Reflection

A key concept from Why Don’t Students Like School? for me was “It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice”. Many of our students want the easy way of going through a class, rather than looking at the class as a way to become proficient in an area. I have always been a firm believer in mastering the math facts to make each new concept less time intensive. The book stressed the importance of practice to also free up working memory space, such as chunking and also making the mental processes become automatized. In following with that idea, chapter eight discussed telling our students that hard work pays off. Similar to the author’s example, I also use the example of athletes and hard work each time I return from watching competition at the Olympic Training Center. I try to stress to my students about how important that effort and dedication is to all areas of life. Until a child has the experience of dedicating time and effort into something and seeing success from that, they rarely “get the point”. I could share examples every day in my class about where practice paid off, but some of my students are still reluctant to put the effort into trying. I try to start small in getting students to practice filling out their student planner daily until it become automatic. History has shown that students with success generally keep track of their assignments and due dates. The same goes for us as educators. We continue to improve on strategies that we practice repeatedly. Daniel Willingham also discussed in addition to just going through the motions of practicing the skill, we need to consciously try to improve, seek feedback, and undertake activities for the sake of improvement. Maybe this is a good time of year to again discuss with my students ways that we could become more proficient in school tasks. Do you suppose the word practice will come up in our discussion? I certainly hope so.