I thought the section about UPR for teachers in the Positive Psychology website was interesting. It is not very dissimilar to what a parent would want for their child. It seems as though the bulleted item below are pretty ingrained in many of the elementary classrooms that I am in. Recognizing students for achievement and giving specific praise for actions and decisions is something I have seem on many occasions with our students.
Offering choice and encouraging independence is probably something that we all ca do more of to help, as the article puts it, increase the child’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem. It is easy to ignore choice and independence as we feel the pressure to guide and grow our students academic proficiency. The need to teach our content and grow our kids reading, math, etc… makes it sometimes hard to provide choice and allow for independence, especially when they are not meeting benchmarks in many cases. Revisiting this concept may be helpful since a student who has a higher sense of self-esteem is likely to preform better and work harder towards goals that not.
Offering choice and encouraging independence is probably something that we all ca do more of to help, as the article puts it, increase the child’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem. It is easy to ignore choice and independence as we feel the pressure to guide and grow our students academic proficiency. The need to teach our content and grow our kids reading, math, etc… makes it sometimes hard to provide choice and allow for independence, especially when they are not meeting benchmarks in many cases. Revisiting this concept may be helpful since a student who has a higher sense of self-esteem is likely to preform better and work harder towards goals that not.
- Giving the child honest recognition for their success and achievement.
- Offering specific (as opposed to overly general) praise for their good decisions and actions.
- Respecting the child by offering them choices, abiding by their decisions, and explaining the reasoning behind our own decisions.
- Help them achieve competence by encouraging them to be independent and offer diverse opportunities to be challenged and to be successful.