Imagine this scenario: You’re coming out of one of the best summers of your young adult life–a summer full of friends, adventure, and unforgettable experiences. Everything has gone by so fast that you never had the chance to pause and reflect on how great it really was. All a sudden school starts and hits you like a brick wall. All summer long you were doing what you wanted, when you wanted. Now you must wake up at a very early hour and head to class each day. You knew this was coming, as it has every year in the past, but you didn’t want to face it, and now it’s three weeks into the school year, and you still are in your summer phase.

The school year started out slow, the early mornings seeming earlier than ever before. You begin to put off school work until the last possible minute, and eventually, the workload piles up to the point where you fall behind. Mom and Dad are never really worried about you in school.  You always seemed to have gotten by with ease.

But now a parent notification has been sent to your parents by your math teacher, saying that you have fallen behind. Your outlook changes. You get in trouble with your parents about school for the first time in a long time just because of the poor quiz score you received in the first week of school. For the first time in as long as you can remeber, you see your friends having fun on Saturday night while you sit in your living room, grounded.

Now you perk up and decide to lock in. You need to rely on your ability to be the student you always have been. Within a week that C+ is turned into an A- after you ace your first unit test. All of the stress that parent notification caused is gone.

This scenario can be avoided if advisor notifications were sent out before parent notifications. Sometimes they are, but there have been instances this fall when parents have received them first. This scenario must be eliminated. Slow starts are common for students everywhere, not a crisis, and if immediate parent notification can be avoided, I believe we should take the necessary steps to avoid the unnecessary stress.

I’m not saying that this always happens when a parent notification is sent out–I just want students to have a chance to improve their grade before the bad news is shared with their parents.

For a kid who may have gotten a bad score on a quiz or project early on in the semester, there is ample time to turn his or her grade around. Having this shared with parents immediately is potentially anti-student. Some parents are very strict about their child’s academics, and to tell them about their child’s troubles so quickly could get him or her an undeserved punishment. Obviously if the student is not able to improve their grade in the class once the advisor notification is sent out, then parent notifications are acceptable.

We have advisors for a reason: to oversee and advise us students in our academic studies and other extracurriculars. According to the 2015-16 Parker Student Handbook, one of the advisor’s responsibilities is to “assist advisees in following through on their responsibilities related to keeping up with material presented in class.”  Notifications should be sent first to advisors, who have the responsibility to “maintain regular and timely communication with parents” if they feel it is necessary to do so.

Students should know that they can turn their grade around before they feel the wrath of their parents. This situation does not pertain to all students at Parker, but those who do have parents who are academically strict would greatly benefit from the abolition of untimely parent notifications.