All the time, in my classes, I seem to get reminders that one of the biggest barriers to my student’s learning is me. Mostly, this comes in the term of what I believe the students are capable of, or might work, or not. My self-censoring, which causes to me to not try out certain activities in the classroom, can actually hold my students back.
A lot of the activities I’ve tried (where I thought the students couldn’t do them), have worked spectacularly well. Occasionally, they will also fail. However, I’ve noticed a tendency to not even try things out because I think the children might not enjoy them or be capable of them.
I clearly remember one of my learning experience managers returning to the teacher room and announcing that his (almost brand new) Kindergarten 1 students had just done 8 different examples of student-student speaking activities. Many teachers of Kindergarten English are reluctant to try student-student speaking in almost any form. I’ve never forgotten that lesson, and have incorporated much more student-student speaking in my very young learner classes since then.
That said, I think most teachers (myself included), underestimate what children are capable of.
On the flip-side, just because that you can do things, doesn’t mean that you should. There’s an idea of age-appropriateness. There are some things that children can do (if ‘pushed’), however, its best they’re left for a later time.
At the language centres I’ve worked at, and I’m sure this mirrored at schools and kindergartens, there are a lot of parents that want to push their children to push their children harder and harder. They want to create ‘super kids’, that will be successful in today’s global competitive economy. Many schools facilitate this, because they want to look good to the parents, and justify their fees.
The most poignant example of this, I remember from working at an international school. I worked at that school from its opening day. There, I was able to observe children from their very first day of kindergarten (ever), and see how they changed over the first few months.
To be honest, the socialisation process was quite shocking to me. Within two months, the students (many of whom had never been to any kindergarten before) were performing at the school’s formal opening celebration day. They were doing gymnastics exercises, including rolls and flips, and contorting their bodies into various positions their bodies had never before experienced. All this happened before a large audience of parents and dignitaries who watched and recorded the events on their mobile phones. A few of the children were deeply distressed during the event, as there were many people, and a lot of the attention was being focused on them. It also seemed that many of the adults were oblivious to the impact that the activities were actually having on the children, as they were caught up in the ‘wow’ of the celebration and the new school.
I felt quite sad.
There was also an enormous pressure put on me to ‘perform’ for the parents as the schools new English teacher. It was quite clear the school wanted a picture perfect demonstration class from me. And the class was practiced several times to ensure that it complied with that requirement. If I remember correctly, some of the students who could have potentially misbehaved were excluded from that class. This is very common where English schools put on any type of public performance. It is only the top students you will see. The children who might love singing and dancing, but aren’t good at it (in the eyes of the school), are kept out of the performance.
All of this left a very deep impression.
And so the problem is, the strategy of ‘pushing’ children often backfires.
There is a lot of research to show that the ‘hurried’ child actually ends up worse off for doing things before an ‘age-appropriate’ time. I guess its kind of like the classic hare and tortoise story. The child that waited until an age-appropriate time to be introduced to various things, cruises past the child who was pushed into doing it earlier. The child that was pushed, can also end up hating the things they were asked to do a little too early. At our language school, I know many parents are keen to prepare their children for English exams they will not sit for many years. Others get upset, when their kindergarten age children are not able to have full conversations with native speakers within the first year.
So, like other aspects of teaching, there are no easy answers to what one ought to do, but instead, a blurry line that one needs to try to walk in order to best serve the interests of the child.
