Encouragement

Recently I heard a speaker at a volunteer dinner whom I'll not soon forget. Dr. Rodney Cooper, well-known author of several books, talked about encouragement. He recounted his experience growing up on a five hundred acre Ohio farm and failing in reading during first grade. He would get off the school bus, walk up the long, dusty road to his home, and hand his mother papers with D's and F's on them. Finally, his mother got a book from the school and read with him twenty minutes daily. One day Rodney got off the bus with a big smile on his face, clutching a reading paper in his hand. He walked up the long, dusty road and proudly handed the paper to his mother. His mother was delighted. She hugged him, promised to fix his favorite dinner, and even let him stay up later than he had ever stayed up before. The grade on the paper was a "C". Rodney wondered what might happen if he would bring home a "B" in reading. Dr. Cooper went on to describe the ways in which his short, stout, farmer father had encouraged him also.

Dr. Cooper spoke about an important principle that educators used to know, but often forget these days in the headlong rush to make every student into a junior genius before the age of eighteen. "People become what they are called," he said. That idea was part of my teacher training over forty years ago. The principal of the school where I first worked full-time admonished me to have high expectations for the students because children tend to do what is expected of them.

If parents or teachers mostly think of children as disabled, disordered, deficient, or dysfunctional, the children will respond to that attitude, whether or not they've heard the specific terms. They will feel discouraged, lose hope, and lack motivation for work. If, on the other hand, significant adults consider children to be musical, artistic, creative, lively, sweet, thoughtful, gentle, brave, mechanical, or otherwise talented, the children will be likely to use their talents to make their best contribution to the community.

Students who use their strengths increase their capabilities. The resultant growth makes the student happy and everyone else too. Everybody feels encouraged. Of course, weaknesses that hold students back have to be identified and addressed. However, weaknesses should never be used to identify the child. Anyway, as stumbling blocks become stepping stones, deficiencies can disappear. It's the person's strengths, not his weaknesses, that determine where his life path will go.

Few of us have the power to change the textbooks and tests that place our children under so much pressure these days. But we can encourage all their efforts as Dr. Cooper's mother and father once did. We can help them discover and use their special talents. We can communicate encouragement. We can help children be all that they can be. Then that thirteen letter word "encouragement" will make a huge positive difference for all of us.

Mary Sue Laing, M.Ed.
Resource Teacher, St. Ambrose School
newskill7@msn.com

by Mary Sue Laing, M. Ed., New Skill, Inc. Academic Tutor