ABC of Child Whispering T is for TESTING

Most kids hate tests and with good reason.

They hate the tension and judgements that accompant them. They hate the fact that teachers use tests to manipulate and bribe them to study.

I teach children from around 40 schools. The one common thread is the number of tests children do.

We are doing more and more of them.

Why?

Do we really think we can reduce kids to some kind of lowest common denominator? A score that really sums them up and pigeon-holes them?

Scores are regularly given to parents who often have no idea what they mean. “Michael is only reading at level 3!”

 

 

Parents need to know:

  • What do these levels mean?
  • How many levels are there?
  • What level should Michael be reading at?
  • How can he be helped?

It is not fair to just give out arbitrary data and use it to worry parents and make them feel uneducated and ignorant.

Many schools test weekly and this of course reduces the hours available for teaching.

Whatever happened to observations, samples of work, video obs and so on?

What does a test really measure?

What do we REALLY learn?

Quite often tests mainly measure ability to read instructions –  not necessarily a deep understanding of the test subject area.

To get that level of understanding we need to TALK to children.

This morning I assessed a child and I received FAR more information from my casual conversations with him rather than my battery of formal tests.

Even the subtexts- the body language, the yawns, the animation that occurred when we discussed his interests- all these  gave me SO much more information than my formal testing packages.

Let’s get back to REAL assessments where we take the time to get to know children, determine their specific needs, learning styles and therefore make education plans that really work!

Over-testing does nothing except waste valuable teaching and learning time!

Blessed by a child

I must have looked tired yesterday!

My last assessment yesterday evening really surprised me!

He boldly told me he wants to be a truck driver and a teacher.

After the assessment I was chatting to his Mum and he eagerly told her, “We are not going home yet. I am going to teach the next kid and Vicky can take time off!”

He is 5.

Kids never fail to amaze me! I HAD been tired but with such an offer I felt renewed, revitalised and blessed!

It is simply not possible to get bored with what I do!

The ABC of Child Whispering: T is for Tension

Children are no strangers to stress and tension. Because they are ‘time-poor’ they have very little down time to process their feelings and concerns. The tension we feel as parents and teachers is unfortunately shared with children.

Our obsessions with their academic results and exams have caused children to question their self-worth, their intellectual ability and to doubt their ability to cope with school.

Stessed  children learn less so everyone loses!

I have assessed many new children over the last 3 months and a common thread runs through most of these sessions – tension.

So many kids are tense, worried, tell me they are failing and CAN’T DO their work. They describe themselves as “dumb” and “stupid” and really cannot perceive they could possibly be smart, successful or able to overcome their difficulties.

Sadly – something all these children share is average to high intelligence and incredible gifts in:

  • music
  • gymnastics/dance/sporting ability
  • the ability to generate amazing ideas for writing
  • really high artistic ability
  • high problem solving skills

Their creative thinking skills are off the scale and yet they know we don’t value these gifts!

Why don’t we?

The world needs these creative gifts like never before!

Why do we consign these brilliant kids to the educational trash heap?

Sure – they often DO learn differently.

This means I have to think differently when I plan their lessons and I have to teach differently. I get kids writing and spelling words in bright colours, tracing them in sand-pits, on a giant white board etc and I’m happy to provide all these learning tools because this is HOW they learn. So, if children learn differently we all need to teach differently. We can’t keep consigning these kids to the educational rubbish bin.

I LOVE working with these super-smart kids. and I have to help them let go of the tension and negative thoughts they have built up around their academic achievement. It is a privilege to work with them.

I teach them to physically relax using kinesiology exercises, learn to adopt a positive mind set and  I utilise art and journalling therapies to help with self-expression .

Its only after they can relax and drop the tension around academic matters that our children can truly start the remediation process. These kids need to be healed from the very education system that was supposed to help them!

We owe it to the future to roll back the tension levels kids feel. it just makes the learning process so much slower. ALL kids can be helped to see their own skills and to realise they ARE smart they DO matter and they CAN succeed.

 

 

 

 

Take a pinch of ADHD and combine with 2 generous teaspoons of ODD and shake well………

We have almost done it. We have almost managed to test kids to death and construct a new model for the ideal designer child that fits our “factory” paradigm of education.

I teach many kids who now spend more time preparing for tests, getting tested, worrying about marks they received, studying for the next test and so on without any breaks to ENJOY learning and explore their interests.

Kids as young as 3 are routinely tested, labelled, drugged and made into education robots.

Parents obsess over terms such as ODD. ADHD, “the spectrum” and nobody seems to realise kids come in a myriad of varieties- just like adults.

Yes- surprising news- kids ARE humans and have rights.

They deserve to be allowed to be who they are- not who we want them to become!

They deserve to have their gifts and difficulties accepted- we are not perfect either.

It’s OK. It was meant to be like that!

Rejoice in their differences and explore these kids. Very likely they will teach us things we have forgotten like-

  • the value of play in learning
  • how to think creatively
  • the fact that we have a cocktail of multiple intelligences and that is OK
  • why it’s important to have some spare time for dreaming, doing nothing or whatever? time. We all need a slice of WHATEVER? time in our planners!

Do we truly want the world to be dull, boring and colourless with cloned child – human lemmings walking straight over the cliff edge into a world without creativity, dreaming, ideas or simply the space to think?

We ALL need to wake up and treat every child as a gift to the world.

Over the past week I have had so many creative, brilliant children do amazing things! Keep in mind that most of these students have had at least one if not 4 negative labels slapped on them. The label they really need is  BRILLIANT!

In 7 days I have witnessed kids:

Make up a fantasy narrative stories in 5 ninutes based on a tower of glue sticks, they made while I spoke to his parents

Take some packets of stickers and use them to write a really interesting book.

Talk to me entirely in antonyms for a whole hour just for fun.

Notice mathematical patterns way beyond their years.

Beg for more time to write and write pages and pages of coherent text. I have a few kids like this – their creative writing is amazing and they fall deeply into their narratives and accept criticism and craft their writing. Sadly we have almost killed the love for writing with our genre driven madness!

Generate innovative ways to save bees, recycle, save endangered species, care for trees and avoid interfering with the echolocation process many animals depend on.

Write the sort of poetry you would be unlikely to even see from a third year English honours student- the sort that takes you from joy to tears in a flash!

Sketch a building accurately on a tissue in 5 mins flat! (From a Grade 2)

Take popular learning games, change the rules and make entirely new games better than the original!

Make huge leaps in thinking about maths and show the levels of maths understanding you would not expect in a graduating high-school kid.

I have students who question EVERYTHING, kids who beg for spare time, kids who (dare I say this out loud?) want to be kids!

The number of labels we can now apply is endless – in fact they read like a recipe book! Take a pinch of ADHD, add in two teaspoons of Oppositional Defiance Disorder and shake them well and place them in a giant “spectrum” cake tin. Cook the mixture in a special oven called “school” for at least 10 years or at least until all the lumps, bumps of individual differences have vanished.

The innovative Sir Ken Robinson has been proposing radical changes for many years. Education is the only thing in this world that doesn’t really change much. If you could bring back your great, great, great granny she would walk around in a daze looking at planes in the sky, computers, Ipads and so on but if you took her to the local school she would relax and feel at home.

We are trying to control kids rather than feed their curiosity, fuel their enthusiasm and nurture their skills and creativity. What are we scared of? Most likely we are scared of the kids themselves. But why?

Sort it out before our kids all grow up with the mindset I see so often- hating school, feeling like an abject failure before 8 years and with an understanding that they will never ever have any spare time to just be, dream, think and wonder.

It never had to be like this and it is truly time for a new paradigm.

Sir Ken is right- watch this along with  1,952,822 others and let’s start a learning revolution today!

http://https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-02-23-kids-don-t-fail-schools-fail-kids-sir-ken-robinson-on-the-learning-revolution

“every student deserves to be treated like the miracle that they are—with personalized, individualized education that addresses that “world within.” Sir Ken Robinson

 

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