Carla Morgan, a parent of two, sat down with us to share how her experiences with Lemi at The Critical Thinking Child (CTC) have shaped her son’s learning. Carla’s son Kenneth is a six-year-old student in first grade in the Chicago Public School System.
https://youtu.be/z9nlE-itDgo
Meeting Kenneth’s Learning Needs
When Kenneth began working with The Critical Thinking Child, he was one of the younger students in his first-grade class. This was a concern for Carla, who noticed that he struggled to sit still and engage in his classwork. Since then, Carla says that, “Working with The Critical Thinking Child allowed him to mature faster than other kids his age.”
She adds that, through CTC, Kenneth is challenged to go deeper than his school assignments. “He’s getting work at school, but CTC pushes him to think about why he’s doing something,” Carla says. Kenneth is learning multiplication while other first graders are learning addition and subtraction, and Carla feels that he now realizes he can do much more than he ever imagined.
What was the “a-ha moment” that made her realize Kenneth was advancing? “My child woke up on a Sunday and was like ‘Mom, I want to do my Lemi homework!’,” Carla recounts, remembering her surprise. “I said ‘Why, you’ve never asked me to do homework!’’’ Now he likes homework and being challenged, and his mother understands that’s part of what he was missing from school. Carla adds, “Now I realize he wasn’t [sitting] still because it wasn’t as challenging as it needed to be. That’s not something we realized until we started working with The Critical Thinking Child.”
A Learning Environment in the Home
As a family, Carla says that what’s most important to them is making sure she’s done everything she can to put her children in the best situation possible. “No matter what happens, I know they have the tools to succeed and I’ve given them everything that I have.” CTC has helped her do this for Kenneth.
Education plays a huge role in the Morgan family. Carla and her husband aren’t first generation college students but their parents went to school in a time when education was very different. This has caused her and her husband to focus on education not just in terms of its academic value, but also for what it teaches in terms of entrepreneurship, being a good citizen, and making sure students get the tools they need to be good people. “Children’s museums are the first things we look for on vacation. We talk about what we see on the street, and we measure while we’re cooking. Reading is free, and if you can read, you can learn how to do anything you want to do,” she says.
Education and critical thinking are part of everyday activities in the Morgan home. Each day, Kenneth does his homework from school and his homework from The Critical Thinking Child. The family also participates in coding classes and visits museums and planetariums. Any activity they do as a family, the kids learn from it.
Education Is in Everything
Before working with The Critical Thinking Child, learning was challenging for Kenneth. Carla explains that “he has a lot of energy and gets bored easily, so it was hard to redirect him to sit and do this activity. What Lemi taught me is that education is in everything! You don’t have to just sit there and practice counting, you can do that at the grocery store” and create a learning experience from everyday activities. She also credits The Critical Thinking Child for helping her identify the areas where her son excels. “It’s clear now that he loves to work with numbers and has an analytical mind.” This has required her to get creative in other areas, like reading. “Before he would read, but I wasn’t going about it the right way,” Carla says. “I know now that I need to make sure he enjoys reading, so we’re reading about ninja turtles and making it fun all the way around.”
The Critical Thinking Child Process in Action
Carla’s initial goal for Kenneth was to get him into a selective enrollment school. He had taken the test twice and fell short in one way or another, once scoring high in math and low in reading and the second time scoring the exact opposite. She realized she needed some help to get Kenneth to excel on the test.
She chose The Critical Thinking Child after speaking with a friend about her frustrations with the testing system in the Chicago Public Schools and the fact that Kenneth wasn’t showing up as gifted even though he excelled in the classroom. Her friend had worked with Lemi previously, so Carla went to a seminar and was sold on the process. “[Lemi] knows what she’s talking about. I know I can’t do this on my own. It’s worth the time, money, and effort. Even if he doesn’t get into a program that’s okay because I now know he can do more than what he’s doing at school.”
Under the guidance of CTC, Carla supported Kenneth by working with him on his homework every day; first came school homework, followed by homework from The Critical Thinking Child. She also made intentional efforts to support Kenneth emotionally. “I made sure he was comfortable with everything we were doing. I gave him a breather on days he felt like it was too much and just let him take a break. Once he got a break he was ready to jump back in, so it was important to give emotional support and not just be test-focused,” she explains.
Since starting with The Critical Thinking Child, Carla says that “Kenneth has progressed tremendously. He started at a below first grade reading level and now he’s at a second/third grade level. This is the same for math, he’s now doing second/third grade math. He gets that he can do this and he feels like he’s really smart. That’s a proud feeling for a kid to have.” Kenneth is now above grade level in everything at school and even won the spelling bee in his first grade classroom. In addition to his academic growth, Carla has noticed that he’s matured as a whole child as well. “He knows if he works hard at something and puts all his effort into it, it will be reflected.”
You Are Your Child’s First Teacher
Without working with The Critical Thinking Child, Carla says, “we would not be in the confident situation we’re in, where we feel good about the test coming up. Almost all the tools we use at home come from Lemi, and now I’m confident that I can be Kenneth’s teacher too. Before this, I didn’t have the faith that I could teach my kid concepts he hasn’t even seen in school yet, and now I know I can. I don’t have to rely on the school system to teach my child, I can do it myself. That’s an awesome feeling!” She adds that Kenneth now learns at a faster pace than his peers at school. He also has intrinsic motivation to achieve at school and now he wants to be doing fourth grade math when he begins second grade. “It really helped to motivate him to want to be the best he can be academically.”
Carla’s advice for parents looking to improve learning for their children? “You are your child’s first teacher. It’s your responsibility to see potential in your children and find what they’re gifted in. Push them to read if they’re gifted in reading. If they’re gifted in art put them in art programs. It’s important that kids know that you’re invested in what they’re invested in. Then they’ll want to be successful all the way around.”
