EDUCATION

It’s 10 p.m. The kitchen table is smeared with pictures and glue. My half-asleep fourth grader is slumped in his chair, while fit to be tied I cut out the intricate outline of a castle bailey. His book report — my book report, really — is due tomorrow. But the diagrams are still incomplete and the cover page is a mess.

Does this scene sound familiar? If you’re a parent of a child over six, you’ve probably spent more than one late night “helping” with a project. It’s no wonder most of us dread them — we know dioramas, book reports and science projects mean hours of work, not only for our children, but also for us.

Teachers also know what we parents are up to. Jacqueline Maguire, a teacher currently working in California, says there’s a certain “kid quality” that can’t be faked. “We’ve been working with these kids all year. We know their style, their level of vocabulary and how they order their sentences. Compare ‘The nights wore metal suits’ to ‘Medieval knights dressed in armour fashioned from iron mail and chain link.’” However, the most important clue for Maguire is when she chats with students about their projects. “If a child can’t explain how he built the teepee or made the bulb light up, we know he didn’t do the work.”

Still, it’s hard not to step in when our children seem overwhelmed by the tasks and, yes, we’re often tempted to go overboard. “When parents do the project for their kids, they are really doing them a disservice,” says veteran teacher Karen Kelly Archer of Toronto’s Bedford Park Public School. “The message they send to their child is that the child can’t do it.”

Alas, there’s no easy way out. Teachers will keep assigning projects so students can develop skills like planning, researching, organizing and public speaking. Also, they understand that keeping parents involved is critical to a child’s academic success. So how can parents help with the school project? According to the pros, we’ve got to let our budding scholars do the actual work. And while our input will vary based on the age of our child, some general rules apply, such as sticking to supporting roles like guiding and streamlining. Here are the best parts we can play:

Originally published in Today's Parent, April 2005