Motivating students to give their best & dealing with individual differences among students.
There is always room for improvement in your academics & overall growth & development of students, but as mentors be careful not to start thinking that your students are a complete failure just because they are not a complete success in all the ways you hoped to be. Your students can win sometime; they can lose sometime. That’s life. The point here is, when they find themselves terrified in the face of a serious challenge, they need to stop and reframe the situation in their subconscious mind.
Setbacks and unforeseen circumstances, especially in your student’s life, can always be on the cards. But as mentors we can definitely help them become a go-getter in life. The point here is, our mentoring approach makes students plan ahead for possibilities. It may draw up a flexible plan of action that allows them to adapt to the changing conditions and circumstances that life will possibly throw at their way.
As mentors we need to make them equipped to live their life on their own terms, help them believe they are in full control of their own destiny — making the most of every situation they find themselves in.
And this is possible if we are able to enhance their skills. By developing skills students can become “self-regulated learners”.
The term “skill” is therefore used in a broad sense that is to enhance their cognitive, metacognitive and affective skills.
Cognitive skills include all the information-processing and thinking skills, often called “study skills” in an academic environment.
Affective skills are the skills of behaviour and emotional management that is helping them develop resilience, perseverance and self-motivation, which often have a large role to play in educational achievement.
Metacognitive skills are the skills that students can use to monitor the effectiveness of their learning skills and processes, to better understand and evaluate their learning.
As psychologists, we believe that Skills are highly teachable.
And another most important skill is the art of communication.
Let’s talk about strategies to develop communication skills.
There are some simple tips for encouraging good communication in the classroom:
- Model a good conversation, particularly with students who struggle conversationally.
- Challenge put-downs or hurtful comments.
- Put thinking ahead of knowing
- Ask open-ended questions.
- Have informal conversations.
And last but not the least for dealing with individual differences among students. We need to incorporate Mindfulness. Indeed, Psychological techniques, such as mindfulness, focus on the practice of mental relaxation, and in an educational context there is evidence that mindfulness training can lead to improvements in the functioning of the brain with improvements being reported in reading comprehension and working memory capacity.
Mindfulness and Dream Analysis (Advanced Course)
Mindfulness means simply becoming more aware of your own perceptions as they happen, and in your thinking as it occurs. Helping students learn how to “stay in the moment” can help them to overcome distractions, increase attention and improve concentration and their interpersonal interactions among the peers will have deep bonding’s & will be able to nurture their relationships in a better way.
Mindfulness can actually bring more emotional stability. Emotional stability & the ability to keep a cool mind is an enormous asset when it comes to dealing with challenging life situations in students’ lives. The point here is , the way a student perceives a situation has a tremendous power to either help or harm them. At the end of the day, you need to understand that the things we perceive as obstacles are actually opportunities to do something. So the next time when your students face an issue or a challenge or a problem, don’t make them feel ‘I have no choice & this is the only thing I can do”, instead may them say & believe; “I am very creative, I have a plan A, plan B & plan C.” And this becomes effectively possible as mentors we help them inculcate mindfulness in their lifestyle.