ECS 210 Response 3: Impressionable Students in the Classroom

“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression” -Dr. Hiam Ginnot

Independent thinking is a somewhat foreign concept in elementary and high schools. You’re expected to be a ‘good’ student (i.e. a quiet and obedient student) and memorize what needs to be memorized. Seems almost a simple concept—at face value. The reality is that the school setting alters an individual at the same level as—in my opinion—family/home life does. A child is at school for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10 months out of the year for—at societal norms’ minimum—at least twelve years. Personally, school had such a heavy influence in everything that I did and said and became. I liked it well enough (would I be writing this assignment if I didn’t?) but I was changed by school. But it isn’t just the institution that altered me, nor the building itself. It was a complex combination of everything that makes up the school environment: teachers, lessons, recess games, friendship groups, boys I liked, boys I really hated, the “big kids” and the “little kids”, the politics of who sits where on the bus, etc. Without school I do not know how I would look at the world. Furthermore, if I hadn’t gone to the elementary and highs schools that I did—who would I be? What would I believe? Everything that happened at school left an impression on me that I still carry with me every day.

There are positive and negative sides to the notion of school’s influence on children. On one hand, there’s a possibility that the engaging lesson or book sparked some passion inside a child that would have been overlooked otherwise. In that case, there is a positive impression that occurred when that information or experience “fell on them” as Ginnot would put it. On the other hand, however, one misinterpreted comment by a high school teacher on your poor studying habits or a friend making fun of you for enjoying something that was deemed “uncool”, can have such an impact—or an impression—on you and your view on yourself. I like to think of it like skipping a rock on a lake (a skill I do not—even remotely—possess). The experience—however big or small that made be) is the rock. Let’s say, for example, a teacher tells a student that they are bad at reading—they dropped the rock. The initial splash is the biggest. The student might go home and cry in their room, feeling poorly about themselves, their self worth might suffer. The consequential splashes of that rock hitting the water are the after effects of that one experience. The student refuses to read out-loud in class—one splash. The student proclaims that English is their least favourite subject—another splash. The student’s reading level drops because they give up on trying to learn how to read better—a third splash. These ‘splashes’ create ripples in the water that is the student’s life. Those ripples are the long-lasting remnants of impact that last for the foreseeable future in the student’s learning career. One move can change so much in a student’s life. I think we as educators and as students need to be constantly aware of that.