Poker Chips
Have you ever stop and wondered what happens to a student on his way to or from school and how it affects him/her?!
One of our teachers sent me an interesting clip that made me think twice before saying something to a student especially the dyslexic student- and we all have a few of them in our classrooms.
The clip is by Richard Lavoie. He was the administrator of residential programs for children with special needs for 30 year. In the video he talks about insecure dyslexic students and he compares the self esteem to a bag filled of poker chips and our lives to a game.
The main idea is that everything in our lives affects that bag, if I'm beautiful and successful and don't have dyslexia or any other disorder than I have more poker chips to play with even if I lost some poker chips because I have a zit on my nose I can still play the game because I have a lot of chips to spare, the dyslexic student start with a lower pack of chips his starting line is not the same as the "normal" child so if something like that happens to him he doesn't have so many poker chips to stay in the "game" and play.
Everything we do or say to a dyslexic student affects his self esteem and his way of "playing" the game, we need to be aware of what and how we say things to these students- things that help them regain their confidence and give them poker chips and not only take from them.
We as teachers need to keep in mind that students after school and after meeting us need to face the rest of the world- on the school bus or playground, with their friends, peers, parents and they can take away all their poker chips so we need to make sure that we give them enough poker chips to keep them un the game and maybe able them to play smarter and handle their chips wiser.
I personally started thinking about everything and now I'm like a Santa Claus I give poker chips to all my students, and making sure they stay and play in the game and I even teach them some tricks.
I highly recommend you spend a few minutes and watch this video it may make you a Santa as well.
Rachel
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