You've Got This
Like Lion, Tiger and Leopard, all kids want to run, jump and play; don’t they? What if running at top speed is not your child’s strength? What if defying gravity like a jumping goat is not on your child’s agenda? What if the rough and tumble of a ball game is not your child’s thing?
Rachel Downie, a visual arts teacher, says we should be “careful not to divorce our kids from their natural aptitudes through their educational journey, by predetermining how they learn. Kids perform well when they are in touch with things that make them feel good.”
In talking with a local primary school principal, she said that, when children are working in groups, they are selected for the group according to their strength/s: so each child has an opportunity to shine and the group, as a whole, has the skills for the task in hand.
Samuel Vaughan is a 12 year old composer who understands that the high performance skills of individual musicians reach new levels of achievement, when they play co-operatively as the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, performing his work. Samuel has been given space to follow his natural aptitudes and feels good about what he does.
Disheartened, Chevron “picked up his tail at the pace of a snail and followed the others to run, and jump and play”: but when he was given scope to explore, to plan, to wrestle with a problem, that was when he felt good; that was when he reached out to his friends, Lion, Tiger and Leopard; that’s when a collaborative effort happened. Thanks Chevron. “You’ve got this!”
References:
Downie, Rachel. “Making the Making” in Kids on the Coast, May-June 2014, pp24-30.
https://www.facebook.com/Samuel-Vaughan-367861887053920/ Cited 01/10/18.
van Donge, Gloria (2017). Catch On in The Gifted Kid Book Series.
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