Friday, December 9, 2011
No More Intervention Classes!
According to https://strengths.gallup.com, "a strength is the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity." The site goes on to explain that the "key to building a strength is to identify your dominant talents, then complement them by acquiring knowledge and skills pertinent to the activity." Add to that, "practice makes permanent", and you have a community of leaders who focus on a collective responsibility of focusing on strength based teaching. What an awesome school! Students no longer attend intervention classes. They are grouped by their number 1 strength with a teacher who also has that strength. (I want to work here) Then, regrouped through out the day to complement their strengths with other team members. For example, partnering teachers and students that are strong in INPUT with team mates that are dominant in FOCUS and DISCIPLINE can help to maintain distractions to a minimum. Teaching core content from a different perspective might just get us 100% student proficiency!
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Now that is a great idea! What do you do with the teachers that are not a match for any students though? With budget slashes happening everywhere, that would take some guts for a district to go in that direction.
ReplyDeleteEric, if the focus is strength, I can't imagine anyone being left out - or behind for that matter! Guts? yeah we call that something else in Spanish (or chutzpa in my Jewish roots). Bottom line, kids would excel and parents wouldn't feel guilty.
ReplyDeleteAh Carmen - what a perfect world that would be! I have to wonder however, what would happen to students who have strengths but have mental health issues that don't allow them to tap into their strengths? I have worked with so many severely behavior challenged students that could not function in a real classroom. They need intervention rooms because they need a calm place where behaviors can be addressed in a safe manner.
ReplyDeleteI, to, think that this sounds like a wonderful avenue of education to help build upon a students strengths. If I am an empathetic student that loves to connect with others, I would fair best with a teacher that cares a great deal about me as a person, and cares a great deal to have a connection with me....outside of how well I write, how I do in geometry, and how successful i am in geography. I do think that Gabrielle brings up a very valid point though about those suffering from mental health illness. I have been dealing with a young lady for the last year that is very strong in the areas of art and writing; however, she has been rocking between two severe mental health ailment diagnosis'for the last year - schizophrinia and/or bi-polar, and she could not succeed being mainstreamed with a teacher that was 'simply' strong in writing and art.She would definitely need major intervention to succeed making it through the day....
ReplyDeleteHi Ladies! I think strength based teaching would still work. What I know about several mental illnesses is that the common goal is to learn to cope. Someone with schizophrenia has to learn to cope and function in day to day activities.
ReplyDeleteI think about my cousin who learned so many things including how to use her mental illness to bully her mom. She's in her 60s, my aunt in her 90s, and now she is learning how to be self-reliant. However, I remember as a kid how my cousin was good at teaching me to remember things by using mnemonics. I can only imagine how different her world would be now if some one had used her love of limericks and mnemonics to teach her coping skills.