It was my late mother some years ago who sent me this meaningful piece, maybe remembering how I was so terrible at mathematics in school. A story about how just one word of praise helped a shy student break through a mental block.
Eric, like me, never very confident in school, had a particular dread of mathematics. A mental block, one of the school counselors had told him. Besides that, Eric’s teacher was unsympathetic. For the rest of the year she hounded him with ceaseless makeup assignments. When his mental block prevented his progress in fractions, she would thunder at him in front of the class, “I don’t care for your excuses! You’d better straighten up!’
Then came the remarkable moment. It happened in the middle of his ninth grade English class. To this day, some twenty-five years later, Eric still lights up as he recalls the moment.
The fifth period class had been yawning through his teacher’s attempts to spark discussion about a Mark Twain story. At some point in the lecture, something clicked in Eric’s mind. It suddenly seemed like he understood something Twain had been driving at. Eric raised his hand and ventured an observation.
That led to the moment when his teacher looked straight into Eric’s eyes, beamed with pleasure, and said, why Eric…that was very perceptive of you!
Perceptive. Perceptive? Perceptive!
The Word That Made a Difference. The word echoed in Eric’s thoughts for the rest of the day and then for the rest of his life. Perceptive? Me? Well, yeah. I guess that was perceptive. Maybe I am perceptive. One word, one little positive word dropped at the right moment somehow tipped the balance in a teenager’s view of himself and possibly changed the course of his life, even though he still can’t multiply fractions!!
Eric went on to pursue a career in journalism and eventually became a book editor, working successfully with some of the top authors in America. Many teachers are well aware how praise motivates children.
One teacher said she praised each student in her third grade class every day, without exception. Her students were the most motivated, encouraged, and enthusiastic in school. But perhaps the greatest honor of any teacher is seeing a child’s eyes light up when they discover something new about themselves and about the world around them.
The day when they hear you tell them, a word that makes a difference..!
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Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.
Great leaders are made not born! How true. Apart from parents, teachers are our first guides, the light to our candle of knowledge and therefore crucial to our personal growth and development. What we ‘perceive’ about ourselves is what we become eventually.
My son had a similar situation. He failed d 9 th std he was doing badly because one teacher was always hitting at him but we did not know only he would refer to her as Teacher Vonkar (vomit)As he repeated d class he got a new Teacher who would praise him n everytime he did well she would write a appreciated remark which he would proudly bring home for me to sign. He changed . He did his Masters in Electronics with distintion n is doing well in Life in Goa. That great teacher was Teacher Lolita Carvalho of Loyola HSchool, Margao.
I too was in a similar situation in class 8 when my teacher summoned my father to inform him that I was going to flunk in maths that year and that it was better to get me married off and not waste his money on my education. It was only when I was doing my masters that i got a true teacher who encouraged me to do my best and corrected me where I needed correction. That great teacher was none other than Prof Madhukar Rao.
When I became a teacher, the one thing I always kept in mind was to not demean my children because I knew the pain that it had caused in me. And i have had so many youngsters coming to me to thank me even now after so many years for not humiliating them in front of the whole class.
My son in law is a patient teacher of music though a prodigy. He belies what’s commonly believed of a musician, that is, of being eccentric. He’s gentle and angelic. He’s loved by the young people he taught.