teaching / teachers Tag

Posts tagged 'teaching / teachers'

I’m Disappointed in You!

Think of the last time anyone said to you, “I’m disappointed in you”. How did that make you feel?

Being disappointed is part of life. I guess it is one of the greatest challenges in life. Realizing that life is not happening the way you want and managing to push through despite it.

Although being disappointed is part of life, being disappointed in others should not be. When I work with my life coaching clients, we deal with a lot of disappointment. Sadly, what hurts them most is not self-disappointment – that things didn’t happen the way they “should have” – but being a disappointment to someone close.

When I think of all the times I have heard this, I can see two groups of people that express disappointment in my clients: teachers and parents, in this order. I dare say that they cause a lot of damage.

Disappointment is “sadness or displeasure caused by the non-fulfilment of one’s hopes or expectations”. Therefore, saying to someone, “I’m disappointed in you”, is telling that person he or she is not fulfilling your hopes and expectations.

Who are you to cause someone a bad feeling for not fulfilling your expectations?

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How to Make Learning Fun with 50 Great Activities

If your kids go to school, you must be wondering how to make learning fun. Some teachers are good at this, but many are not, so it’s up to parents to add spice to the learning process.

Learning takes a big part of our life. As babies, we learn all the time. I can look at my granddaughter after not seeing her for 3 days and see she’s learned new things. And she has a lot of fun learning.

Later in life, we go to school to learn in a structured, controlled environment that doesn’t take into consideration that the brain needs to be open to absorb new knowledge. Sadly, I think that in the format it is now, school destroys a big part of our ability to learn.

I work with many children and the system has failed to instill the love for learning in them. I also work with grownups that consider school a traumatic period of their life.

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The Power of Complimenting: Don’t Be Stingy

Some parents are stingy with complimenting. I do not blame them. They probably grew up with stingy parents, who probably grew up with parents that did not compliment them either. I have said many times that we suffer today for things our ancestors did, which have not evolved.

Wake up, parents! We do not need to do the same things our great-great-grandparents did, because in some areas of life, they were not great at all. Giving compliments was definitely one of these areas.

The belief “back then” was that compliments got in the way of “building character”. I have clients and friends who say it aloud, “If you compliment people, especially children, they become complacent”.

What?!

Since when is complacent a bad word, anyway?

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The Power of Bilingualism

My introduction to learning languages and bilingualism happened 24 years ago, when we moved to Texas, USA, and our daughter started to learn English. As a Special Education teacher, I knew she would be fine, but as a mother, I was scared, because at the age of 4, with the language of a 10 year old, I was afraid she would be left behind.

She wasn’t!

Since then, I have been working with inspiring people who specialize in language acquisition and with many children of migrants around the world. I have learned that parents and teachers play an important role in supporting language development. If they understand the challenges and consider the myths around language, they can help kids with healthy language acquisition.

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How to Turn off Children’s Creativity

As an educator and a mother, I believe in the importance of developing children’s creativity. My first real job as an educator was in a very special project, called “Creative Thinking”. It was a very important part in my career and in forming my philosophy.

I think this is the reason creativity is such a high value for me. I have written a lot about creativity and how to “turn it on”. But today, I would like to give some negative examples of ways you can turn it off, just as easily as you can turn it on.

Please check if your relationships with your children or students include any of these things. If so, this may be limiting their creativity and future success.

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Disrespectful Behavior is a Mirror: Talk With Kids, Not At Them

“Kids today are very disrespectful” is a common phrase I have heard a lot lately. Parents and teachers are very frustrated about this issue of respect. When children exhibit disrespectful behavior, they get into lots of conflicts and trouble and their ability to learn and absorb information is limited.

Respect is a very popular topic at home and at school. Most parents and teachers demand respect and by that, they do not understand that respect is earned and works like a mirror. When your behavior is disrespectful towards children, they will have no respect for you either.

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Be Your Child’s Speech Therapist with Mouth Gym

Over the last 30 years, I have had a chance to see many children with speech difficulties. Children who do not speak properly may sound cute at first, but this might become an obstacle as they grow up. At some stage, their parents stress about it and take them to a speech therapist or a speech pathologist.

But parents can fix some of the speech problems very easily. This post includes my tips for fixing one of the major speech difficulties – physical sound production. Hundreds of parents around the world have used them and changed their children’s life. If your child has trouble pronouncing words, you do not need a speech therapist.

Using the suggestions below will do the same for your child.

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What Others Think about You Is … None of Your Business

When I was young, if someone asked me to complete the sentence “What others think about you is …” I would have said, “the most important thing in life”. I thought that, because of how I grew up. My mom, who is over 75 years old now, still thinks that we live to impress other people and navigate our life based on what they think about us.

When I studied Education, I realized that most parents in the world teach this to their kids. At first, they say, “Whatever your parents think about you is the most important thing in life”. Later on, they say, “What your teachers think about you is also important”.

They are all very surprised when their kids become teenagers and transfer this to their peers and add, “Whatever your friends think about you is the most important thing in the world”.

It is a natural progression. If you practice worrying and navigate your life based on what others think about you, you become good at … worrying and navigating your life based on what others think about you.

Simple!

When you follow this path, you never learn who you are and how to navigate life based on what you think of yourself.

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Children with the Kinesthetic Communication Style

The idea that all kids are the same is false and brings parents and teachers into lots of trouble. Every time these kids are not “the same” as others, they think something is wrong with them. Nothing is wrong with them! They are just different and we should all be happy that there is not such a thing as “one size fits all”.

In my kids’ assessments, I check children’s communication styles. If I know their communication styles, I know what challenges they have and why, and I know the best ways to introduce new information to them.

During our sessions together, I pay attention to how they move. I check if they stand up while they work and if they move their legs or other body part. I notice if they are social and friendly and pay attention to how they talk about others. Moving a lot and talking about emotions, fairness, kindness and caring are typical for kinesthetic children.

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Use Your Self-fulfilling Prophecy to Help Your Kids Succeed

What does “self-fulfilling prophecy” have to do with good education and helping your kids succeed? Everything!

To raise our children to be successful, happy, healthy and productive grownups, we need a holistic approach. Yet our society and education system take a different approach. Governments spend billions of dollars every year to establish and run educational institutes where kids learn literacy and numeracy. Children dedicate 13 to 15 years of their life to learning things that will play a small part of their adult life.

Do not get me wrong, I think it is important to learn to read. I am also a qualified math teacher and think math is important. But tell me, out of a week of your life, with 24 hours a day and 60 minutes every hour, how much time do you analyze poems or find square roots of numbers? Do your amazing English and math abilities determine how happy, successful, healthy, friendly and productive you are?

I wish!

Learning depends greatly on the self-fulfilling prophecy of the teacher. Yes, I know, it sounds harsh, but the quality of the learning is highly dependent on what goes on in the teacher’s mind (and in the holistic approach, parents are also teachers). Every time I finish a day of professional development for teachers, the teachers are surprised to discover that what they think of the students manifests itself in the students’ behavior, social interactions and academic achievements.

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