Attention
For all the new innovations, regulations, tests, consultants (guilty as charged) and others, there is really only one thing that works for students that struggle, and it’s actually giving them some one-on-one attention. Think about the obvious reasons students may struggle:
- The student doesn’t know the material. Clearly attention will help this. Parents help with homework, kids stay after class to work with their teachers, and tutors are hired to help make up for deficiencies.
- A physical or intellectual ability interferes with learning. Again, attention will help…the person working closely with their kids may see them squint, transpose letters, or some other indication of a broader problem.
- The student is bright, but he/she is just not trying. They don’t think education is important. The attention of adults is direct evidence of the contrary.
- The student is suffering from socioemotional problems, perhaps due to their outside-of-school environment. Attention from a caring adult will help that student in a number of ways, such as showing that the child is valued, support can be provided as needed.
Where is all this attention supposed to come from? Well, without beating some of my earlier pieces to death, I’d start with the foundation that love and attention comes from home first. Any teacher has seen it: often it’s the parents of the most successful students that come to conferences, while the parent we really need to talk to is not there. And this is not accident. In order to sit in desks for years and learn things that are not currently or perhaps ever relevant to them, students need a great deal of acculturation and coaching. The students that come from supportive environments, read: where somebody cares and pays attention to them and their education, are far more likely to do well, even if their parents aren’t experts at providing tutoring, counseling or whatever else the student is in need of.
We see study after study that talk about the importance of effort, motivation, and grit. In schools, we talk often about the problem we face with our students being principally rooted in their disengagement. So imagine for a moment the ideal: every student gets 1-1 education or pretty close to it. Would we have the time to give them everything they need? And of course, it’s not a surprise to anybody who has even 2-3 kids that when we give a teacher 30 students she simply can’t give the same attention she’d give if she had only 1. That’s the premise of the system’s correct function—if the kids get enough love and attention outside of school, the amount the teacher needs to supply to keep the student moving is not as great.
Sometimes, perhaps regularly in some schools, students arrive without having gotten all the loving attention they need, and we see this when they fail chronically. What can be done if the staff is overwhelmed by the needs of its students? What if there’s just too in need many for the adults in the building to reach?
(part 2 next week)
