Embracing the Uniqueness of Your Students

This past month, I had an opportunity to look over an assignment from a fellow www.cdaclass.org student. In her desire to complete her early childhood education courses with www.cdaclass.org, she took an approach to an assignment in an entirely different way I had not expected, nor had I ever considered.

I have been working with children of all ages, and adult learners, in several capacities and for many years, and this particular moment, proved to be a real eye-opener for me. I embraced the uniqueness of the assignment and was swept away by its captivating words. As such, this reminded me that as teachers, our job is to allow our students to learn in THEIR best way possible. At all times, we should be meeting the child where they are; not expecting them to “meet” us. In our busy, hectic lives, we often forget this.

When you are doing an activity with your students, you typically model the expectations on how you want something done. For example, “Cut out the picture like this, and glue this here, and trace this there,” etc. I understand that some things require exactness, but we need to remember that children are not perfect, we are not perfect, and therefore, our end results of things we had high expectations for may not come out perfect. What you should consider however, is did your student enjoy themselves? Were they able to express themselves? Did they learn anything from the experience? As adults we must remember that children do things in their own way, and we should not force everything to be done our way. Let us remember that individuality is something to cherish. So provide that clean slate for them at times

Happy Learning!