“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” – Ken Robinson
We want our children to succeed in life – finding financial stability, deep life experiences and the actualization of their dreams. While exceptions exist, school achievement is considered a grand testing ground, a predictor of these hallmarks of success. Is it any wonder, then, that parents approach teachers anxiously when a child fails to meet expectations on tests and assignments, despite the fact that true predictors of success–like self-assurance, creative thinking, and ethical decision-making–have little to do with abstract tests and benchmarks? In fact, failure in its own right is one of the most potent ways to approach innovative learning and capacity-building. Simply put, it is a focus on means over ends, approach and effort over grades, and a celebration of failure as a First Attempt In Learning.
Photo credit: Shining Mountain Waldorf School
Students’ brains are hard at work every moment of the day, learning skills and connecting new information with old. Those same brains are also constantly processing information when it comes to their relationship with you, their teacher.
Positive student relationships are fundamental to success. When students feel supported, they’re more likely to engage in learning and have better academic outcomes. Plus, when students have positive interactions with teachers, they have fewer behavioral problems. These relationships are more important—and more challenging—than ever in uncertain times, like during the coronavirus pandemic.
Neuroscience can help us understand what’s happening in students’ brains when they feel safe and understood. Here are four reasons why positive teacher-student relationships are important—and how you can build those relationships.
Growing Healthy Children
What do children need to grow and learn in a healthy way? Love, joy, and warm human relationships are essential, along with nourishing food and plenty of sleep. Otherwise, the child’s basic needs could be described as security and freedom. Just as the mother’s body provides a safe, protected environment within which the child’s own body grows, in the first years of life we need to provide a safe haven within which the child has freedom to exercise, explore, and develop her individuality. Waldorf educators work with these polarities in many ways; here are a few that can be added to out of your own observation and experience.
While the benefits of handwriting have long been recognized, scientists only recently engaged in brain imaging research to uncover why writing by hand has beneficial effects over keyboarding. Handwriting, they have discovered, is a complex brain process that requires many different brain systems work together.
A recent article at NPR.org -- Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning -- looks at multiple research studies showing why hand writing leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding; improves memory and recall of words; and leads to better conceptual understanding of material.
