Teacher World

When thinking back on particular times in our lives, we can all single out certain situations or events that have had a lasting impact on our behavior. Perhaps it was a time when you struck out during a little league baseball game and  you felt terrible, like you let down everyone. After that moment, you decided you no longer wanted to play that game. Or maybe you wrote an essay in middle school about a book you had read over winter vacation and your teacher praised your talented work. From that moment on, your writing took on a greater meaning and the classes you enjoyed the most were those that let you display your blossoming talent.

From a teacher’s perspective, these moments have significant impact in how a particular class moves through scheduled material and graduates with the knowledge necessary to perform in the desired manner. In each class, there are those students who have the ability and confidence necessary to quickly devour material and grasp concepts. And, in each class, there are those students who seem to have a terribly difficult time grappling with concepts, and in turn, slow down the progress of an entire class.

Some researchers believe that a significant portion of students who are under-performing are doing so because they have a lack of confidence in themselves, experience great amounts of stress in class and feel enough fear of failure to paralyze their ability to perform.

“The researchers, led by Geoffrey L. Cohen, a social psychologist at the University of Colorado, had seventh graders in suburban Connecticut schools perform the assignment three to five times through that school year. It asked them to simply choose from a list which values were most important to them — including athletic ability, sense of humor, creativity and being smart — and to write why those values were so important…

“The idea is that a bad experience early in school can have lasting effects, and that if we can do something in that crucial window, it could alter the student’s trajectory slightly and change the arc of their experience over time,” Dr. Cohen said. The assignment, he said, reminded students that their entire self-worth was not riding on a single test result.”
- New York Times, April 16th, 2009

So, perhaps if teachers learn a few more tricks like this to help break down barriers that were built in the absence of self-esteem, we may slowly see student performance creep upwards.

From a common sense perspective, this makes a great deal of sense. We all have had dreams in our lives. Many of those dreams we never reached simply because we never tried. And why did we never try? Because we were afraid of failing. In a public education system that is desperately trying to meet accountability standards, perhaps we are missing the fundamental reasons why some students fail and others succeed. Maybe a touch of psychology can help all of us teachers make a greater impact in the lives of our students.

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