I have taught many, many children during my 35 year teaching career. And, as any teacher will tell you, you can quickly tell which child will be successful and which will not.
I am not talking about how some children seem brighter than others but about the children, not matter what their level of ‘brightness’, who you just know will make it, will become all they are capable of being, will have a good chance of succeeding in school and in life.
I can remember Esther, she struggled to learn to read, wore hand-me-downs and had to look after her five brothers and sisters, but I knew that she would make it. I knew that she would persevere at whatever she set her mind to until she had mastered it and then she would move onto the next challenge. She was never going to be rich and famous and she would always struggle in a low paying job but she knew that she was doing the best she could and had a positive attitude despite all her challenges.
I knew that Mark, would do well. His family had recently arrived in Vancouver as refugees from a war torn country. He had seen things that would have been enough to disturb him for the rest of his life if he let them. He was ten years old and did not speak English. He came to my class everyday and worked harder than any of the other children. He never missed a lesson and insisted on doing everything I asked him to do no matter how hard he found the work. I found out later that not only did he work hard in class, he would go home and teach his parents what he had learned in school that day so that they too could begin to learn English and start to participate in their new country.
But the student I remember most was in my very first class after I graduated from ‘teacher college’. This was in the 60’s and there was still a lot we had to learn about why some children had learning problems. In retrospect it is obvious that this boy was dyslexic. He was bright and could read but he could not write. He would produce pages and pages of beautifully written gibberish. I did my best to help him but it wasn’t much because I had no idea what his problem was. What I remember were the tears of frustration that we both shed on occasion and the dogged determination of the boy to do whatever it took to overcome his problem. He was going to find a way to succeed, he was going to be successful.
All these children faced significant learning challenges and were finding ways to deal with them. Other children who also faced challenges to learning were not as committed to finding ways to handle them and were much more ready to give up, to accept that they could not learn and to see themselves as failures.
Then there were the so-called ‘normal’ students. Those who did not have learning difficulties and were progressing fairly well through the educational system. Even among those students teachers have a pretty good idea about who will be successful and who will never reach their learning potential.
What made the difference between students who, whatever their situation, would rise above their difficulties and become all that they were capable of becoming? I wanted to know.
There are the usual suspects, quality of teaching, parental involvement, socio-economic status etc. But none of them seemed to fully account for why some students were going to make it and some were not.
It took me many years to begin to understand why some children were going to reach their learning potential while others were forever going to remain in the ‘underachiever’ category and never fulfill their potential.
Because of my work with children with learning difficulties I was fortunate to be trained by a group of learning experts in ways to help these children learn become better learners. This group of academic educational researchers had identified the learning skills that enabled children to learn. Children who lacked one or more of these skills struggled to learn and never reached their full learning potential.
The researchers described two groups of skills that children need, emotional and cognitive learning skills. As I learned this I began to understand why some students were more successful than others. They had the skills they need to succeed.
The three students I described at the beginning all lacked cognitive learning skills. But they all had wonderful emotional learning skills, skills that allowed them to go beyond their cognitive learning issues and to find ways of becoming successful.
All I could do at the time was to encourage their efforts, to support them in their attitudes to school and learning. How much more successful these children would have been if I had also been able to support their cognitive learning skills haunts me still.
The difference between success and failure? Learning skills that go beyond those taught in any classroom, but learning skills that we can help all children develop.
What made the difference between success and failure for these students?
I wanted to find out.
It was too easy just to say that
