One day Nisha, (a class X student, in my coaching classes few years back) enters the class with tears… “Sir I will fail in the board exams!” .
I ask – why do you say so?
She responded “I don’t remember anything for today’s test.”
I reiterated – “don’t create a story to avoid today’s test”.
She started crying.
I knew Nisha is not creating a scene here. Because she had potential to score beyond 95% marks in the Board exam. There were 2 more friends of hers in the class who were her “friendly” competitors. This is a normal phase in the learning curve of a person. When a person starts learning it takes some time to get the ability to recollect the new information. It involves learning and forgetting cycle before the information firmly sets in the mind.
When students try to write a test, learning and recollecting once or twice, they will not be able to write the required answer in the exam. They
panic, which worsens their state of mind and score less marks. Due to low marks, some of the parents or teachers get upset because it reflects on their competence. They ridicule, abuse or punish the students. This may create more problems. Sometimes It may aggravate the situation and performance may further worsen. As a parent or teacher we need to realise that this is a temporary phase.
In most of the cases, students have the capacity to bounce back. If they can’t do it by themselves it shows up in further reduced performance. This situation occurs mostly due to loss of self confidence. Such students openly start telling that that they have lower intelligence or weak memory or lack of concentration or some other such negative self impression. Mostly it has to be identified by the parents or teachers.
In such cases their confidence has to be boosted. It is not a job of psychiatrist. If we share with them similar situations from our personal life, they get an idea that they are not the only one facing such situations. The pathways we used to move out of such situations are great motivating tools for them. Narrating the struggles before the success of persons like Dale Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln, Arunima Sinha, Sudha Chandran etc., (there are hundreds of live examples) gives them the confidence that many individuals like them also were successful. Recovery will be quick.
This learning method is also useful for such students. Students read a paragraph twice. Then they write the same from memory. First time they recollect about 20-30% of what they read. Then they again read and write and repeat the process till they remember maximum of the paragraph. Care should be taken to write in own language of the students. Not memorising without knowing the meaning of each word in the paragraph. After working with two paragraphs, they write both the paragraphs together and so on. This technique has worked with hundreds of students.
Recovering from such state of mind may not long last always. Sometimes, just in a matter of weeks one or other situations may break them down again. But they can recover little faster because they have some experience from their earlier recovery. The role of parents and teachers in monitoring such children is important. The support has to be continued if there is delay in recovery. In my experience assisted recovery is very quick compared to self recovery. So the main role of parents and teachers is identifying the roadblocks of their wards and assisting them.
Having started an incidence, I should tell you the performance of Nisha and her friends. The percentage scores of three friends were 98,97 and 96. As of now one is studying medicine and other two are doing engineering in reputed institutions. They sometimes meet me when they are around in town. May be because – Dale Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln, Arunima Sinha, Sudha Chandran still inspire them to cope with stress. (Name of student changed)
Prathvi Uthaiah- 9845013053.
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