TIP! Start small but do it daily
“Hey, three months ago I couldn’t do what I’m doing now,” said Marquis, 15, who took up Japanese language study because of his interest in anime cartoons. “Let’s see what I can do in another three months! When somebody’s helping you all the way, inch by inch, you keep pushing yourself.”
Kids and adults alike feel awkward and clumsy when we’re first stretching for a new skill. It helps to pick just one part of what you’re going for, and keep practicing it till it becomes a habit. (Don’t forget to cheer for that progress before moving on to the “new hard”!)
I am currently a student teacher reading Fires in the Mind for one of my classes and love the idea of daily practice. The idea of daily practice is one that makes so much sense to my students in other contexts, such as sports and music practice, but they do not see school in the same light. For one of my students who is often absent but is a great football and baseball player, I made the analogy of to the pain of making up a week’s worth of lifting workouts in a day and how painful that would be. This made sense to him, as he was feeling overwhelmed by all that he had to make up as my mentor teacher and I had been giving daily practice assignments and we are working on ways for him (and the rest of my students) to get his assignments more easily in advance when he knows he will be out. In general, given that my students are dealing with 6 subjects a day, on top of jobs, sports, social, and family obligations, I sometimes feel guilty about assigning practice every night, even though I know that that is the best way to have them master the subjects we talk about in class.
Additionally, although not mentioned in this post but it was mentioned in the book, I would like to make that practice that I give them tailored to their abilities, but to create this on a daily basis seems an overwhelming and insurmountable task. Are there resources that someone might have heard about how to created tiered homework that is based on the student’s abilities and understanding in quick fashion? I know that there are some that are computer based, but many of my students do not have access to the Internet or computers, so that is a challenge as well.