“Everyone should feel achievement everyday - no matter how big or small! Let’s encourage them to try their hardest as much as we can!”
This week’s blog is centred on a post Discount For Teachers shared - a quote written by @MissRaesRoom - “When students are confident in their learning abilities they try harder”. This made me think about how difficult it can be to encourage pupils through emails, online lessons and various uses of technology in current times. It has made me focus on how I am spreading positivity to my students, to not only ensure confidence in their learning abilities but also their goals, achievements and just being themselves.
Teaching remotely has been difficult in many ways - the main challenge being teaching a highly practical subject through a computer! When I saw this quote, so many emails from the past week popped into my head. In a lot of these I included “use your great Drama skills”, “you have made some great contributions recently” and “look how well you did in that quiz, well done!”. One thing strikes me reflecting on these - POSITIVITY. Sometimes we just need to build each other up.
Recently - and of course before the lockdown - I have found myself finding new ways to boost pupils’ belief in themselves and encourage them to achieve their best. With so many new and different distractions learning from home, I think they need this more than ever. So, even if a child struggles with a task, I’ve shown nothing but positivity for them to complete it and tell them their work will be great. When I receive my 1000th email about how to upload their work, I remain calm and encouraging, typing the same step-by-step guide I did to another pupil two minutes earlier. And when they say they didn’t make their live lesson, I remind them of their fantastic progress so far rather than dwell on their absence.
Although this quote’s foundations are in encouraging a students’ learning capabilities, which we all do, it took my mind to ensuring we are positive and encouraging. This is not just for their abilities, but also their resilience, independence, and hard work. When we can send an email saying “I can’t wait to see your work!” we should, or when we want to remind them how fantastically they have dealt with extreme change recently, let’s do that!
I really believe that in order to feel confident about their school work, they also need a sense of confidence in themselves. They need to know that us, their teachers, believe in them, that we are proud of them. Yes of course, when they believe in their abilities they will try harder, but also their hard work is built by encouragement, love and care from those around them.
Heading into yet another teaching of remote learning, I want to ensure that I strive to keep encouraging and spreading positivity to students and staff. At the end of day - as cliche as it sounds - we are all in this together. Whatever we need to do to make our students try hard, if we can, we should.
Everyone deserves to feel proud of themselves everyday - be that a little or large achievement.
We can do this!
Miss B :)