Nurturing The 'C' Student - What It Means, And Why It Matters For Your Child (Part 1)

- By Rong Xin & Wei Xuan

We know what you're thinking: shouldn't every educator hope to nurture an 'A' student instead?

To clarify, 'C' here isn't referring to a grade on your child's report book. For most of us, the significance of grades has been so ingrained in our mindset that we have no qualms with labelling students by their grades. Offensive though it might be, western culture isn't far wrong with its strict, grade-obsessed Asian parent stereotypes.

But if you've been following our blog long enough, you'll know grades are not the end point for us as educators. Not by a long shot. When we talk about nurturing the 'C' student, what 'C' really stands for is Creative. For us, it's all about nurturing the Creative student: a student who can design and develop, construct and assemble, formulate and investigate. In short, a student who can create.

According to Bloom's Taxonomy of learning, the highest level of learning comes when a student is able to create and produce original work, and that is what we try to achieve through every one of our enriching classes.

As fancy as it sounds, it's really not that difficult to start encouraging your child to be creative. It does, however, take some effort and willingness to go against some of the conventions that society has come to take for granted. Here are some tips you can immediately apply into your parenting style that will bring out the creativity in your child.

Let Your Child Take His/Her Own Sweet Time

In a society as efficiency-driven as ours, time is a valuable, oftentimes scarce, resource. We rush from meeting to class, from class to lunch appointments, with barely an hour to catch a break each day. As a parent, it's easy for this frantic rush to seep into your interactions with your child without you realising it.

We have to remember this, though: many things we take for granted as adults are new discoveries to be made for our children.

Take for example the road you walk from your flat to the car park every day. For you, it is simply a path. The most amount of thought you give it is to check that you won't trip on anything on your way across (I don't even check that sometimes). For your child, however, every step presents the chance for a new discovery, from the snail slowly making it's way up the bush to the newly-bloomed flower that wasn't there the day before.

Yet, caught up in making our next appointment as we are, we don't hesitate to stop our child from marvelling at every bug that catches his interest. When we rush our kids from class to class, we take away the chance for them to learn organically through observation.

So before you yell at your child to "Hurry up!" the next time she's staring at a piece of bread carried by a trail of ants, ask yourself this: Is it really worth it for your child to give up his/her sense of wonder?

Here at the EJ blog, we strive to continuously post articles filled with useful tips and activities on a regular basis, so join our mailing list through the link below to make sure you don't miss out on any new updates! Next week, we'll be talking about two new tips on how to nurture a Creative student, so stay tuned to find out more!