Education News – Julia Steiny
“Speaking at the RIMA’s High Expectation’s Conference, keynote speaker Kate Gerson says, “The number one way we love our students is by rescuing them from struggle. We hate and feel so uncomfortable with kids struggling.” When you pose a challenge just out of a kid’s reach, she’s forced to think. She’ll have to sort through what she already knows to come up with an educated, if not necessarily correct, answer. The kid blinks at you, deer in the headlights. You assure her she can figure it out, but the wait for her to wrestle through the problem is nerve-wracking. Often we spare her the struggle and give her the answer, which she’ll never remember. Had she dug around in her prior knowledge and figured it out — or even come up with a wrong but thoughtful solution — she’d have exercised her mind…Honestly, I think kids would be less bored in school if they were asked to put their minds to something intriguing, but difficult. Achieving mastery with intellectual persistence is an acquired taste that needs to start early. They can’t be lured into education the way they’re lured into the media.”(more)