awakening genius in your classroom shereen abou hamad

Awakening Genius in your Classroom

Shereen Abou Hamad

Thomas Armstrong

AWAKENING

GENIUS IN THE

CLASSROOM

Every Student is a Genius

•“ Genius” is not only who scores above130 on IQ test.

•It means “one’s joy in learning”

• Thus; every student has genius under his skin .

The following are 12 basic qualities to expand the meaning of genius. These are the basic building blocks of each student’s intrinsic genius.

The Twelve Qualities of Genius

1.Curiosity

•Children are naturally curios about the world around them from the earliest weeks of life.

•However, some teachers see curiosity as “ off-task” behavior, irrelevancies, and even rudeness.

1.Curiosity

•Teachers should know that these questions emerge out of students’ genius-their often insatiable need to find out everything they can about the world..• A good teacher knows how to take the question and make it serve the lesson plan’s objectives and the curriculum.

2.Playfulness

•When children play, they reinvent the world.

•It’s very healthy to allow playfulness presence during the school day in an appropriate way.

playfulness Allows students to :

•Work through emotional conflicts•Develop and test hypothesis about the

world•Investigate complex social roles•Prepare full-fledged participation in the family and community•Develop more

appropriate ways of relating to peers

3 .Imagination

•Children and adolescents can close their eyes and see all sorts of images: swirls of color, cartoon, pictures, etc…

•This imagination has come to be associated with something negative: daydreaming.

3 .Imagination

• Teachers should benefit from this imagination as a potential source of cognitive power that the student might use to write stories, initiate deep dialogues about significant life issues, etc…

4.Creativity

•The word creativity is directly linked to the word genius in meaning.

• Children and adolescents, being relatively new to life, are naturally creative because they haven’t been brainwashed.

• Creativity manifests itself in poems, drawings, novel observations, etc…

5 .Wonder

• It is the natural astonishment that children and adolescents has about the world around them.

•It reveals the depths of our students’ minds and deepens the learning process whenever it occurs.

6 .Wisdom

•It comes out of wonder. •The student who is able to experience the wonder of the world directly without having acquired wisdom from the years of experience has genius!• Can you imagine a first-grade

student drawing a rainbow saying it stands for the world of peace. This is wisdom!!

7.Inventivness

•It has a certain “ hands –on” quality.•Children can come up with strange uses of

common things •As a teacher, don’t be rigid to the curriculum to give students time to exercise their “inventiveness”. This enriches the learning experience.

8.Vitality

•It means that students are awake to their senses.

•Vital students response directly to their environment and engage actively in each and every moment.

9 .Sensitivity

•It is the incredible openness to the world.

•Teachers must respect this sensitivity.

•Its misuse and abuse might lead to subtle forms of brainwashing or emotional scars.

10.Flexibility

•It’s distinguishing fantasy from reality and taking the whole picture not piece by piece,

REAL

UNREAL

11 .Humor

•It breaks out of ruts and routines.

•It causes aliveness and excitement

•If it is integrated healthily in the classroom, it promotes learning.

12 .Joy

•It is the main factor to enjoy learning.

•You can see it in the sparking eyes, bouncing bodies, and squeals of delight.

•Without joy, learning becomes flat and tasteless

The Genius Shut Down

“The student enters the school as a question mark and ends it

in a period”.

?.

Why does the Genius Shut Down as the Student Grows

Up?

Genius Shut Down

Home

Media

School

The Role of the Home

Emotional Dysfunction

Food Disorders : anorexia, bulimia nervosa..

Alcoholism Drug Dependence

AnxietyDepression

Poverty

The Role of the Home

Fast – Track Life Style

Rigid Ideologies

The Role of The School

School’s Role

Testing and Grading

Labeling and Tracking

Worksheet learning

Testing and Grading

Using testing and grading as threatening techniques represses the expression of the students’ imagination and inventiveness.

Labeling and Tracking

Labeling and tracking students scratches the self-fulfilling prophecy as well as the hallo effect

Worksheet Learning

Students spend their time filling blanks and circling the right answers.

No genius have attributed his/her success to a worksheet!

It’s too boring

The Role of the Media

Media’s Role

Stereotypical Images

Insipid Language

Mediocre Content

Reawakening Genius in your

ClassroomReawaken the genius in yourself.

•Be enthusiastic about your teaching

•Be up to dated

•Attend workshops

•Read books for pleasure

•Join clubs…

Reawakening Genius in your

ClassroomProvide simple genius experience

Reawakening Genius in your

ClassroomCreate a Genial Climate in your

Classroom

Freedom to choose

Open-ended exploration

Freedom from judgment

Honoring every student’s experience

Reawakening Genius in your

ClassroomBelieve in every student genius

Multiple Intelligences

IQ

EQ (Emotional Intelligence)