Every Kids needs a Champion by Rita Pierson says it all.
Every year we are given students we struggle to connect
with. This year for me it happened. It seems like a terrible thing to say but
it can happen. I saw it straight away and reflected on how was I ever going to
find a connection with this one child. They were so disengaged, uninterested
and had no empathy for their peers. Yet I also knew they didn’t have the greatest home life
and therefore lacked a lot of confidence and self-esteem.
As Rita say in her Ted Talk, 'until the relationships are
built the ‘real’ learning will not happen'. There is a value and importance of
human connections. It took me nearly two terms to find a connection with this
child and it developed over reading. One-one reading with them every day and I
saw a side to this child I had never seen before. They would smile, feel proud
of their efforts and enjoy themselves. Better yet, their reading improved
dramatically.
I realised in a group situation that this would have never
happened and if it meant that I started my reading programme at 8:30 in the
morning to cater for this need, then so be it.
As Rita says ‘Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like’
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