Day 8 of Training

I thought today’s speaker was excellent! I found Dr. Lisa Blackwell’s discussion of the brain being malleable to be interesting and motivational. Dr. Blackwell really made me think about self-fulfilling prophecies and about the importance of encouraging students and reminding them that they can learn! I liked that she took us back to our memories of elementary school. This exercise made me think about how I felt to always be in the highest reading group, and although now as an educator I am ashamed to admit it, I used to think less of the students in the lower reading groups and thought of them as being less capable than I was. I can only imagine how the students I will be working with must feel, knowing that they have been labeled as the “lowest 6 readers” in their class. I especially loved the way it was suggested that we approach this label with the students. Rather than thinking of students as being the “6 lowest,” we should emphasize with these students that they are students who we see a lot of potential in! I definitely plan to remind students that they are being pulled out because we can tell that they have “a lot of room to grow” (not because they are “bad readers”) and I want to help them do that! I also agree with Dr. Blackwell’s recommendation that we discuss with students what they are good at (i.e. videogames) and how they got so good at them. Just like students succeed at videogames when they practice them for hours, they will succeed at reading if they also spend the time practicing that!