I have my homepage set to CNN and often go through some of the headline stories to get a gist of what is currently happening in the world. Maybe not the most important events out there, but at least some recent events are reported. Today, sadly, under the “What if” section was a story on dogs helping kids learn. The dog will sit there and just listen as a child reads to them:
“The philosophy is simple. Children who are just learning to read often feel judged or intimidated by classmates and adults. But reading to a dog isn't so scary. It won't judge, it won't get impatient, it won't laugh or correct if the child makes a mistake. In a nutshell, dogs are simply excellent listeners. And for shy kids or slow readers, that can make all the difference.”
The child has the “power” of teaching the dog and telling them a story. This provides two things to the child; an environment with little outside stress, and they get to be the teacher who knows the most in the relationship. I recalled a book I recently read, Brain Rules, by John Medina, about the brain and its learning processes. I actually ordered this book for my AP Psychology class because it highlighted many principles we learn about through the course. There is a chapter about stress and learning. One specific part defined stress as being helpless, or having a loss of power. The group using dogs to assist in reading conquered these aspects by eliminating the judgment of others (Stress) and allowing them to have control.
This stress of not knowing does not disappear through time. If you are with a group of people that are all talking about football and you have no interest or knowledge of football, do you chime in? No, since you know you cannot add anything to the conversation or at the worst you will say something that will be wrong and be “admonished”.
One school technique is to put people of differing abilities in groups and let them work on a project or activity. What if you are the student that knows or comprehends the least of the group is with high achievers? It is the same thing as the football example above. Even if it is all brand new material, we know that some kids are always the “smart ones” and the intimidation and judgment is still an issue. The teacher has to use specific techniques to solve this or this method is actually furthering the stress and frustration of the slower learner.
What I would like to do, but I have yet to figure out excatally how, is to eliminate all the grades of some students half way through a semester. The ones who cannot do the material will still fail, but there are certain students that give up at that point because they realize that they cannot improve and the stress is one of learned helplessness. Unfortunately there are issues of fairness to other students and the student who worked hard all semester earns the same grade as one who had half their grade eliminated. Those issues are unfortunate since school is for learning and if one learned better with that second chance, teachers would actually be doing their job better by promoting learning not grades.
