Cinderella's HARD WORK

THIS Cinderella has had the best waltz these four days. Of course she is looking forward to having another night of dancing, (yes, maybe a night of folk dancing with some old friends in MO). Okay, if you know me, whenever I say I have a good dance it probably means that I feel all my hard work proves to be more than 'it is worth'. And, speaking of 'hard work', I have my own interpretation of 'hard'. So someone says 'you work very hard', I told her 'that's not “hard”'. Practicing dancing has never been hard. I in fact enjoy it a lot. Now, speaking of enjoying working hard... BINGO! I want to blog about how to motivate my kids to work hard!

For a thousand times I have asked my students why do they or why don't they enjoy studying, they might give me different answers but the main idea is always 'I'm not interested. It's not fun.' That prompts me to ask another question: why aren't they interested? Why isn't it fun? Every kid loves and enjoys doing something; therefore, the key is how to make them like studying the way they enjoy their favourite pastime. I have no objection about kids doesn't like academic things and enter the society earlier than their peers as long as they acquire the necessary level of literacy and reasoning ability. Let's accept it, someone may just be hopeless in terms of mathematics but brilliant in playing sports. Why can't we train this person to be our next Olympic winner at a young age instead of forcing them to enter university and tell the most ridiculous lie to them that 'you can choose you career upon finishing the degree when you are 21?' This is the biggest lie ever, since everyone knows that training of a certain talent is always better be at an early age...

Let's take a look at my cases of HARD working. At first I wasn't so obsessive. I mean I practiced but not an hour every single day. Then I found myself was dazzling on the floor, not only myself, but the other dancers also noticed this new girl CAN DANCE; then I started to mind the detail and tried to perfect my skills and advance my technique; then, I got more envious gaze and praise which in turn gave me a reason to work even more. Of course I enjoy dancing, I love it because I feel like I am another person and can express myself freely with my body, maybe with a little eye contact and facial expression too. Once I have my dance shoes on, I am no long the decent teacher that I claim to be but an incredibly sexy dance professional. (I somehow feel that this is the real me.)

The same also applies to my studying. Often people say they think I worked very hard to gain all those degrees, but for me 'HARD' is not a correct word. I simply enjoyed it. People say they need a degree to get a good job so their drive is 'the need'; however, my degrees have never given me any tangible rewards. The benefits from studying have been from the ability of taking retrospection and self-evaluation; from the conscious of the refining, retuning, and refocusing of the my teaching; from the praises of parents, who has lately become 'loyal' to my teaching.

You may think that it's the praise that drives me study or practice. Now let me present my argument: I hadn't known I would have the honour that I have achieved recently. It is after tons of times practicing dancing with an invisible partner I mastered my legs in the way dancing needs me to; after hundreds of thousands hours spent on studying I gained my degree and after years of working I gained people's respect. So you see what I mean- there is no 'praise' at the very beginning.

Simply put, it's purely the 'desire to know'. Then my question should be tuned to focus on 'how to make them have such desire?' I am not a psychologist, I don't know how to analyze my mind. I don't know how to analyze my kids' minds and give a prescription. What I can do is to encourage. Tell them how well I understand their thoughts, and I know it very well that studying may not be the most interesting thing in the world (probably will never be...). I give them a reasonable target to achieve. I will never think it too big, I don't even set the target of 'to pass a dictation' for a kid who used to get zero mark... to make it more sensible, just tell him the target is 'better than the previous one'. So far we have made some progress, even though that's just 4 or 5 marks higher, it's better than pushing too hard and make studying a nightmare. Learning itself should be fun- I think the kid also enjoys the time we have been spending together, it's the assessment not the fun thing.

Well, that's my sharing of what 'learning' and 'fun learning' should be in my point of view, and how it has been in my classroom.