5 Great Ways to Help Your Young Person's Education

5 Great Ways to Help Your Young Person's Education

School can be a challenging time for all of us, especially for our fostered family members.

Some carers find it a difficult subject matter to approach.

We reached out to some of our amazing Foster Carers, Eugene & Joanne as well as our Head of Education, Chris Carty, to put together our top 5 tips to help you in supporting young person's education.

1 - Involvement

Firstly, we have to get ourselves involved in our young people’s education. It will come as no surprise to hear that at Blue Sky, we take our young people's education very seriously and consider it a top priority.

Both our Foster Carers and Social Workers have found that direct involvement and support throughout our young people's education can help to maintain a focus on learning. Class-based activities, quizzes, and dedicated homework hours go a long way towards helping students thrive in school.

Joanne & Eugene found that talking openly about what their young person did at school each day (usually over dinner) helps to show that they are interested and are keen to help. Something as small as asking "What did you learn today", or "What did you like or dislike at school", can help greatly.

By engaging with young people in this way, we show we are invested in them and that they are important to us. We are very respectful of their schooling, even when things go wrong -Joanne

2 - Understand That it is Hard

Think back to your time at school, it wasn’t all fun and games right? Every young person navigating school life experiences ups and downs. Now consider the difficulties that our fostered family members may experience on top of that.

School is a complex time for all, which can add another layer of stress to those who are currently experiencing tough situations.

The key for our foster carers is that it is all about individual success and not to measure a young person against anyone else. - Chris Carty

It is important to address these concerns and to keep this in mind when talking about school or learning. Although we cannot all relate to the same issues, there may be experiences from your time at school that you can share which could help to relate to or assess a current situation differently. 

3 - Reach Out to Us and Others

If you want to help out with education but are unsure how to, or you're worried you may take the wrong approach, simply reach out to us.

The staff at Blue Sky understand the importance of education and can offer some helpful tips on how to approach education on an individual basis. You could also ask the school's staff themselves for more details and advice.

Chris, our Head of Education, is more than happy to offer professional guidance to our carers, which many have found amazingly useful given his extensive background as a teacher. Our support is available every step of the way.

4 - Help Out with Schoolwork

It is no secret that statistically, a high number of young people going through transitional periods in their lives, for example, a change in school or personal issues, can fall behind in their academic subjects while at school. Once someone starts to feel like they are behind, they sometimes start to withdraw entirely from their learning.

A straightforward way to help a young person catch up is by supporting with their schoolwork. By offering knowledge or simply looking through homework together, we not only give that young person some much-needed academic advice but also further develop our relationships.

One useful and simple tool is the use of study flashcards.  As well as helping to develop our abilities to retain information, these cards can be tailored to our young person's learning style through imagery or actions.

5 – Celebrate!

Engagement in learning should be celebrated and acknowledged. Celebrate the little wins as well as the milestones, whether they have gained a pass in a big exam or learned to spell a new word this week.

Smaller successes pave the path for greater ones.

Joanne and Eugene share that using phrases like "wow" and "you smashed it" supported with both small and big gestures to celebrate successes and steady progress alike goes a long way to helping young people develop within their schooling.

We notice and praise progress and celebrate success with extra time playing games, which promote thinking skills, social skills, communication skills, or later bedtime or mid-night feasts, or choosing outings or trips at weekends - Joanne

These little bits of encouragement do wonders for keeping young people interested in their education and validating the hard work that young person puts into it.

One thing to keep in mind through all of this is that it is never too late for education. No matter how far off it seems, it is never too late to re-engage in education.