Creating Confident Learners by Building Teacher Empathy
This video does more than just showcase 80’s fashion trends! It is also an awesome example of how understanding the perspective of a student not only provides a teacher with an insight into the student’s needs but it also builds empathy in the teacher. This video gave me an opportunity to observe some challenges that students with LD face in the classroom and has made me more mindful and empathetic towards student’s needs.
By understanding how a child feels when they are struggling, as teachers we can adapt our teaching styles and support for the student in order to maintain student confidence in learning. I believe that a classroom that focuses on positive reinforcement, provides time for students to process, and celebrates many different learning strategies will result in higher levels of students’ confidence in learning.
Although this video is 1 hour long, I promise that you will be engaged the entire time.
ADHD: “Attention Different not Attention Deficit”
Stephen is a Senior Directing major at Carnegie Mellon and who speaks on his experiences with ADHD as well as his opinions on how to best support students with ADHD.
What I took from his talk, was a teaching perspective and a multitude of strategies/inspiration for adjusting the instruction and classroom climate for creating confident learners – specifically those students with ADHD.
Stephen made some powerful statements that I will reflect on below:
“It is not Attention Deficit but Attention Difference” – students process things differently. As educators, this is a powerful perspective to have of all students in addition to students with learning disabilities. Students have different perspectives, different cognitive processing strategies and different needs. As educators, we must adapt our instructional strategies, organization of the physical space, routines and expectations in order to meet the needs of all of our students. This reminds me of a quote that I heard in another video where an LD teacher spoke about fairness. Fairness is making sure everyone gets what they need, not making sure everyone gets the same thing. Therefore, each student is taught differently, because each student needs different supports.
“We must teach students how to learn” – teaching students different cognitive processing strategies not only gives students the tools to learn but it builds empathy within the classroom. A classroom that celebrates different learning strategies and approaches also celebrates diversity – each student’s perspective, experiences, learning strategies etc. are seen to enrich the classroom rather than hinder it.
There are so many more important points that Stephen made so please, please, please watch this video!