How Would Students Respond?

James Comer, founder of the Comer School Development Program, knows something about educating the 'whole child.' One of the critical components of Comer's belief of students processing focuses on the idea that every interaction that teachers, and others in the school setting, have with students matters and that these greatly influence how a child feels, acts, and responds.

I mention this point because the absence of positive interactions can have consequential results just as surely as the presence of them. As adults we interact hundreds of times each day with a large score of children in so very many ways. Likewise, each student has many interactions within the school day.,

All of this is not new for the vast majority of educators. Why do I mention this? I believe that placing a higher priority on one-to-one positive interactions is far more critical to a child's learning and growth than the overdone amount of standardized testing we are currently engaged in.

Here's a question for you. How do you suppose children would 'feel, act, and respond' to the onslaught of standardized testing? Put another way, do you suppose students would prefer a positive in-class teacher-student lesson (whatever that might entail) over a standardized test?

As teachers often say to students, "please pay attention!"

Dick