by Roger Crain

Created on: June 15, 2009   Last Updated: July 08, 2009

You don't have to be a master-degreed teacher in order to help your teenager achieve higher grades in school. In fact, all that is required for your teen's academic success is your parental involvement toward helping your teen attain those higher scholastic marks.

Here are some keys that will help your teen achieve better grades in school:

1.) Supervise Your Teen's Homework. From the time that your teen walks through the front door after school to his or her other after-school activities, your primary task as a concerned parent is to make sure that your teen's homework is completed. Supervising your teenager's homework will be rewarded by the higher scholastic marks on his or her report card.

2.) Attend Those Parent/Teacher Association Meetings. Becoming involved in your PTA is the first step toward helping your teenager achieve higher grades in his or her class. The PTA was organized for a reason, and it behooves any concerned parent to attend those scheduled meetings whether those meetings arrive via the student or through the mail.

3.) Evaluate Your Teen's Progress. On a periodic basis throughout the year, evaluate your teen's progress by checking how he is doing or has done in his coursework. This key to helping your teen learn can be turned into a game; education need not be boring. It can be modeled after the TV game show "Jeopardy" by asking your teen to provide the categorical questions to the given answers.

4.) Encourage your teen more. Teenagers are the hardest people in the world whose attention is constantly being competed for by interests other than academic ones. So in order to hold their attention you must encourage your teen while providing him or her with constructive criticism so they can improve.

5.) Shun Competition. Competition breeds contempt; a parent can help his or her teen achieve higher grades by shunning competition and thus, helping his or her teen rise above the petty squabbles that competition engenders. This can be done remarkably tactfully by showing your teen how contemptible competition really is.

6.) Follow Up With The Teacher's Advice. If a teacher feel that little Johnny or Susie would do better in class by your involvement in their educational development; by all means, become involved. Adhering to the teacher's advice will go a long way toward instilling discipline in your teenager, and help your teenager earn those higher grades in school.

Finally, your child's future is at stake, and learning is enhanced when someone like a parent takes an active involvement in their children's future. And you will received many dividends many times over for being so involved in their lives once they are and gone.

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