Learning Requires Investment

Look around at what children are learning. Look at those things you learn easily, or stick with until you succeed. A vested or intrinsic interest is involved. A desire to succeed at something, either to satisfy a personal goal or to meet milestone. Even a desire to please can be a great motivator. All of these things inspire one to put aside discouragement, fear of failure, even initial disinterest, and put in the energy and effort required to succeed. Put a calculous book in front of a child, or a dry history book, and their eyes will glaze over. Talk most people about statistics and you will likely find yourself suddenly alone, or wish you hadn't brought up the subject. Talk about baseball stats, however, and you'll find interested, even enthusiastic people who can work the numbers like knitters work needles in a knitting clatch. Finding a way to make learning fun or at least relevant will more likely grab a student's interest. What is interesting? What is fun? I find just about every child I work with loves (or at least likes) pizza,M&Ms, or Reeses Pieces. All of these are great for fractions. Colored candies, or Legos, or any other colored thing of small size and interest can be useful in teaching ratios, probabilities. Cooking is also really useful for fractions and ratios. Recipes are full of them. Who doesn't love a good dessert, or a fun meal. They're also great for learning to follow directions. Gimmicks are not required to make learning fun, it just needs to be interesting; relevant. There are teachers who feel like they have to be entertaining because they think that's what is expected of them, like a comedian working an audience. Some teachers are naturally entertaining, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying entertainment is bad, it just isn't required. Too many programs and initiatives are constantly being thrown at districts, principles, and teachers, all for the sake of improving education. And who doesn't want it to be successful, for the children's sake? We are letting fear of failure drive our decisions, while we should be looking at what has been done well. We are so worried about being left behind that we're racing ahead in pouring rain without functional wipers! We need to narrow our focus, slow down, and reverse the current trend of centralization. Districts and teachers are so busy trying to integrate all of the standards and prescriptive measures, learning is actually being squeezed out. Students and teachers are being burned out.

Balance Between Success and Failure

Learning to deal with failure is important for every student. Successfully dealing with failure requires a sense of confidence in one's self. Most children need to be supported in their failure, and taught how to learn from failure. I have personally come across too many children who freeze up because they are afraid of doing something wrong (whether it be math, writing, or art.) Children need to be encouraged to take risks in their creativity and thinking (academically speaking.) At the same time time, students need have successes so they don't come to believe they are failures. Especially for struggling students, finding success is critical. If you have a struggling student work with their teacher to find ways for them to find, experience, and feel successful. Find ways to tie writing, math, or any other area of struggle to things they are interested or passionate about. The more successful they feel, they more confident in what they know, the more successfully they will deal with mistakes and failures. Failure is a part of life. We have to get away from stigmatizing failure and mistakes. Aside from leaving sponges in patients, driving on the wrong side of they road, running the fuel tanks dry on an airplane, or pranking 911.

Making Mistakes is Part of Learning

I guest teach in a lot of classrooms. One of the most disheartening things I see is the fear of making mistakes. Some students freeze, especially when it comes time to be creative, but also in trying to problem solve. Too many students who don't know the answer right off, are afraid to use trial and error to find an answer. The concept that more than one possible right answer could exist seems to put some in a panic. Do you encourage, or discourage, your child in the are of taking risks/mistakes? Do they have the ability (with your blessing) to make larger decisions for themselves as they get older? Are they afraid to make decisions, or solve problems through trial and error, because they are afraid of what will happen? As a parent myself, I constantly struggle with wanting to save my child the pain of making mistakes and wanting them to learn how to deal with mistakes as a result of having freedom. In this area I want to eat my cake and have it too. I've learned the only real problems are the mistakes not learned from. When one of my children makes the same mistake over and over, that tells me they are not learning. I would encourage you, if you don't already, find a safe way for your child to fail. Let them learn from their mistakes, their own choices. Help them learn that "failure" in one thing can lead to success in something else. This country was built on failure. Or least the success which followed failure. A person is not a failure because they have a failure. The only failure is not learning from setbacks. Ask your child how failure is dealt with in the classroom. If you sense they don't feel safe taking risks or answering questions in class, talk to their teacher about how you can help them encourage your child to take risks in the classroom. Remember to assume that the teacher has all students best interests in mind when approaching them. Wait for them to prove otherwise before taking other measures. Ask them how you can help in the classroom.

Reading and Writing

Of the most basic skills required to be successful in education, and life, are the ability to read and write effectively. What does it mean to read and write effectively? Good question. Synthesis of reading material; different sources, subjects, ideas, and more into coherent thoughts used to inform or persuade. Without the ability to write effectively, synthesis of information cannot reach fruition – it dies on the vine so to speak. A lot of people writing about students' ability to focus on long texts tend to think we should adapt teaching to shorter texts; since students have shorter attention spans and bore easily, why not make it easy on them by exposing them only to shorter texts which will not tax their abilities? This does nothing but lower expectations of students, leading to lower standards, and leaves them ill prepared for higher education. What can be done? Make sure your child is exposed to news articles, editorial pieces, or other sources of current news and have them write a response to it. It doesn't have to be long. If they can do it on a computer, have them clip the article and write their response in the same file. Have them review their writing once a week. If they change their opinion about something, have them add that to their file and explain what lead them to change their mind. Attach any pertinent articles. This will help tremendously over time in their ability to put their thoughts into words. If they can share their writing with family members so much the better. Remember the focus should be on forming cogent thoughts, don't worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar at this point. The point is to become comfortable forming logical responses and putting them into words. Have fun with it!