ruth Moulton, junior kindergarten teacher, MICDS; Mark Smith, History Department chair, John Burroughs School; and Leslie Wolf, executive director, Deutsch Early Childhood Center, Congregation Temple Israel—what traits they see in the most successful students and what advice they have for parents to help bring out the best in their kids.
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How early on in the education process can a student’s success be measured?
Wolf: You can identify strengths and weaknesses as young as 2 or 3… Strengths and weaknesses are more visible in grade school. Preschool is all based on development: physical, reading, identifying letters. Preschool should give children the opportunity to learn and play and make messes and to feel free to figure out who they are and where they’re going.
Moulton: Common traits in successful students include curiosity; a variety of life experiences; perseverance; positive relationships with family members, friends, and teachers; and strong expressive and receptive language skills.
What are some of the traits you see in the most successful students?
Estes: The No. 1 factor I see in successful students is their work ethic, no matter what kind of task they are given. I also notice that some students are good at connecting with others, both adults and other students, on a personal level. Collaboration and teamwork are skills that will carry them far.
Economon: The love of knowledge; the fact that they know something that other people don’t know. It’s not competitive, because they can really impress somebody and answer a question and the other students go, ‘‘How in the world did you know that?”
Gleich: They have a Renaissance approach to learning and develop the whole person, always asking questions and listening to the answers they find along the way. This whole-person approach does not preclude pursuing particular interests in a very determined way, but these students see learning as a unified whole, not a collection of specific facts. This allows them to transfer learning from one discipline to another. In this regard, I would include learning that occurs on the athletic field as well as in the classroom.
Smith: For general academic success, the important personal characteristics includes curiosity, perseverance, and self-awareness. In a history class, developing a sense of historical empathy—the ability to treat the past on its own terms and to understand historical agents in their contexts—is particularly crucial to success.
How can parents help bring out the best in their children?
Wolf: A lot of times, parents of all ages want to micromanage their kids—their friends, what they wear, what they eat—and I think really the biggest gift you can give your children from early on is to help them be independent to make their own decisions.
Moulton: It is very important for parents to have meaningful conversations with their children every day. These conversations strengthen relationships, as well as give children time to practice language skills. It’s very important for parents to limit the time children spend one-on-one with technology… They need to make the shift from being technology consumers to being students who thoughtfully and intentionally use technology to express learning.
Kieffer: Language helps in vocabulary development, in formulating ideas. When parents talk to kids, they’re kind of emulating thought processes. When kids watch adults interact with other adults, they’re learning cues for how to do that.
Estes: The most successful students have parents who know what’s going on at school. Not to be confused with “helicopter parents,” they are the ones who know exactly what their kids’ grades are, attend school-sponsored activities, keep a calendar, and make sure their children keep up with schedules. Most important of all, they allow their children to learn from mistakes, not always smoothing way for them when there’s a problem.
Smith: Some suggest that praising actions instead of character yields a child more capable of dealing successfully with adversity. Parents can also help their students stay organized, plan ahead effectively, and remain engaged with them by getting their child to teach the parent something that they learned in school. Allowing the student to become the teacher can help to solidify their understanding.
Gleich: The most important things for a parent to do are encourage their children to read anything and everything they can; encourage them to ask questions about what they read, see, and hear; and train them to be good listeners. Today’s parents need not fear saying no and then providing a sound reason why they have said no. This strengthens the student’s ability to say no when distractions come along, as they inevitably do.
