Your child needs time to learn!

Unfair expectation

“Damn the clock and spare the kid”. These words from Daniel’s father echoed in the counselling room. It was not hard to relate to his thought.  Earlier, in the meeting, his wife shared daily activity chart for Daniel, which listed all activities from his wake-up to bedtime. Any deviation meant a reaction from her, ranging from mild reprimand to Daniel being grounded. Her obsession with the clock stretched to his studies as well. He was expected to grasp the concepts taught in class as and when his teacher taught based on the study plan approved by school board. He was able to meet her expectation in all subjects except math. Daniel’s poor scores always puzzled her. More so when other kids in the class were able to get a passing score. Her question, “When other kids can do well in math with the same study time, why can’t Daniel?” rang a familiar tone.

Daniel’s mother failed to realize that neither Daniel nor his teacher have any control over the study plan; a plan which prescribes the schedule for concepts to be taught with defined time frame for each subject. It assumes that majority of the students can learn concepts in the given time. Daniel was not one of them and he was struggling. Clearly, he is not to be blamed. One can continue to blame the system or chose to help Daniel to cope by removing “time” from the equation and allow Daniel to learn at his pace. Daniel’s father got it and hence the reaction.

Now for the key question. Does Daniel represent sizeable percentage of kids in a class who face this challenge? The answer is an emphatic “yes”. Out of many approaches I have tried to address this challenge, one was very effective.

An approach

I was teaching a set of kids. This set was representative of a typical class which comprises of kids with varying ability to learn. Objective of next 3 sessions was to enable the kids to learn application of basic mathematical operations in daily life. To begin with, I used the white board to teach and 10% of the kids were able grasp this. The rest were either looking confused or not interested. I followed this up with videos with graphics and voice over. Another 15% seemed to get their head around the concept. The remaining 75% were struggling to use the operations. Finally, I requested help from senior kids and we set up a mock stationery market. All kids were asked to buy and sell stationery items based on the scenario I had written on the board and voice out the transaction. Interest levels of all kids shot up as they were able to relate to real life experience and they were enjoying it. At the end of the session, 80% of the kids understood the concept.  For the rest, a one to one session was planned.

The takeaway is, there is no one size fits all in a class.  Time and technique required to teach will vary based on the needs of the clusters within the class. Therefore, analysis of the time span required by each cluster in the class to learn a concept is critical.  In the absence of this, it is unfair to expect all kids to be on par or above the average score of the class.

What Worked

• Learning is most effective when kids live the moment. Use of multiple teaching techiniques factors in the additional time required by multiple clusters in the class. Additionally, it reinforces  learning in the cluster having quick learners.
• In your calendar, carve out  time required for one to one sessions with kids who haven’t grasped the concepts despite the use of multiple techniques. This will be a small percentage of kids compared to the scenario where single technique is used.
• The incremental progress in learning should take precedence over pace of learning by kids.
• Discouraging parents from comparing performance of their kids with that of others in the class.