The backlash

It was report-day today. Parents came to collect the term reports. As parents went over the answer-sheets of their child, it was interesting to see the their reaction - shaking of their head in disbelief. Irrespective of whether the child had done well or not, parents typically got upset about the mistakes and marks lost.

A few parents reprimanded child on the spot "See I was telling you". Discussing marks on the result-day makes no sense. In fact it is useless from the child's point of view. It doesn't help the child study better, on the contrary, they are repelled and shamed. It creates a backlash and they just shut the parents out.

When a child hasn't performed well, invariably it is due to lack of understanding or skills or habits. Low marks is only a side-effect of poor study skills. While poor study-skills lead to poor marks, shouting about poor marks doesn't lead to improving study skills. None of the success factors grow by hectoring children on the report-day. To master these skills one needs to make long-term efforts.

A few children had come to me before the report-day. They asked me to tell parents not to scold them about marks. They were down in spirit in anticipation of the report-day. And I agree with them. Parents (and teachers as well) should avoid talking about marks, defuse the anxiety on the report-day.

Did I have any suggestions and advice ? parents would ask me afterwards. Yes, I did. "Instead of discussing marks let us cheer them up and ask, what can we do for the long term".

What did I learn

I was going through my students' note-books. As every teacher knows - there are tonnes corrections to be done. Since I give notes of my own (and not from text book) it involved reading my own words through a mountain of note-books. In one note-book I ran into something different. This boy had scribbled something in the margins every few pages. He is an enthusiastic but disruptive boy, so I was irritated see this mess.

To my surprise, he had written "What did I learn" after every topic and in the narrow margins. He had summarized what he found important after we had finished a topic. That was so sensible, and why had this not occurred to me. What did I learn ? I decided to make this a formal practice for my lessons. After every major topic, I would quickly round-up 'what we learnt' from students and commit them to the notebook. This time, not in the margin but within the notes.

The next day, I celebrated this boy in the class and thanked him for giving me this great idea.