BlogWellbeingWays You Can Support Your Teen Through the HSC

Ways You Can Support Your Teen Through the HSC

Wondering how you can support your teen completing their HSC this year?

A commonality among many Year 12 students is that when they go through the HSC, their entire family goes on that journey with them. Year 12 can be an incredibly stressful experience, particularly for parents!

But no fear. We’ve come up with three ways you can support your teen through the HSC. 

Check them out!

Tip #1: Have a Conversation with your Teen about their HSC Goals
Tip #2: Get Your Teen to Teach You Content
Tip #3: Don’t Shy Away from Encouragement

Tip #1: Have a Conversation with your Teen about their HSC Goals

As a parent or caregiver, the first way you can better support your teenager through the HSC is to help them set goals. This includes helping your teen map out their goals for school assessments, required ATARs for university courses, TAFE requirements or assisting them find placements for a gap year.

It is also important to have a conversation with your teenager to help them set goals also around their health and wellbeing. This includes how they plan to stay healthy in Year 12, such as healthy eating and exercise, how to balance school work with social life and how they will maintain their relationships with family and friends.

In summary, you can try setting goals around the three main categories of:

    • Academic
    • Health and wellbeing
    • Friends and family

Once you’ve had the conversation, write your teen’s goals down and stick them on a wall so they’ve got something to aspire for and work towards throughout Year 12. This will help them do better academically but importantly, stay healthier and happier by maintaining and even developing their relationships with family and friends. 

Check out our guide to setting goals and achieving them here!

Tip #2: Get Your Teen to Teach You Content 

Teaching is one of the most effective ways that someone can build memory and understanding. However, we often don’t want to do it as it’s uncomfortable.

So, a really powerful thing that you can do, as a parent, is to get your teenager to teach their HSC content. This could involve asking them questions about topic areas they have learnt during their school day.

For example, if you’re driving them somewhere, ask them some questions such as, “What did you learn today at school?” or “What was the most difficult thing that you learnt?” 

Then, dig into that and explore in more detail what that topic involves. This could, of course, always be done at the dinner table!

You can also get your teen to give you their study notes for you to quiz them on the syllabus dot points, as a way to support your teen. This provides a powerful feedback loop that is fundamental to good learning, allowing your teen to understand what they know and don’t know. 

Learn more about different study methods that can help your teen effectively prepare for the HSC here!

Tip #3: Don’t Shy Away from Encouragement

This method may be really hard to implement sometimes because you can see that your teenager isn’t doing the work that you know that they really need to be doing. As hard as it might be, one of the things that Art of Smart has found from interviewing thousands of students and parents, is that students find encouragement to be such a powerful motivator for them.

So, while it may be tough, wherever possible, have your default response be encouragement. Rather than saying, “Well, why didn’t you do that work? You know you should have done that study,” flip your messages and say, “Well look, you know, it’s great that you’re building momentum, you know,” or, “It’s great that you’re starting to do more study.”

This encouragement can then be used as a conversation starter about what your teen could do differently in the next assessment or exam – it’s essential to supporting your teen throughout their HSC. 

Good Luck!

If you’ve got any questions about how to support your teenager through the HSC or suggestions to help your teenager generally from senior years of school and making the transition into Year 12, look to the Art of Smart blog for more resources!

Year 12 is an enormous journey for both students and parents/caregivers – any steps taken for goal setting, teaching content, and encouragement can assist in making the journey that little bit easier. 

Looking for some extra help with your child’s HSC studies?

We pride ourselves on our inspirational HSC coaches and mentors!

We offer tutoring and mentoring for Years K-12 in a variety of subjects, with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or at our state of the art campus in Hornsby!

To find out more and get started with an inspirational tutor and mentor get in touch today!

Give us a ring on 1300 267 888, email us at [email protected] or check us out on Facebook!


Grace Mitchell hopes to one day stand in front of a Year 12 Modern History class teaching the history of the Soviet Union, or have an insightful discussion with a Year 10 English class on race relations in To Kill a Mockingbird. Either way, Grace is beginning her teaching journey studying a Bachelor of Education (Secondary: Humanities and Social Sciences)/Bachelor of Arts at Sydney University. Grace loves to learn new things, write short stories and opinion pieces, read, and play contemporary Australian compositions on the clarinet. When she is not learning – if that is possible – Grace loves to sit and watch the sun set.

 

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