Dec 20, 2017
Tutors can find ways to “humanize” the learning process by treating students for what they are: human beings with fears, hopes, and needs.
It’s always been tough to be a school-age kid, with those early mornings and childhood antics. Add on top the modern pressure of unrelenting standardized testing and it’s a recipe for disaster for struggling students.
That’s why many educators are turning their focus to students’ social and emotional well-being, and some even going so far as to advocate getting rid of letter grades altogether.
Reformers say a “more humanizing pedagogy” in the learning environment serves to build students’ emotional integrity and critical thinking skills that will serve them lifelong. When big players like Google agree, it’s probably worth our listening.
How do we get there? For starters, personalized learning means exactly that: personalizing the individual student’s learning experience.
Is a student struggling to grasp a concept? Emphasize that it’s OK to struggle. School’s hard. Life’s hard. But learning should be dynamic and responsive: move on with the subject material, identify strong points in the subject matter, find ways to link those strengths to the content they struggled with, circle back, build the student up.
There’s no easy way to setting a student on the path to success, but every student deserves to hear the message all the same:
We’re never giving up on you.
banner image from https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-failing-students-want-us-remember
What Failing Students Want Us to Remember https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-failing-students-want-us-remember
