by Sarah Major, M.Ed
How to help your children who have previously failed, learn. Wow, there’s a topic for you that looks super ambitious and way too general. But there are some ideas we can consider that will go a long way toward helping children who are at-risk to fail, instead learn successfully. The challenges these children face might be in reading, in math, or in every subject they have.
First of all, we must recognize what is going on with the child. When a child faces threat of any kind, her emotional brain takes over and puts her on high alert to help her avoid danger or threat. When this happens, the thinking brain shuts down. So, quite simply, the biggest obstacle to learning for an at-risk child comes from inside her own mind. As long as she feels any threat or danger, she will remain controlled by her emotional brain. And as long as the child remains controlled by the emotional brain, learning is not likely to happen.
“Threat” and “danger” don’t have to be physical, either. They can be emotional in nature and still hijack the child’s ability to think and reason. For children who have failed, the very idea of doing a task again that they were unable to do before looks and feels like threat. Under threat of this nature, behaviors can vary from a child zoning out, to a child acting out horribly. All the behaviors are calculated to help the child avoid what she perceives as threatening.
Obviously the very first thing to do is to remove the threat and make the children feel safe. Make school time feel as safe and noncompetitive as possible.
Be as consistent as absolutely possible. A child who is already in fight or flight mode doesn’t need to enter a situation that is unpredictable.
Choose very carefully which hill you plan to die on. Choose very wisely which things absolutely must happen and let everything lesser go. Let me give you an example. In the last school in which I taught, the attitude of the administration was that because we were a failing school, we had to look and act even more together than we normally would. This meant teachers had to wear closed shoes, never open back ones, and kids could not wear printed tee-shirts and had to at all times have their shirts tucked in their pants. My room was full of at risk kids. So when we lined up to come back in from recess, I didn’t feel it was my hill to die on the make sure all my kids’ shirts were tucked in and I certainly did not write them up for wearing printed tee-shirts. For one thing, they were not buying their clothes as second graders, and for another thing, we were lucky the kids were even IN school wearing something. In addition, the children who were perennially late and showed up sans homework and even sans book bags did not incur my wrath. There were children who never knew where they were going to sleep that night, and I didn’t feel it was critical to try and make them always keep their book bag on their person. My hills to die on for these children were simple: don’t hurt anyone, don’t hurt yourself, we take turns talking, and during class we don’t do anything that will keep the others from doing their work.
Ensure success for your child. Just because the lesson plan book says that my children should be able to do X, Y, Z by today doesn’t mean that all the children have the necessary skills to perform at this level. So it is my job to be aware of exactly what each child is able to do, and support him as he stretches out a bit. For one child this might mean if he agrees to read something out loud that he wrote, I will be right beside him to make sure he feels he is not alone. For another child maybe it means he gets a little play money dollar every time he double checks his letters to make sure they are not backwards. Above all, I must never ever shame a child or expose him to the gazes of the other children when he has failed.
Involve multiple regions in the brain and body. When you teach, don’t do so only verbally. Use pictures, give examples, make it fun, (yes, even teaching punctuation can be fun!) insert humor, let them act out the learning, and take them outside for a novel and memorable lesson. Also be sure to encourage each child to use their area of strength to show me what they learned.
Teach in such a way that you are teaching the child, not the lesson. For example, I knew well which ones of my children needed to see the end result before they could do their project. I knew which ones needed me to fingermap their spelling words (they needed the visual map of the word in order to see it in their heads and then successfully write the words), I knew which children learned from whole to part and I didn’t make these children have to sound out words – because they just couldn’t do it. After all, I wanted them to be able to read, not sound out words.
Support each child by taking the time to find out their strengths and then make sure and share this information with them so they can feel competent.
I think the bottom line here is that we have to be counterintuitive with kids who are at-risk of failing to learn. They will be behaving badly and our first thought is to correct the bad behavior instead of questioning what might be behind it. They might appear lazy. They will be forgetful and careless. They might lash out and be mean to other children. All their behaviors will tax us and drive us crazy if we let them. But remember the chaos in the brain as the child is feeling at risk of failing to learn. What is going to help that? Yelling? Punishment? Or a warm welcome, an understanding teacher, and the ability to be in a safe place where there is good stuff going on. And use pictures! This is the most brain friendly way to communicate ideas to children. The more brain-friendly, the better!
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child-1st.com
704-879-4047
3302 S New Hope Rd
Suite 300B
Gastonia, NC 28056
How to help your children who have previously failed, learn. Wow, there’s a topic for you that looks super ambitious and way too general. But there are some ideas we can consider that will go a long way toward helping children who are at-risk to fail, instead learn successfully. The challenges these children face might be in reading, in math, or in every subject they have.
First of all, we must recognize what is going on with the child. When a child faces threat of any kind, her emotional brain takes over and puts her on high alert to help her avoid danger or threat. When this happens, the thinking brain shuts down. So, quite simply, the biggest obstacle to learning for an at-risk child comes from inside her own mind. As long as she feels any threat or danger, she will remain controlled by her emotional brain. And as long as the child remains controlled by the emotional brain, learning is not likely to happen.
“Threat” and “danger” don’t have to be physical, either. They can be emotional in nature and still hijack the child’s ability to think and reason. For children who have failed, the very idea of doing a task again that they were unable to do before looks and feels like threat. Under threat of this nature, behaviors can vary from a child zoning out, to a child acting out horribly. All the behaviors are calculated to help the child avoid what she perceives as threatening.
Obviously the very first thing to do is to remove the threat and make the children feel safe. Make school time feel as safe and noncompetitive as possible.
Be as consistent as absolutely possible. A child who is already in fight or flight mode doesn’t need to enter a situation that is unpredictable.
Choose very carefully which hill you plan to die on. Choose very wisely which things absolutely must happen and let everything lesser go. Let me give you an example. In the last school in which I taught, the attitude of the administration was that because we were a failing school, we had to look and act even more together than we normally would. This meant teachers had to wear closed shoes, never open back ones, and kids could not wear printed tee-shirts and had to at all times have their shirts tucked in their pants. My room was full of at risk kids. So when we lined up to come back in from recess, I didn’t feel it was my hill to die on the make sure all my kids’ shirts were tucked in and I certainly did not write them up for wearing printed tee-shirts. For one thing, they were not buying their clothes as second graders, and for another thing, we were lucky the kids were even IN school wearing something. In addition, the children who were perennially late and showed up sans homework and even sans book bags did not incur my wrath. There were children who never knew where they were going to sleep that night, and I didn’t feel it was critical to try and make them always keep their book bag on their person. My hills to die on for these children were simple: don’t hurt anyone, don’t hurt yourself, we take turns talking, and during class we don’t do anything that will keep the others from doing their work.
Ensure success for your child. Just because the lesson plan book says that my children should be able to do X, Y, Z by today doesn’t mean that all the children have the necessary skills to perform at this level. So it is my job to be aware of exactly what each child is able to do, and support him as he stretches out a bit. For one child this might mean if he agrees to read something out loud that he wrote, I will be right beside him to make sure he feels he is not alone. For another child maybe it means he gets a little play money dollar every time he double checks his letters to make sure they are not backwards. Above all, I must never ever shame a child or expose him to the gazes of the other children when he has failed.
Involve multiple regions in the brain and body. When you teach, don’t do so only verbally. Use pictures, give examples, make it fun, (yes, even teaching punctuation can be fun!) insert humor, let them act out the learning, and take them outside for a novel and memorable lesson. Also be sure to encourage each child to use their area of strength to show me what they learned.
Teach in such a way that you are teaching the child, not the lesson. For example, I knew well which ones of my children needed to see the end result before they could do their project. I knew which ones needed me to fingermap their spelling words (they needed the visual map of the word in order to see it in their heads and then successfully write the words), I knew which children learned from whole to part and I didn’t make these children have to sound out words – because they just couldn’t do it. After all, I wanted them to be able to read, not sound out words.
Support each child by taking the time to find out their strengths and then make sure and share this information with them so they can feel competent.
I think the bottom line here is that we have to be counterintuitive with kids who are at-risk of failing to learn. They will be behaving badly and our first thought is to correct the bad behavior instead of questioning what might be behind it. They might appear lazy. They will be forgetful and careless. They might lash out and be mean to other children. All their behaviors will tax us and drive us crazy if we let them. But remember the chaos in the brain as the child is feeling at risk of failing to learn. What is going to help that? Yelling? Punishment? Or a warm welcome, an understanding teacher, and the ability to be in a safe place where there is good stuff going on. And use pictures! This is the most brain friendly way to communicate ideas to children. The more brain-friendly, the better!
Sarah Major, CEO of Child1st Publications, grew up on the mission field with her four siblings, all of whom her mother homeschooled. As an adult, Sarah homeschooled a small group of children in collaboration with their parents, and has taught from preschool age to adult. Sarah has been the Title 1 director and program developer for grades K-7, an ESOL teacher, and a classroom teacher. As an undergraduate student, Sarah attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. and then received her M.Ed. from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2006 Sarah resigned from fulltime teaching in order to devote more time to Child1st, publisher of the best-selling SnapWords™ stylized sight word cards. In her spare time Sarah enjoys gardening, cooking, pottery, quilting, and spending time with her family.
Child1st Publications, LLC
www.child-1st.com
704-879-4047
3302 S New Hope Rd
Suite 300B
Gastonia, NC 28056
