Shilpa, so nice to see this article and your work along with Manish and others at Shikshantar. I still remember our lunch along the Chicago River when you came to see me. We should meet next time you are in Chicago. Raj uncle, 630-915-6176.
1 REPLY
Cindy D.Apr 17, 2013
My response to my students, gifted or remedial. is that boring is an excuse for not wanting to pay attention. We will always have times or experiences in our life that don't automatically cause our pleasure centers to ignite. Our job is to find new ways of looking at the challenge. Boring is about changing the observer. A teaching tip I found helpful was to break the challenge into smaller pieces. I may not be able to pay attention to 20 pages but I can pay attention for 2 pages and then write a summary sentence of those two pages. Then I give myself a 30 second vacation for a job well done, then tackle two more pages. I used this with the state mandated testing. I'd tell my students I knew for sure they could do one of the reading assignments and get the answers correct. Then they could tell themselves, "I'm only going to do one more." Take a mental break and then, "I'm only going to do one more." until they had finished. Learning and life have this in common - we can always do just "one more."
ORIGINAL COMMENT
Shilpa, so nice to see this article and your work along with Manish and others at Shikshantar. I still remember our lunch along the Chicago River when you came to see me. We should meet next time you are in Chicago. Raj uncle, 630-915-6176.
1 REPLY
My response to my students, gifted or remedial. is that boring is an excuse for not wanting to pay attention. We will always have times or experiences in our life that don't automatically cause our pleasure centers to ignite. Our job is to find new ways of looking at the challenge. Boring is about changing the observer.
A teaching tip I found helpful was to break the challenge into smaller pieces. I may not be able to pay attention to 20 pages but I can pay attention for 2 pages and then write a summary sentence of those two pages. Then I give myself a 30 second vacation for a job well done, then tackle two more pages.
I used this with the state mandated testing. I'd tell my students I knew for sure they could do one of the reading assignments and get the answers correct. Then they could tell themselves, "I'm only going to do one more." Take a mental break and then, "I'm only going to do one more." until they had finished.
Learning and life have this in common - we can always do just "one more."