One
of the most frustrating experiences that a parent can have
is when their child is experiencing difficulty in school.
Most parents don’t know what to do or know where to
turn for help. The most obvious place for help would be to
talk to the teachers at the school. However, many times the
teachers don’t know what to do either. Part of the problem
is that teachers are not extensively trained to deal with
students who are struggling in school. It is a very complex
problem and there are many reasons a student might struggle.
Blame is everywhere. Everybody is pointing fingers at somebody
else as the person responsible for the struggle. Parents many
times blame the teachers or the school system. Teachers many
times blame the parents or lack of family support or the lack
of funding for adequate supplies and books. EVERYBODY blames
the student. They accuse the student of not trying hard enough
or of being lazy or of not caring. They often label the student
with a learning disability and put him or her in a special
class. Meanwhile, the student continues to struggle and the
frustration level of all continues to grow.
Most solutions are aimed at changing behaviors or the environmental
constraints of the student. We may ground them, or take away
their TV privileges, or make them study longer, or monitor
their schoolwork to make sure it is turned in. We sometimes
change teachers or schools, or have them do their homework
in a different setting, or have them do homework at a different
time. Most of the time, these attempts do not provide a long-term
solution. It produces a lot of policing on the part of the
parent and a lot of bickering between the parent and student.
This bickering causes hurt feelings and escalating frustration
for both the student and parent.
Maybe it is time to look for solutions in different places.
Maybe the real answer for how to help struggling students
is not by changing behaviors or environmental constraints
but lies in how the student perceives school and learning.
In my opinion, there are five primary areas within which problems
in school originate. They are:
INAPPROPRIATE ATTITUDE ABOUT SCHOOL,
NOT KNOWING HOW TO LEARN,
LACK OF MOTIVATION,
ASSUMING NEGATIVE INTENTION, and
INAPPROPRIATE RESPONSE OF PARENTS AND TEACHERS.
ATTITUDE: Make sure the student has an appropriate way to
think ABOUT school and learning or certain subjects. The way
a student thinks about school establishes whether or not school
is meaningful. If school has no positive meaning, the student
has no reason to excel. If school has a negative meaning,
it becomes an incubator for behavior problems. A metaphor
that I use is “Not knowing what school is about is like
putting together a jigsaw puzzle without looking at the picture
on the box. Without the picture on the box, the individual
pieces have no meaning. When you have the picture on the box,
it shows you how the pieces fit together—how different
parts of the puzzle relate to each other.”
You can find out what their attitude is by getting an answer
to the question “What is the meaning of school to you?”
If they say things like: “It has no meaning.”
or “I don’t know.” or “I get to see
my friends.” or “I have to go.” then they
will drift through school in a meaningless fashion. At best,
they will have to force themselves to do the academic tasks
assigned to them. School will be no fun at all. If they say:
“School is boring, I hate it!” or “The teachers
pick on me.” or some other angry variation of that,
then school will be one behavior problem after another. If
their answer is some variation of “It is where I get
to go and learn new things.” then learning and school
will have a positive meaning and will be fun to them.
An academic level where attitude and meaning really makes
a difference is in college. Many times students will enroll
in college because it is expected of them or because they
want to be college educated. However, many times they do not
know yet what they want in a profession or career. They have
not yet figured out what they want to do with their life.
When this happens, many times the course work will have no
meaning to them. So they have to force themselves to study.
If they haven’t yet learned good learning strategies,
the more complex course work is even harder for them to deal
with than it was in high school. This, coupled with the lack
of meaning of the courses makes college a very frustrating
experience. Add to this frustration the experience of being
on their own for the first time and it can sometimes make
their social life far more tempting than studying. Their grades
go down even further. They subsequently drop out thinking
that college is not for them. When I have a college student
like this in to see me, I elicit their Virtual Question. Their
Virtual Question is an unconscious question that defines who
they are and what their purpose is for being here on planet
earth. It defines their life and what is REALLY important
to them. Once they know their Virtual Question, they can choose
careers and make other major decisions so that they serve
their Virtual Question. Now the course work will have meaning
because it now serves their Virtual Question
Another interesting phenomena I find when I work with students
and their parents is the idea that they either like or dislike
certain subjects. The way they talk about it makes it sound
like it is genetic or some natural law. They will make comments
like: “I don’t like math and science but I like
English and history.” Guess which subjects they do the
best in? Liking a subject or not is a matter of perception—and
perception can be changed. Think of the times in your life
when you shifted your perception of a subject. It might have
been a teacher’s influence, or the way a friend explained
it, or you found a sub-part of the subject that caught your
interest. One of the factors that greatly influences if we
like a subject or not is how we think ABOUT it. If we have
a poor way to think about it, then we generally will not like
it because it will not have meaning for us. If we have a good
or useful way to think about it, then we will like it because
we see it’s purpose.
I am a former math teacher. So, I have been very interested
in what causes students to not like math and others to like
it. So far, I have found four primary causes for students
to struggle in math. They are:
1. They don’t know their math facts in such a way that
they are automatic. Math facts are how to add, subtract, multiply,
and short divide the numbers from 0-9 (like for example, 8
x 7 = 56, or 9 + 6 = 15, or 63 ¸ 7 = 9.). Instead of
these math facts being automatic, many students will have
strategies for computing these answers. These strategies slow
them down later on when they are attempting more complex problems.
2. They don’t know the math terminology in such a way
that they can understand the teacher or read the book.
3. They don’t have a strategy for learning math.
4. They don’t have a good way to think about math that
activates their interest and motivation.
We will cover the first three in the next section. The last
one, however, is very related to this section. Many times
when I ask a student the question “In your opinion,
what is math the study of?” I will get answers ranging
from “I don’t know.” to “So I can
balance my checkbook.” to “So I can make change.”
None of these answers will inspire or motivate. Nor would
they help you make sense of 99% of mathematics.
I offer them my version: “Math is the study of the
manipulation of numbers and letters to solve problems in the
world involving quantities. The numbers and letters are the
measures of the quantities.” I then give them many examples
of problems ranging from first grade and on.” Such as,
“In the first grade, you learn to manipulate numbers
by adding them. So, you solve problems like ‘You have
5 apples and your friend has 4 apples. How many apples do
you both have?’ Later on in the fifth grade, you learn
there is a number called a fraction and you learn to add,
subtract, multiply and divide fractions. Then you learn to
solve problems like ‘Your mother baked two pies for
Thanksgiving, an apple pie and a cherry pie. She had ½
of the apple left and 1/3 of the cherry. How much pie did
she have left?’ In Algebra, you learn to use formulas
to solve problems like ‘Mr. Smith, the owner of Smith
Wholesale Clothes, wanted to celebrate the arrival of the
year 2000 by having a “20% off sale.” If he had
a shirt that originally sold for $45, what was the sale price?’
The study of mathematics continues on like this practically
throughout school.”
LEARNING: Make sure the student knows HOW to learn and do
the academic tasks assigned to him or her. Our schools assume
that students already know how to learn in the classroom and
that they do not have to teach them learning strategies that
actually engage the mind in learning in an appropriate way.
Many students struggle because what they attempt to do DOES
NOT WORK. Most “study skills” are simply activities
that may or may not create learning in the mind. For example,
two of the most common ways students are advised to learn
spelling words are: 1. Write the spelling word down 5-10 times,
and/or 2. Spell the word over and over in their mind until
they remember it. Neither of these activities works very well
and many students rebel at having to do the boring and repetitive
tasks.
Another learning task that many students struggle with is
learning their math facts. Most of them just repeat them over
and over in an attempt to learn them. How boring, repetitious
and ineffective that is. I want them to combine visual and
auditory by drawing a triangle like the one below. They make
an internal image of the triangle with the math fact numbers
and symbols in it. They then close their eyes or cover up
the drawing and say the math facts off of the internal image
(eg, 7 X 8 = 56, 56 ¸ 7 = 8, 8 X 7 = 56, etc). This
attaches the auditory part of the math fact to a visual representation
of it. This is much more interesting and effective because
you are using more than one sense and it is quick and easy.
In my book, “Rediscover the Joy of Learning,”
I cover many of the basic learning strategies that I believe
students need to survive and/or to thrive in school. They
work extremely well and students seem to enjoy using them
because they are quick, efficient and fun. With the students
I work with, I make sure they at least know what I call the
“basic survival learning strategies.” These are:
1) Knowing how to learn spelling words; 2) Knowing how to
learn math facts, 3) Knowing how to memorize data and facts,
4) Knowing how to learn vocabulary or terminology in a way
that enhances reading comprehension, and 5) Knowing how to
read with comprehension. In my experience, if they know my
learning strategies for these five academic tasks, they not
only can survive school but thrive in most school environments.
In order to show the relationship between knowing what a
subject is about and a learning strategy for it, let me return
to the study of math. If you will recall, we covered in the
last section that “Math is the study of the manipulation
of numbers and letters to solve problems in the world involving
quantities. The numbers and letters are the measures of the
quantities.” So, when you are learning math, you are
learning how to solve problems in the world. This sets up
a strategy for learning math where you picture in your mind
(as the lesson is being presented) answers to the two following
questions: “What kind of problem is this?” and
“How do I solve it?” You connect these two answers
together in a picture in your mind. Then you verbally review
the answers to the two questions like “When I have this
kind of problem, I solve it this way.” Then, when you
are taking a test and read a test question, you ask yourself
“What kind of problem is this?’ and as soon as
the answer pops up in your mind, “how to solve it”
comes up with it. This strategy is very helpful with those
dreaded word problems.
MOTIVATION: Make sure the student is turned on to school
and the various learning tasks that he or she is assigned
to do. They become turned on when school or the tasks serve
THEIR highly valued criteria. Criteria are what are important
to the student. They are the standards by which behavior is
evaluated and judged. If a student values learning or doing
well or being competent, for example, and if they know how
to achieve those criteria, then they will be turned on to
school. If a student has not yet made the connection to their
own criteria, then they will not be turned on to school. They
will be very indifferent and passive. Many athletes are turned
on to sports because they value the competition and value
being “the best” but are turned off of classroom
activities because they have not yet found a way to be competitive
or the best in the classroom. Sometimes the link that is missed
is that they were coached in sports as to HOW to excel and
have not yet been coached as to how to learn in the classroom.
Other examples of criteria might be: to be creative, to be
independent, to be responsible, to be liked, to be unique,
to belong, etc.
Turning students on to school or learning or homework or
some school task is relatively easy to do. The art of doing
this is three simple steps:
1. Identify the student’s hierarchy of highly valued
criteria.
2. Connect the task to the hierarchy.
3. Build the motivation by pumping the connection.
Again, criteria are those values that are important to the
student. They are the standards by which he or she will measure
themselves.
To find the hierarchy of highly valued criteria, listen for
times (maybe in other contexts) in which the student is emotional--“turned
on” or “turned off” of something. If they
are “turned on” it means some criterion has been
met or satisfied. If they are “turned off,” it
means that some criterion has been violated or not satisfied.
When you find a moment like that, get an answer to the question
“What is it about (turn on or turn off), that is so
important to you?” Then listen for criteria.
When you think you have a criterion, verify it by curiously
asking the question “So, (criterion) is important to
you?” You should get a full bodied, positive response.
If you get a weak or wishy/washy response, you do not have
one of their criteria.
When you get the full bodied, positive response, you can
build the hierarchy by asking “What is it about (criterion)
that is so important to you?” Again, listen for criteria.
The second criterion should be of higher value. The first
criterion actually serves the second.
Continue this process to build the hierarchy until you get
a circular answer or self-concept type criteria (like “I
feel good about myself.” or “I like myself.”)
A circular answer would be “When I do well in school,
I feel good about myself and when I feel good about myself,
I do well in school.”
As you are building the hierarchy, continually ask yourself
the question “How can school or the task serve these
criteria?” When you get a hunch or an idea, ask questions
like “Have you ever thought about the idea that (task)
can help you achieve your (criteria)?” They will sometimes
say no, but you can see the wheels turning and the excitement
building as they think about the possibilities.
Continue to build the hierarchy and talk about the connections
(or get them to talk about the connections) and their excitement
will build even more until they will be “really pumped
up!”
An example could be something like this:
Student—“I am so excited, I just hit four for
four yesterday in our baseball game.”
Parent—“That is exciting! I’m curious, what
is it about hitting four for four that is so important to
you?”
Student—“I have never been very good at sports,
so this means that the effort I am putting into my practice
is paying off.”
Parent —“So, seeing the payoff for your efforts
in practice is important to you?”
Student—“Well yeah, it makes me want to keep doing
it.”
Parent —“So, what is it about seeing the payoff
for your efforts that is so important to you?”
Student—“It means I am getting better!”
Parent —“And, is getting better important to you?”
Student—“Absolutely!!!
Parent —“What is so important to you about getting
better?”
Student—“When I notice that I am getting better,
I am aware that even though I used to think that I wasn’t
good at sports, with practice and hard work, I can accomplish
anything.”
Parent —“So, being aware that you can accomplish
anything with practice and hard work is important to you?”
Student—“Oh yeah, it means everything to me!”
Parent —“What is important to you about being
able to accomplish anything with practice and hard work?”
Student—“I feel good about myself.”
Parent —“So, feeling good about yourself is important
to you.”
Student—“Oh sure! That is what it is all about.”
Parent —“Well, you know, I just had a thought.
Doing well in the classroom is very similar to sports. Homework
is like practice. The teacher is like the coach. Test taking
is like the game, and so on. I am wondering if you devoted
yourself to working hard at getting your homework in on time
if you wouldn’t also start to become turned on to your
ability to accomplish better grades in the classroom. And,
I am also curious as to what else you could do differently
in order to feel like you are getting better and better in
the classroom. In fact, I would bet that as you notice you
are getting better in the classroom by getting your homework
in on time, you would feel really good about yourself, wouldn’t
you?”
Student—“Yeah, that is a great idea. I had not
thought of homework like that before.”
INTENTION: Many times when a student starts to struggle in
school, the parents or teachers start reacting to the student
as though they were struggling on purpose. In other words,
they assume negative intention behind the behaviors. They
sometimes call the student lazy or unmotivated or uncaring.
The perception of the student when these types of labels are
used is that something is wrong with him or her. In order
to protect their self-esteem, the student will either fight
back or withdraw in various ways. In fact, if this labeling
continues, the fight to save their self-esteem becomes the
main issue rather then how to solve the school problem.
When parents and teachers look for positive intention behind
behavior, students are more open to solving the real problem.
The parent or teacher is perceived to be an ally instead of
a foe. Sometimes the real positive intention is hard to find
because it can be buried pretty deep and is out of conscious
awareness. When we assume that they want to do well in school
and that they would do well if they only knew what to do differently,
we are assuming positive intention behind their struggle in
school. When we couple the notion of positive intention with
the fact that nobody teaches them to learn in the classroom
in a way that really works and that nobody has taught them
how to think about school in ways that make it meaningful,
it helps us see the plight of the typical struggling student.
This directs us in how to solve the problem without blame
or criticism.
So, how do we find hidden, unconscious positive intention?
You can either put yourself in the other person's experience
and guess the positive intention by getting an answer to the
question "What would this behavior do for me?" (remember
you are them) or "How would this behavior benefit me?"
or "What am I wanting to happen when I do this behavior?"
Remember to look for POSITIVE reasons connected to THEIR criteria.
You can also directly ask the other person any of the above
questions. It is EXTREMELY important that you do it with rapport,
bolstered by a caring, accepting, curious tone and demeanor.
That is why it is so important that you believe in the notion
of positive intention. If you don't believe they have positive
intention, your non-verbals will give you away and you will
come across as incongruent.
When you get an answer to one of the above questions, you
can elicit more important embedded intentions by taking the
answer you got and asking the same questions about it, "And
what does that do for you?" You can elicit a chain of
embedded intentions, each more powerful then the one before,
by continuing to ask the question of each answer you get.
When you have an idea of a possible positive intention, check
it out with them by asking the question "So, what you
were really wanting with that behavior was _______?"
Once you know what the positive intention is, talk to him
or her as though it were true. Applaud and appreciate the
fact that they are trying to do something positive and offer
to assist them in achieving their positive intention. Comment
on the fact that the positive intention is more consistent
with the kind of person they are than is the negative behavior.
Help them come up with a new behavior that is consistent with
the kind of person they are AND which will satisfy their positive
intention.
The more you practice this technique, the more skilled and
smooth you will become in asking the questions and listening
for the response and in finding the positive intention. In
my experience, as you do this more and more, you will find
that other people treat you significantly better AND you treat
others better.
RESPONSE: Many times the crucial element as to whether the
real problem is addressed and solved is the response of the
parents, teachers, and/or peers to the struggling student.
If their response is perceived to be critical and judgmental,
the student has a strong tendency to “take it personally”
and either fight back or withdraw. This escalates the situation
into a much harder to solve problem because it becomes a self-esteem
issue rather then a simpler to solve school problem. Unfortunately,
our society and schools have a strong tendency to place blame
and/or to judge. One of the most effective ways to respond
is by looking for positive intention behind the struggle with
a caring, loving, accepting and appreciating frame of mind;
then marvelous communication opens up. You then have the opportunity
to help them in the ways previously mentioned.
Summary
So, the art of helping your child when they are struggling
in school lies mostly in the realm of communication. Particularly
as in helping them in the five areas as outlined in this article.
Knowing how to help them with other learning strategies or
when they have learning disabilities such as Attention Deficit
Disorder (ADD) is covered in more depth in my book “Rediscover
the Joy of Learning” or in my workshops. Staying away
from anger or criticism is vitally important. Also, one of
the most critical communication tools is in seeking positive
intention. Looking for positive intention is a major cornerstone
of effective communication and is very powerful.
When the communication is open and honest and you are looking
for positive intentions, it is easier to look for trouble
spots and their solutions. Now you can look under the other
areas of “making sure they know how to learn”
and/or “making sure they have the right attitude”
and/or “making sure they are turned on to school.”
They deserve this approach.
About the Author
Don A. Blackerby, Ph.D. is a former math teacher and college dean and founded SUCCESS SKILLS in 1981 in order to focus on using NLP in helping struggling students in school. In 1996, he wrote a book “Rediscover the Joy of Learning” in which he describes his NLP based strategies and processes on
how he helps struggling students including those who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Don is not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or medical doctor, he is an educator who is certified in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and practices as a Personal Development and Academic Coach. On a spiritual path he is an ordained minister and registered in the State
of Oklahoma. He may be contacted in various ways. His address and phone numbers are: SUCCESS SKILLS, 1517 Walnut Cove Road, Edmond, OK 73013, USA. His phone number is 1-405-330-0164. His fax is 1-405-330-0167. His E-mail is info@nlpok.com . He also has a web site: www.nlpok.com . |
