FSCA NEWS

By SUSAN ENGEL
Published: October 3, 2007

THE PROBLEM Every year, Roberta Valentine, an elementary school teacher
in New York City, encounters a few students who cannot concentrate for
more than a few moments. As a girl from her class once said, "Sometimes
if I have to sit still for one more minute, I just can't stand it." The
child who is distracted cannot learn and may distract others, said Ms.
Valentine, who has taught first to fifth grade for 20 years.

THE SOLUTION For years, Ms. Valentine did what many other skilled
teachers do. She determined which children had serious problems, like
attention deficit disorder, and referred them to specialists. She often
found herself reminding the others, repeatedly, not to fidget, jump out
of their seats or make noise.

Over the years in her work at the East Village Community School, on 12th
Street in Manhattan, she has tested various tactics: setting a timer for
10 minutes to help children break up their work time into manageable
chunks; giving a child a stuffed animal to hold during group discussions
(a common strategy for cutting down on fidgeting); and even enlisting
other students to help daydreamers stay focused. Still, every year, she
felt these efforts were not good enough.

A few years ago, Ms. Valentine read a book by Mel Levine, an expert on
learning disabilities, about schoolchildren who have trouble focusing,
and came across his term "mind trips" to describe such moments of
distraction. She felt that it offered a clue about how to proceed.

Meanwhile, like many teachers in the last decade, Ms. Valentine decided
to update her use of technology in the classroom by learning how to make
PowerPoint presentations, and teaching the children to do them as well.
It occurred to her that she might have stumbled upon a way to help
children tell others something interesting about their distractibility,
rather than simply trying to hide or suppress it. And so she would help
some of the children make PowerPoints about their "mind trips."

Ms. Valentine asked six children to describe what they thought about
when their minds were wandering, and wrote down everything they said.
Then, each child illustrated their sentences. Finally, Ms. Valentine
recorded the children saying the sentences.

Together she and the children put the written and spoken sentences onto
PowerPoint, along with the illustrations. Each child's work became a
multimedia slide show about his or her daydreaming.

One child said: "My problem is concentrating. I think about my dad. I
think about Titanic. I think about G. I. Joes. Sometimes my mind tells
me to stop thinking about things on my own. Sometimes people in my class
tell me stop thinking about things, and that helps me."

Another wrote: "I am a slow writer. It takes me a long time to write.
Sometimes I think about watching TV. I don't like the way I hold my
pencil, it feels funny. My teacher says, take a break. When I tell my
mind to focus I write more."

Another wrote: "Sometimes I can't sit in my chair. My teacher says,
'Angela, sit in your chair.' Sometimes I fall off my chair and sometimes
I even lay down. Sometimes I walk around the classroom. I say to myself,
'Angela, you have to stop.' The kids in my class say 'Angela, sit down,
please,' and that helps me. If you have this problem you could ask your
teacher or the kids in your class to help you, like I did."

The children showed their PowerPoints to other students.
"It doesn't solve the problem entirely," said Ms. Valentine, who has
used these presentations for two years. "Kids whose minds wander become
adults whose minds wander."

But by describing their daydreams, she said, children are "able to
figure out not only what went wrong, but what kinds of thoughts and
tricks could help them concentrate."

Susan Engel is a psychology professor and director of the teaching
program at Williams College. Contact her at e-edu@nytimes.com if you
have a teaching problem to share.

# posted by FSCA @ 10:43 AM