What Mary Ann did to get a 4.7 point hike on her students’ scores!

Dear Difference Maker,

Focus on doing the work to learn the better ways to engage students is what created a 4.7 point improvement in Mary Ann’s students’ scores!

Opportunity found Mary Ann because she focused on getting control back. She made a decision to get really good at empowering her students to self-regulate and be peaceful enough to accelerate their learning power.

I do it for today’s children and the weary, frustrated, worried adults who live with, work with and care for them; especially for the one’s getting themselves labeled “problem,” “behaviorally challenging,” “dysregulated,” “spirited” or any one of the 34 different diagnosed acronyms (ADD/ADHD/OCD/SPC etc.).

Let me share a quick case study with you about a person I helped.

One of my favorite examples is of a teacher who was able to break her cycles of failure and heal herself and her students at the same time.

Shortly after I started teaching my CE courses in the evenings at PSU, I accepted a job as an elementary counselor where I met the first-grade teacher, Mary Ann.

The night before parent-teacher conferences, I needed to see Mary Ann about the results of an assessment I had given her children. I found her in her classroom with stacks of work in front of her. She seemed burned out, beaten down and worried, and we were just at the end of the first quarter of the school year.

I sat down and she immediately told me she didn’t know what to do. She feared that there would be some angry parents coming in the next two days for conferences. She didn’t know how she was going to explain why her children weren’t as far along in their schoolwork as the children in the other first-grade classrooms.

The facts: I reminded her that the assessment that I had given her students recently revealed that 56% of her classroom were students considered at-risk behaviorally and academically.

What this means to a teacher, even the most competent of teachers, is that initially, they may have to be three times as focused and intentional to keep this population of students in their seats, let alone teach them how to pay attention and stay present during the school day.

Breaking the cycle: I invited her to consider taking my upcoming course. Her spirit lifted.

Mary Ann immediately signed up for my PSU course, “Breaking the Cycles of Failure” which is now “Academic Success 101: Accelerate Learning in Every. Single. Student.”

She was an eager student. In this adult setting, it was inspiring to watch her work through her issues openly and try to learn and understand how to be more effective with her students, and in her life. I was privileged to watch her take risks with other adults and with me that she had never taken before.

As we moved through each week’s lesson, she reported that her students were accelerating exponentially. She came to evening classes looking reignited with color in her cheeks. She began as a quiet observer and became an active participant.

The result of all of her taking my course was that her class had markedly improved on the same assessment given again in the spring. The standard improvement normally shown by the best of teachers would be an increase of maybe 2 points. Mary Ann’s class had increased its overall score, 4.7 points.

This was unheard of.

Needless to say, both she and her students broke through many cycles of failure in those seven months. Occasionally, I would hear other teacher’s taking notice of her accomplishments in the teacher’s lounge. With the right tools, her ability to accelerate her first grader’s love of learning reignited her light.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

I’d love to hear from you about this. Does Mary Ann’s story resonate with you at all?

Now I know you might not think (or maybe you do) that you have the time or energy to learn how to deal with social-emotional issues so you can accelerate your student’s learning power (or maybe you do) like Mary Ann.

But do you need help reigniting your light?

By the way, for those of you that are educators, what do you teach (or want to teach)? I’d love to know, especially because it’ll help me know more about my subscribers and how I can help you do better with YOUR energy and control.

Click here and let me know, I’d love to hear from you!

Enjoy the rest of your day :-),

Reaching out …

Keep It Simple & Straightforward