Ambitious life lessons in children classroom
How I inadvertently taught children profound life lessons, and became aware of it after it had happened. And how they taught me not to judge their knowledge by their behaviour.
My teaching experience began about twenty years ago, specializing and focusing on the adults and ESP. The only real experience I had with children was a year of au-pairing in the UK. Teaching adults was intriguing, they were professionals who knew much more than I did about the topics they learned. While they learned the language, I was learning the subject matter of finance, banking, marketing, law, etc. When I started working for my current school, I opted for the adult classes, as I felt uncomfortable and unskillful to enter the child classes. Due to various reasons, I was given two groups, with less than ten students, and they were wonderful. However, I knew that I had to learn more about practical knowledge in classroom, although I still remember a lot of my high-school psychology course that included language acquisition. I attended some webinars, and even serious online courses that dealt with Ambitious Learning, 21st century skills, Personalized learning, Discovery in learning and Project-based learning. It perfectly set the scene of encouraging students to do much more than just completing the workbook exercises, reading and answering questions.
I should note that the children courses take place once a week in a two-hour block session with a ten minute break in the middle. The autumn session was bitter-sweet, with two large child groups, one easily manageable, while the other totally chaotic. I had a reward system in the form of stickers, which were counted at the end to single out three best students in class. A few students of the ‘unruly class’ had to be disciplined by going to the school administrator, and even calling their parents, so I decided that I would nip those in the bud in the winter session, and react to the misbehaviour immediately. Oh, boy, did it not help!
Each child is different, and each of them struggles with different emotions and perspective. Not everyone can be ‘trained’ with the same ‘cookies’.
The winter session brought me two very low level large groups, again one easier to manage, and the other one completely unruly. Let me first reflect on the ruly classroom, to build the suspense.
I knew already from my autumn experience that the behavioural misconduct is not a sign of academic struggle, but often boredom with the easy activity and lack of challenge. I was also aware of the fact that a quiet student was not necessarily an excellent student, but the one embarrassed to ask because he does not know how to ask, or because he does not understand. Even at the age of 7–8 children already develop the ‘failure anxiety’ and choose to do nothing as a preventive technique from ridicule by the peers. It is my belief that because of
- Strict schooling in their regular school, according to which they build their own expectations of how they should learn English (which is completely contradictory to the above mentioned framework)
- Awareness of parents’ expectation
- Disparity in the language skills: French, Arabic and English
- Experience and rigour in learning French, and assuming the same consequences would follow when making mistakes in English
they refrain from making mistakes and are shy to response when they are not sure of the answer.
The songs we sang using a real chordless microphone, and the videos related to program were a great tool to alleviate this anxiety and help them become more loose and prepared for painless learning.
The Wednesday group dynamic was perfect: a few excellent students, a few teacher-pet wannabes, a few cool guys who knew a lot, one guy who always disturbed the class, and ended up being disciplined, a couple of quiet but responsive girls, one guy who was very popular, but struggled with reading, and then there was Elena — the extremely quiet girl who did not say a word, could not make a sound. I would see her lips move, but there was no sound coming out of her. It was my mission in the winter session to make Lina say at least one sentence each week. The mission was successfully completed, although I am not sure that she profited from it.
With the Ambitious instruction in mind, I gave them a mid-term project to make a family poster and say something about their family, but only five students actually did it. The others simply forgot about the materials I had given them the week before. One of the tasks I anticipated they would not complete easily, but most of them breezed through, was the dictation. Elena did some homework and earned a few stickers, but failed on the last ambitious activity: the sketch. The class was divided in four groups, and they had to read the script while standing in front of the class, with minimum acting. Two groups did a wonderful job, but two group did not. The first reason was that two girls in one group were simply chatting and not working with the group, and the second — Elena. She just could not say one sentence. And we stood there, in front of the class, for about three minutes, until she said this sentence. The time was out, so they did not have a chance to perform. Is this fair to Elena? Is this fair to other students, who could do more, but are prevented by one single student who is slowing the pace of the group?
The final memorable event in the Wednesday group was the award ceremony. The three students who collected most stickers ‘won’ a baloon, and the first one received a special prize — a mini puzzle. Each of them got a paper/certificate ‘Activity Award’. Salah, the popular guy with the reading difficulties, burst into tears. He was crying until the break, dug his head into his arms, and would not answer any questions anyone asked. The children were speculating: ‘He is crying because he wants the award’. I am still not sure why he cried, but I realized that what I had done was not just reward the best ones. I also taught two life lessons: 1. How to deal with failure. Some children simply laughed at the fact that they had only one sticker, others inquired detective-like about the validity of the whole process, making sure I was not rewarding the ones who did not deserve it, asking also why they did not get the baloon. 2. Celebrating other people’s success. We applauded to each student, and played with balloons afterwards. It is crucial to rejoice when your peers succeed, and not to fill your heart with jealousy or envy. Because, when your success comes, you will want to share it with others, and seeing green faces is the last thing you wish on the day of your achievement. Those two are two sides of one coin, and parents tend to forget that both are required for stable and sane life. If the child is used to being rewarded for no reason, he will demand it later in life, when parents cease to be the source of reward. When this reward is not delivered, there will be a period of emotional imbalance, or ‘a crying time’, like in Salah’s case.
Now, the Saturday group. There have been many misbehaving instances that needed special intervention, almost every week. The students played football in the classroom, but somehow managed to do all the tasks well. There were very few who lagged behind, so while waiting, they used the activity vacuum to vent out. And I let them. However, sometimes it would escalate, so I needed to apply more rigorous measures.
On the whole, the Saturday group collected much more stickers than the Wednesday group, the performance on the mid-term project was the same, but they did better at the two dictation tasks. However, the final sketch was an epic fail — for everyone. The majority of students were boys, so they all complained at being ‘Goldilocks’ and ‘Mama bear’, so instead of reading, they were laughing at those who were assigned female characters. Too much testosterone for that age, I thought. While doing the practice exam, and usually during the tasks, they were very loud. Extremely loud. Most of them would jump out of their chair, and stand up during the group tasks. I have read that this is actually a desirable behaviour, and children learn better when moving, not sitting down. ( https://www.thestar.com/life/2016/02/24/kids-who-move-while-learning-may-absorb-more-study-says.html ) I got a practical confirmation for this: the only student who failed on the exam was Elena’s less extreme counterpart, who was always sitting, even when we were dancing, or doing ‘stand up’ activities.
The unruly class passed with flying colours, it has been my loudest and unmanageable class so far, yet with most A and A+ marks on the exam! I have learned some tricks how to engage them more, and spend less time on giving instructions, but I do not regret the noise and chaos. Being cooped up in a classroom for two hours with 17 students and a teacher is very demanding on the body, and it is natural that it will protest against this. My openness and lack of strictness encouraged them to become loose, and to release the tension they might not be able to release at their regular school. I let them be more emotional, more who they really are. And each of them is so unique: the Saturday class had three sets of siblings — twins, two brothers, and two sisters. The twins were the most different, by abilities, interests, and behaviour. One student had to go to the bathroom at least twice in one-hour session, he was often so disruptive that his classmates once wanted to kick him out of the classroom. He scored an A on the exam! One guy never brought a pen or pencil to school, kept playing with everything during classes, once ended up talking to the administrator. He scored A+. The Saturday class celebrated the success of their mates genuinely, they applauded to all three ‘winners’, and nobody complained about their own ‘loss’. The most unruly classroom was the best behaved during the exam. The loudest group in the session was the quietest while taking the exam. The most problematic group turned out to be the most successful one. The process of learning is so mysterious, and watching it unfold in front of my eyes is the best privilege I gratefully receive in this life.
The students’ names were changed to protect their privacy.
