All Children Can Learn

                                                              Miss Seah Jiak Choo

It’s the end of March and for me, the end of a hectic but interesting month. The month began with the Singapore ASCD AGM and our guest speaker this time was none other than our former Director General of Education, Miss Seah Jiak Choo. I have heard her speak on one or two former occasions and each time I have been struck by her honesty, her no-nonsense approach and her genuine love for what she does. Again, she did not disappoint us this time.

My greatest take away from her talk entitled Teacher Leadership has been the fact that all teachers are leaders by virtue of the fact that they all have followers who are growing and contributing to the greater good- yes, their students. I wonder if teachers know this. She went on to say that some teachers are more successful than others as leaders and this is because some have no opportunities to develop their leadership skills.

Another significant gem from her that is related to what I wrote about in my last post is the fact that all teachers must be obsessed with the belief that all children can learn. I thought that this is such an important idea for all teachers to embrace because it is the premise upon which we function as teachers. If we no longer believe in the fact that all our children can learn, we will be no longer effective as teachers and we should then leave the profession.

This message was reinforced for me a week later when I attended the ASCD conference in Philadelphia.  Yvette Jackson spoke about a pedagogy of confidence where educators start teaching from students’ strengths instead of focusing on their weakness.  Yvette described a weakness as an undeveloped skill.  It’s not that students don’t know but it’s that they don’t know... YET! But they will get it eventually.

The secret to teaching these children is to change the input; find another way of teaching them, change the script so that they are not constantly exposed to the same script and the same input. Think of how often we insist on giving weaker children watered down materials and easy tasks. Our intention is always good and that is not to frustrate them.  But the opposite also happens.  Too many dumb down tasks will result in no learning and a loss of motivation. Remember the rich do become richer and the poor can become poorer.  Weak students need more rich input.

I compared this to fertilising plants when discussing this topic with my teachers recently. We need to spread a lot of good fertiliser around in our garden to encourage the plants to grow.  It’s true that sometimes the plants cannot take this. I know this from firsthand experience. Some plants will even die from too much richness, but most will show some growth but there will be some that will blossom and grow even faster and stronger. Teaching must be like spreading fertiliser. If the input is not rich, none of the students will benefit. If it’s very rich, some may be lost but there will be many others who will benefit.

Yvette offered seven principles for a pedagogy of confidence, and in a nutshell they are:

1. Identifying and activating strengths
2. Building relationships
3. Nurturing high intellectual performances
4. Providing enrichment
5. Incorporating prerequisites ( as in providing supporting help and materials)
6. Situating learning in the lives of students
7. Amplifying student voice

Finally, an interesting activity we did together was to develop a bubble map (semantic web) of the strengths of underachieving students. In fact, this activity is best done with students themselves. I bet they never thought deeply about the strengths they have. Once they have identified their strengths, think of how you can build upon each of these individual strengths. Begin your planning with that strength in mind and see if you can give your lesson a new twist.  Yvette’s example was that students do not understand World War 2 but they all understand conflict. Begin with conflict.

Ultimately, as teachers we need to flip the script and reframe the issues. It’s only when we are equipped with a new and more positive perspective of our underachievers that we can begin to help them to learn.  Our pedagogy can then be one of confidence.