So there I was thinking that the mini-exams would be on the dreary side, when all of a sudden I encountered a genuine learning opportunity. One of those where real life threw you a practical bone in terms of your theoretical training. It went down as follows:
I was assigned to a Gr. 8 class today, that was writing Life Sciences at the end of the day. The learners were to make use of the preceding periods to study for upcoming papers, and review their work for the day’s examination. Simple enough as long as they keep relatively quiet. Not so simple when one of the learners has need branded as probably suffering from ADHD…
Now I don’t believe in ADHD, much in the same way as atheists don’t believe in God. I might have flashes of despair which seem to confirm the alleged condition – but in my core I don’t believe it exists. I’m firmly secured in Sir Ken Robinson’s camp on this topic (amongst others). As Sir Ken Robinson suggests, I believe that learners are wrongfully diagnosed with this made-up condition simply so they can be tranquilized with medication, in this way making it so that nobody has to “deal” with them. Adults have grown too distracted and “busy” to have the time (read: desire) to work with these exceptional children.
Yes, I believe them to be exceptional. Be they incredibly gifted, kinesthetic learners, simply blessed with higher levels of energy and curiosity, or all of the above. The point is that these learners are merely bored (out of their skulls) because we do not know how to effectively keep them interested and busy while working with “the rest of the class”.
Today I had the opportunity to test out this theory, and even though I wasn’t exactly prepared for such a situation – I was eager to try and see what could be done to engage such a learner.
I had noticed earlier that he had brought a rubber finger cover in the hope of helping to hand out the exam papers. The teacher in charge had a different approach though (sending the learners out of the classroom in order to place a copy on each desk before letting them back in), meaning he couldn’t participate as he had hoped. This gave me an idea:
Once the specific learner had finished writing the paper and reviewing his answers, I asked his assistance in preparing for a project. First, I asked him to count the sheets of writing paper that was lying in a nearby stack. Once counted (I was making this up as I went along) I requested that he divided the paper into stacks of three sheets each. The particular pile of paper rendered eight stacks and two sheets to spare. Having counted the learners in his class before, I requested that he counted out additional sheets from another pile until there were 27 piles. One for each student. I tried to create the impression that this was of great help to me and my work. The kid was happy as anything, and took his task very seriously. Once he had finished, I thanked him for his assistance. The time allocated to the test had run out, so I asked him to walk up each row of desks with a stapler, fixing each learner’s answer sheets to the test. He beamed again, and made sure that each set of papers was stapled neatly, quickly and quietly.
I was pleasantly surprised by the change this exercise brought about in his behavior and demeanor! Where he had previously been unruly and a bit of a disruption in class, he had now turned into a model teacher’s assistant.
I hope to prepare for such scenarios in future, and to keep testing out theories and finding better ways to engage all my learners in ways that speak to their individual requirements.
(I’d better invest in a few Rubik’s cubes in case I can’t come up with suitable “projects”.)
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