Making Any School Subject Come Alive for Your Adolescent

Is your teenager bored with school? If so, you may need to do something at home to help bring a little life into his various school subjects. Here are a few suggestions:

• For boring textbook material, try acting out the work, creating a little skit or play to illustrate the concepts or facts covered. For example, if your teen isn't getting into a chapter on the Civil War in his U.S. history book, then suggest that he act out the battle described with some of his friends or family members.

• Alternatively, if he enjoys art, suggest that he make a sketch or painting of the battlefield. Or, suggest that he close his eyes and see in his mind's eye whatever the material describes as vividly as possible.

• Try to draw connections between the material he is learning in his textbooks with more concrete learning experiences. If he's stumbling with a Shakespearean play, find a video of the play and watch it together. If Boyles' law doesn't make any sense in chemistry, then blow up a balloon and show him how lowering the total volume increases the pressure.

In these and other ways, you can help light little fires of interest in your teenager's mind.

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