Doc Meek

School counselors and psychologists tell about the huge number of students referred to them for suspected learning disabilities, only to discover that a large percentage of these students simply lack organizational skills.

Parents are totally dismayed because they try to keep everything organized, but they aren’t at school to oversee organization, when it seems to matter most.

Why Is This Happening?

There are three main reasons students have trouble staying organized:

1. They have too much “stuff.”  Most students have 12 to 16 different folders and notebooks to keep track of across a whole lot of transitions: from home, in the car/bus, to school, in the locker, back into the book bag, into class, back to the locker, and then home again.  (Elementary students may only have a half dozen folders, but that’s still five more than they should have!)

2. Everything looks alike.  When those folders and notebooks are stacked in the locker or book bag, they all look the same!

3. Any time students are managing papers, they are in a hurry.  Whether they are rushing out of class at the end of an hour, rushing from their locker at the end of the day, or rushing to finish their homework at home, they are always in a hurry.

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Let’s Relate This to Our Lives as Adults

Imagine having 12 to 16 different email accounts to maintain every day.  Imagine if you were expected to log into each account several times each day, respond to emails and retrieve old/sent emails at the snap of a finger?  It would be overwhelming to transition between them quickly.

However, this traditional system is actually creating the problem.  The sheer volume of folders and notebooks (not to mention textbooks and workbooks) makes it hard for students to find the right ones, especially when they are in a hurry!