Confidence?

    The topic today is confidence. How do we build children’s confidence? How can we change attitudes of students who are struggling, so that they can have the chance at learning? How do we reduce the anxiety in a classroom for children who struggle? I don’t begin to have the answers to these questions, nor could I ever discuss this thoroughly in a blog post. I could write a 300 page book, and still only scratch the surface, but these are things we need to consider. If children don’t have confidence when they start the early grades, this lack of self confidence builds on itself and can have devastating effects on learning and on the child’s life into adulthood.

    Here is a situation. Say you are a first, second, or third grade student and you can’t read.  You are constantly seeing material in the classroom that you cannot read, and you see you classmates in your classroom reading the material you cannot read. You try to read the material, but you aren’t catching on. What does this do for a child’s confidence and self-esteem and what could be done to repair this? It seems the more a child is put into situations like these, the more hopeless he or she feels. They might begin to say I can’t read. Once they say they can’t read, then it is really hard to break through that. How can we teach something to someone, when that person has made up his or her mind that he or she can’t do it. It is like the old saying, "if you think you can or you can’t you are right." Please, let me know your thoughts on this.