I would, too, if I were a child today. Standards are higher; school days are longer; homework is endless; free play is suspect; kiddie sports are heavily monitored by adults. Diagnoses abound. For a those and other reasons, many children do not find much fun in school or out.
In his “Input Hypothesis,” Stephen Krashen includes an “affective filter” as an impediment to learning. The filter is the Teflon shield of fear that we crank up when we experience or anticipate failure and that prevents us from processing new information.
As adults, we can just say that scary things like reading Proust or sky-diving are not for us. Kids can’t just dismiss reading and math or physics and history so cavalierly.
Enter the field of Social Emotional Learning. The relationship between attitude and achievement is well documented. We have to feed children’s souls as well as their minds.
This year’s Everyone Reading Conference on Dyslexia and Related Learning Disabilities features a number of sessions by experts in the field of SEL. They will suggest proven techniques for helping students feel better and crank down the affective filters that are preventing them from having success in school and in life.
As always, we also have lots of workshops on strategies for helping students master basic skills before their affective filters become impenetrable.
Join us on March 4 and 5, 2019 at the CUNY Graduate Center. You’ll feel good and learn a lot.
If, alas, conferences are not your thing, we have lots of small, 30-participant, workshops just for you.
- IMSE Institutes February 18-21 OR April 1-5
- Anita Archer on March 9
- Tell Me about It: Oral Language Development through Phonological Awareness, Visual Literacy and Story Telling- April 25 and 26 (ASPDP P Credit Course)
- Kendore Multi-Sensory Strategies for the Classroom on May 4
- SRSD (Self-Regulated Strategy Development Writing Workshop – May 15 and 16
All Everyone Reading events are approved for New York State Education Department CTLE (Continuing Teacher and Leader Education) hours.
All registrations are done through our new website at EveryoneReading.org
