I've had a very brief experiences teaching other people's kids, and I think that there is a world of difference between what a single teacher can do for a child or children in a given period of time, and saying that the technology of teaching will advance over time and make huge differences to a child throughout their years as a student, starting in preschool.
When I did teach, 2 3 hours sessions to 13 year old religious school students, one of the boys told me at the end of the year that I was the best religious school teacher he had ever had. This made me want to cry, because it was my first year trying it. This sweet boy was super fidgety and I think mostly what I did right was give him some non-distructive fidget avenues without humiliating him. His read aloud skill were also very far behind the other students, and I went to great lengths to give the impression that when we went around the room reading from the book, he got short paragraphs with easy words, or that we ran out of paragraphs a few students before him just 'by accident.'
His thinking ability seems just fine to me, but I wonder if in the hands of a teacher who was less of a divergent thinker by nature, if his remarks would have seemed 'off base.' I had a slot in my brain for 'just because I don't readily understand where this comment is coming from doesn't mean that the student isn't logically making sense internally but just not able to share fully.' I came understand the great charm of sweet kids who appear to be making a lot of effort to make wins in their level of accomplishment and how much fun that is for the teacher. I don't however think that that child deserves more teaching energy than my rather-less-reinforcing son, nor more kindness.
I'm hoping that as teaching technology improves, then all kids can spend more time in the 'sweet spot' of their readiness zone. My experience shows me that working with kids in the sweet spot if very emotionally reinforcing for the Adult learning partner.
I'm hoping that I've bumped into a small piece of that new puzzle in this:
Amazon.com: Notching Up the Nurtured Heart Approach - The New Inner Wealth Initiative for Educators (9780982671429): Howard Glasser with Melissa Block
Love and More Love,
Grinity
