Something I have been pondering just recently is the pointless way as coaches that we constantly focus on things that just don’t matter with people especially children. When we as teachers pass on information to others we tend to focus primarily on the things that they are doing wrong or could do better now obviously we have to teach good habits but to critique everything just makes the person learning believe that their dreams are un-achievable. And that poses the question, is telling the truth always best?
Now this is fairly easy to understand and most teachers try to give praise in the appropriate dose, but I think the bit we find hardest to balance is how much and when we need to tell our students about the size of the world and enormity of the challenge they face to make their dreams a reality. This is when telling the truth doesn’t always benefit anyone because when a student is struggling with something small making him/her aware that this is the easy part and it only gets harder only kills dreams not promotes them.
This is something I have been very guilty of in the past, the explanation for my guilt is my desire to be truthful and set them up to deal with the problems that are yet to come but I have come to realize that they will never reach those problems if they are aware of them from the out set, well most won’t any way and the aim of any good teacher should be to be judged by his weakest student not his strongest.
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