How can getting out of an extracurricular activity help a students grades improve?
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The negative side is that by involving themselves in several activities, rather than just with school, a student can maintain some sense of self-confidence even when his/her grades aren’t the best. When you take away the activities at which s/he was good, you leave him/her with only a sense of failure, which can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, sometimes poor grades are not a result of a lack of effort, but of some sort of learning disability. I often find that certain students are putting more and more time into their studying, but getting no results because they aren’t studying any better, and that can be extremely frustrating to them.
My advice would be that if you know that the student is involved in extracurricular activities to the exclusion of studying, then yes, the activities should be restricted. But be fair and don’t assume this. If you do see the student studying on a regular basis, get her/him checked for learning disabilities before taking punitive actions.
i do think students need balance in their lives, so it’s good to be doing something other than schoolwork all the time. But if an activity is threatening the schoolwork, it makes sense to stop doing the activity to improve grades.
But parents should realize that the activity might not be the only reason for poor grades.