Parents in Highschooland: Helping Students Succeed in the Critical Years

Parents of teenagers know well what a difficult job it is to raise teenagers, but it certainly is made much more difficult because of the need to find ways to help teenagers to become successful in their school lives. This book is the product of Karyn Rashoff’s thirty-plus-year career as a high school counselor. Ms. Rashoff worked in a wide variety of settings from small to very large high schools with populations that encompassed all income levels, cultures, and races of teenagers in the United States. Her experience is amazing, and this little book is chock full of great ideas and excellent advice.

The short, very readable chapters are often filled with reconstructed conversations with parents and students through the years focus on different aspects of difficulties faced by teens and their parents regarding the school and social parts of the teens’ lives. The book is broken into seven sections – If My Office Walls Could Talk, In the Words of Students, Wisdom and Encouragement from Educators, Advice from Parents of Successful Students, Study Skills and Help for Specific Courses, Coming to America, and Planning for College. Sure, there is a lot of common sense advice in here, things most people could figure out on their own, but so often emotions and power struggles get in the way. The beauty of this book is the way real-life examples shine a light on the problem/solution dynamic without becoming personal or accusatory. The chapter on what is negotiable and what is a given should be pure gold for parents. This book should not only be required reading for parents with kids in high school, it should be required reading for every parent before their kids start school. There is little doubt if most parents would take the time to read this valuable little tome, the school experience for kids would be a far better one.