RESEARCH Activities motivate students

Some researchers and school counselors are asking how much is too much, however.
By JOSH KELLEY
SCRIPPS HOWARD
School counselors and researchers agree that high-school sports produce more than dumb jocks, and band practice can motivate students academically.
When students participate in extracurricular activities, their grades and attendance go up on average, while dropout rates and discipline problems tend to go down, according to reports over the past 20 years by the National Federation of State High School Associations and the National Center for Education Statistics.
"I think there's a sense of pride, of community, but more importantly, I think there's a sense of ownership," said Kelly Collins, a high-school counselor from Midwest, Okla.
Students find motivation to make their schools look good academically when they participate in fine arts, athletics and ROTC programs, said Collins, named the 2003 national secondary school counselor of the year by the American School Counselors Association.
In the Winter 2002 Harvard Education Review, researchers echoed what Collins has experienced. They said that extracurricular activities "foster school identification/commitment" that benefits academic performance, and the effect is more dramatic among lower-income, traditionally underserved students.
Athletics affect grades
Collins said some student-athletes' grades drop in the spring because the sports team they played for in the fall breaks for the second semester. Students no longer have coaches to motivate them.
In Texas, for example, students who don't pass, don't play, said Kellie Durham, a spokeswoman for the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District in the northwest Houston area. It is the state's fifth-largest district. That motivation alone can push students to work harder in class.
Durham said teachers monitor student-athletes' academic progress in an effort to catch them before they fail.
"Teachers are trying to provide that safety net before they put them in that position where they can't participate," she said.
But some researchers and school counselors are asking how much is too much for students involved in extracurricular activities because there's no time left for much else, including family interaction.
Brenda Melton, past president of the American School Counselors Association, said many parents believe "the busier I have them the less they'll have to deal with peer-pressure issues."
Parents' pushing
While Melton pointed to the benefits of extracurricular activities for students, she also said some parents take it too far.
"Their whole lives are revolving around their kids' schedules," she said.
Parents may spend a lot of time transporting their children to soccer practice or watching them perform in the school play. But the chief concern among American teens is that they don't spend enough time with their parents, according to a 2000 national YMCA survey cited by William J. Doherty, a researcher with the Family Social Science Department at the University of Minnesota, in a report.
According to 2002 government statistics, meanwhile, more than one-third of teens, ages 16 to 19, were also employed, indicating that many students must balance more than academic and extracurricular activities.
Collins said many of the teens who work are from low- or middle-income families, and they usually don't participate in extracurricular activities.
She said those who do are skilled at managing time, and "they can often balance more than one thing."
Need for balance
Durham stresses to parents the need to know their teens before the teens try to balance jobs, church activities, community service, sports and academics, among other activities.
"What is overloading for one child, is not necessarily an overloading situation for another child," Durham said.
When assessing how much their teens can handle, parents should find out how much time each activity requires, she said. For example, Durham found that an honors class required an additional two to four hours of studying each week at the school where she previously worked.
Melton also warned that more than two hours of homework in one night is certainly a concern because teens need some downtime.