Guruvani: ‘Parents must ascertain their expectations match up with children’s potential, skill set’ - Hindustan Times
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Guruvani: ‘Parents must ascertain their expectations match up with children’s potential, skill set’

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
Nov 23, 2020 04:04 PM IST

Guruvani: This forum provides school principals/ teachers a chance to share their views and insights on a wide range of subjects with students.

Sharing her views, this principal says, “Children are also subjected to some undue parental pressure and sometimes they are expected to fulfill the dreams of their parents. While it is absolutely justified to have dreams and goals for their children, we as parents ought to ascertain that the expectations match up with the potential, interest and skill-set of the child.”

Dr. Anshu Arora, Principal, Amity International School, Sector-43, Gurugram
Dr. Anshu Arora, Principal, Amity International School, Sector-43, Gurugram

What, according to you, is the key to success when communicating with the students?

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First and foremost, we should get to their level, understand their perspective and then have an open discussion with them. Children are tender at heart and are genuinely looking for acceptance. No matter what they say, we must lend our ears and hear them out. Even if they have to be corrected the sandwich formula of praise-criticise-praise works the best. Also, criticism should not be personal but directed only towards the act distinctively keeping the deed and the doer apart.

Today, children in general are super active, super curious and super distracted which causes concentration problems. What kind of different approach would you suggest to them to improve their concentration and memory retention power?

Children are our future and the hope of better tomorrow hence I would urge that they should tap their positivity and utilise their energy in a meaningful way. Parents and educators must give them enough food for thought and develop their wholesome personality in a holistic way. Over and above that, children need to be trusted and taught the ability to take complete responsibility for their words, actions and decisions.

As for retention and memory, children should flex their brain muscles just like they build their body stamina and muscle-power by regular practice, keen observation and high perseverance.

You have authored books for children, which shows how connected you feel to them. So, in your opinion, what are the most common problems they face nowadays while juggling with vast syllabus, extracurricular activities and peer pressure?

Students’ problems, frustrations and complexes usually stem from their economic-biological-social differences. However, I earnestly request children to accept themselves fully, know their strength and weaknesses, be a life-long learner and keep striving towards improvement.

Children are also subjected to some undue parental pressure and sometimes they are expected to fulfill the dreams of their parents. While it is absolutely justified to have dreams and goals for their children, we as parents ought to ascertain that the expectations match up with the potential, interest and skill-set of the child.

Describe an experience where you identified the educational needs of your students and developed a successful way to teach/train them.

In the past few years, the board has become very sensitive about the needs of differently-abled children but more than a decade back, along with the help of my staff members, we used to identify and counsel such children. At our own level, we used to reduce their syllabus and provide individual attention, extra classes, concept tests and try our best to build up such children both emotionally and mentally.

You have developed your very own app called ‘iBrainPower’ which helps students to grasp concepts and memorize facts in a very interesting and easy manner. How did you get this informative and useful idea for students?

I was a bright kid at school and in a race to do well and stay consistent, I started experimenting with my learning styles. I have researched a lot about memory, learning techniques, NLP (Neuro Linguistic programming) and developmental child psychology. Almost two decades back, I had even opened an institute by the name of ‘Brain Power Academy’ and in the past 25 years, I have been actively talking and discussing various techniques with the school kids. Since the pandemic had cut me off from children, I thought of recording the videos and sharing the tricks and methods of learning with them. For this, I not only learnt the mechanism to record videos but also explored the video editor available on MAC.

Whether you wish to excel in any examination, learn a new language, avoid embarrassing memory lapses or you just want to stay mentally sharp, improving your memory is what you need to focus on! The FREE learning App ‘iBrainPower’ has research-proven strategies that can effectively improve memory, enhance recall, and even increase retention of information.

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