While I have encountered all three types mentioned, Alice is the one I see most often in my classes. The child who sits in class like a lump, doesn't turn anything in, parents appear to not know what to do. And my reaction, after weeks or a couple months of encouragement, is the same as the counselor gave Alice's parents - just let them fail. They'll learn the consequences, they'll be motivated by failure. That hasn't worked yet - and wow, did this author point out how wrong I am in just shrugging my shoulders.
Trouble is - we as teachers need to help get to the root of the problem. If the difficulties are feelings of inadequacy, or need for approval, or the fact that certain attitudes are modeled at home - how to discover those within the student? Prompt 2 asks if children are aware of these behaviors. I struggle with this. My gut instinct is yes. These kids know what they're doing, they make conscious decisions to not turn things in or to not complete their work at home. How could they not? But the author relates the story of the kid (p. 42) who truly didn't know why he didn't hand in a project, but after leading him through the choices, he acknowledged he didn't think his was good enough. I can see a couple of current students reflected in that story. But it's hard for me to look at the underachievers I have and say that they're unaware of their behavior.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Pre-reading response. Think of adults that are underachievers at work don't they have believe they are successful. Whenever they talk about why they are good they have a valid area of strength. Is it possible many underachievers that we see often had a time in their life where they were very successful without much effort. Suddenly the requirements change and the effort required or skills needed are not easily accessible. I'm curious to know the students that we identify as underachievers have they achieved at a different level. Some random thoughts to the star pupil!!!!
ReplyDeleteThese random thoughts would bring up valid thoughts. I can think of hockey as my example. As I grew up I was ahead of the curve, it was super easy for me to score goals and be the "big shot" on the team. This continued all the way through High School hockey. Then once I graduated and started playing juniors the talent increased and I was set in the bottom middle of the curve. My first year and a half I severely under achieved and did only speak of my strengths- sitting in front of the net. Then once I ended up at EMU I changed my work ethic because I had to make a new team and flourished in college. SUre there were other factors along the way but looking at it now in this perspective really gives me a downer... lol..
ReplyDeleteWe talk to kids about this a lot, especially the ones who "always did well in the past." I tell the kids (and parents!) that eventually they'll reach a point where they will need to work at school, and if they don't have the skill set in place to do that, it'll just be that much harder. If something has always come easy to you, then why learn how to work at it??
ReplyDelete