Analyze and Fix the roots of the Problem...

Listen to a story, “You and a friend are having a picnic on the bank of a river. And you've just laid down your picnic blankets, you're about to have your meal when you hear a shout from the direction of the river. You look back and there's a child thrashing around in the water, apparently drowning. So you both dive in, you fish the child out, you bring them to shore. Just as you're starting to calm down you hear another shout. You look back, there's a second child splashing around again, apparently drowning and so back in you go. You fish them out, then there are two more children who come along right behind and so begins this kind of revolving door of rescue, where you're in and out, and fishing kids out and it's exhausting work. And right about that time, you notice your friend is swimming to the shore, steps out, starts to walk away as though to leave you alone, and you cry out, "Hey, where are you going? I need your help. All these kids are drowning" and your friend says, "I'm going upstream to figure out who's throwing all these kids in the river."

And that is the problem with most organizations. We are too focused on our own work and trying to quickly solve any issues that come up in order to just keep moving forward - we reward busy work. The result is an endless cycle of putting out fires as they come, when instead we should be able to recognize recurrent problems so we can get to the root cause. If we can find out how to fix the systems that cause the problems in the first place, we would save so much time and energy. 

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THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM & CLAREFY MODEL

Parents often think and make their children focus on academics alone. But we at clarefy, after research, found that after a particular stage, the academics are seldom needed by the children to be successful and happy. Its the life skills that should be integrated during the study life of every child. It includes a set of skills which can make an holistic growth in terms of emotional intelligence, positional intelligence and much more. We call this as the Hidden Curriculum.

Hidden curriculum refers to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and perspectives that students learn in school. While the “formal” curriculum consists of the courses, lessons, and learning activities students participate in, as well as the knowledge and skills educators intentionally teach to students, the hidden curriculum consists of the unspoken or implicit academic, social, and cultural messages that are communicated to students while they are in school.

The hidden-curriculum concept is based on the recognition that students absorb lessons in school that may or may not be part of the formal course of study—for example, how they should interact with peers, teachers, and other adults; how they should perceive different races, groups, or classes of people; or what ideas and behaviors are considered acceptable or unacceptable. The hidden curriculum is described as “hidden” because it is usually unacknowledged or un-examined by students, educators, and the wider community. And because the values and lessons reinforced by the hidden curriculum are often the accepted status quo, it may be assumed that these “hidden” practices and messages don’t need to change—even if they are contributing to undesirable behaviors and results, whether it’s bullying, conflicts, or low graduation and college-enrollment rates.

Register free at www.clarefy.com and make your child an overall winner in this career and life.

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Latest CBSE decisions amid Covid-19: Direct promotions to selective board exams

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) took the step of postponing all examinations from classes 1 to 8 as soon as the virus reached the country. In mid-March, the Board took the decision of postponing all the papers that were left in the Board Exam until further notice.

Below mentioned are some of the potential decisions taken by CBSE regarding the academic developments of school students amid the coronavirus outbreak:

One-time measures proposed by CBSE:

• ·        Students of classes 1 to 8 may be promoted to the higher grade without conducting exams. This decision will be taken after adequate consultation with NCERT.
• ·        Many schools have not yet conducted the annual examination for classes 9 and 11. These schools include all the Kendriya Vidyalayas, Naodaya Vidyalayas and some other government and provate schools. These schools are advised to promote the students of class 9 and 11 to the higher grade based on their performance in project work, periodic tests, term exams, etc. conducted so far.
• ·        When it comes to rescheduling the board examinations for classes 10 and 12, CBSE has not yet made the final decision of if and when the examinations will be conducted. The Board will be giving a minimum 10 day notice to all stakeholders before scheduling the examinations again.
• ·        As the Board was not able to conduct several board examinations for classes 10 and 12, they have decided to only conduct board examinations for main subjects that are required for promotion and admission into higher educational institutes.
• ·        For CBSE schools located outside India, it will be difficult to bring the answer booklets for class 10 and 12 students back to India for checking due to the current situation. So, the Board has decided not to hold any examinations for class 10 and 12 students studying in CBSE schools outside India.
• ·        Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the board has not been able to continue with the evaluation process of answer sheets as per schedule. Though the board has not reached a decision yet regarding the issue, they will notify all concerned parties 3 to 4 days before the evaluation process will be set to commence again.
• ·        To avoid being misled by rumours, all stakeholders are hereby informed to only trust the official announcements by the Board that are made on the Board’s website.
• ·        All schools are requested to ensure that this information is disseminated to all concerned students by their respective schools.

Amid the covid-19 pandemic, the Board has also requested all their stakeholders and concerned parties to be patient for further instructions. Though the situation might not seem in the favour of students currently studying in CBSE schools, the Board is trying to ensure that their academic future is secure.

For latest sample questions for CBSE 2021, register free at www.clarefy.com

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Stuttering Problem and Emotional Intelligence

The ancient split between emotion and intelligence is over. "They are together again, this time under the rubric of emotional intelligence (EI)". The work of many outstanding neural scientists has shown that the mind consists of both thoughts and emotions. Both work together in concert, influencing reasoning and decision making. In order to succeed in stuttering intervention, an understanding of the critical link between thinking and feeling is necessary. Self-defeating and self-handicapping thoughts, abnormal physiological reactions, fear and anxiety, and low self-esteem may often negatively affect decision making and life choices in people who stutter (PWS). Therefore, it is only through addressing the power of the mind and feelings that lasting change in general well-being, including successful communication, can be achieved.

Although many leading authorities in the field of stuttering intervention have long presented their philosophy on psychotherapy and counseling approaches with clients who stutter, and have proposed desirable attributes for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working with PWS, many clinicians do not address the emotional aspects of stuttering, and lack the emotional competencies necessary to effectively treat PWS.

People with stuttering problems may quick test their emotional intelligence levels at

http://www.clarefy.com/eit

In order to further address the affective and cognitive aspects of clients who stutter, this writer modified Bar-On's (2000) model with ten EI abilities, which was designed to help people to deal effectively with pressures and demands of everyday life.

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Overcoming Fear and Tension in Stuttering - For School Children

Most children talk without much difficulty most of the time. It’s true that children hesitate and stumble over words at times, especially when under stress or fatigue, but they show little concern over such mistakes. What, then, makes your speech different and what can you do to help yourself? Invariably, the child who stutters overreacts to his mistakes. He fears they will occur, becomes tense and feels helpless. During the time that tension is so high, the flow of speech stops or will not start. As you continue to have these tense moments that become different from what normal speakers experience, fear increases to higher and higher levels. You come to dread and perhaps avoid speaking. Many stutterers learn that their greatest enemies are fear and tension. If the battle with stuttering is to be won, fear and tension must be gradually eliminated. Let’s look at some battle plans that have helped quite a few stutterers conquer the majority of their fears, eliminate excessive tensions, and find that speech in most situations can once again come easily.

Conquering Tension. You must learn to substitute easy, slower, more relaxed movements for rushed, tight, forced movements. Typical tension sites are your chest and breath, your throat and vocal cords, jaw, lips and tongue. The practice suggested here can make for success in reducing the fear that follows from blocked movements, so think of these as stages of therapy that you can “put together” for greater effect.

Choose some words that begin with sounds that you think of as being hard—those on which you often stutter. Speech normally begins with a relaxed, unconscious flow of breath. Practice sighing and letting voice come easily. You don’t make voice, it just happens if you will let it. The same is true of sounds you make with tongue and lips. Feel yourself gently close the lips for the “P” or move the tongue to form such sounds as “T” and “K,” then go ahead and say the rest of the word. Notice how little effort speaking takes. Fear has resulted in too much forcing to get words out. You must learn what ‘not forcing’ is, and practice until easy movements become habitual. First, practice at a very soft, almost silent level, then gradually at a normal voice level. Practice the movement gently to make the difficult word begin easier, then work on other words that begin with that same movement.

Assuming that you engage faithfully in daily practice, try a different sound each week. Fear of words lessens as you repeatedly prove to yourself you have a new, easy way of producing them that is becoming automatic. As you practice, be sure not to let the tongue, lips, vocal cords, or breath become tight or touch too hard. No word or speech movement requires conscious effort. Feel the relaxed easy movements into and out of words. Stop and begin the easy movements again for the next word series. Now, you are talking in phrases that are short and that you have confidence you can initiate, if you remember to use the easy beginning you have practiced. Remember, speech sounds better in short phrases with frequent pauses.

By conquering fear-arousal through learning to plan your approach, and then using the easy movements which keep tension from making you feel helpless, you are beginning to control stuttering rather than letting it rule you. Certain speaking situations become easier. At this point you must begin to integrate your success. That is, you are not just having good and bad days, you are creating some successes out of potential failure. That’s what building confidence is all about—and stutterers say time after time, “I talk better when I’m more confident.” When you have created a better performance, you can realistically feel more confidence. The model is then begun for turning ‘bad cycles’ into good ones. You are then able to turn your attention to fluency rather than frequent expectation of stuttering. One of our adult stutterers who successfully went through the above said, “Now I think more about my fluent successes, and does that ever help!”

You appreciate most in life those things you do for yourself. Getting over stuttering takes tremendous self-discipline and desire. We have found that just practicing easy movements without trying to reduce fear is not too successful, since high fear keeps you from remembering the new easier speech movements at the time when you most need to use them. Also, just trying to reduce fear without giving you something to do that is new — and that works — may simply allow fear to creep back into the situation very quickly. 

School Children who stutter should be encouraged to lead positive lives without fear and anxiety. They need psychological care and moral support.

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Children and coronavirus: what we know and don't know

As the number of Covid-19 cases rises worldwide, parents trying to protect their children from the disease can take solace in one thing: the disease has generally been milder in children.

“Its pretty clear from all of the data who is ending up in hospital and who is dying. Severe disease is very rare in children, Its not yet completely clear whether this is because children are not being infected as regularly or do they just not get sick. Some of these children have a large amount of virus but they weren’t very sick,” said Williams.

Last week, there was a paper released from the Chinese Centers of Disease Control looking at people getting sick and who they had come into contact with, which suggested the rates of infection in children are just as common as in adults. The new research also suggested that perhaps the virus could be shed in fecal matter from children.

“People have looked at this a lot for SARS-CoV2 in adults and children and have found viral RNA in the stool, its not currently clear what this means – the secretions from our nose, respiratory viruses go into our esophagus to be swallowed, happens constantly with respiratory viruses,” said Williams, noting that there is evidence of other respiratory viruses in the stools of infected individuals.

“The question is, can it be transmitted to others via fecal material? This is likely most relevant with kids with diapers. All of us can have low level experience exposure of fecal material by poor hand washing but the only time you’re really exposed to a lot of fecal material is when we are changing kids diapers,” said Williams

However just because genetic traces from viruses are found in fecal matter does not mean that contact with fecal matter can make people sick. The viruses could be dead meaning that they can no longer infect people, but can still be picked up.

“This is really in contrast to a virus like norovirus (cruise ship virus) where people shed billions of virus particles in their fecal material and its easily transmitted person to person,” said Williams.

To prove that virus from fecal material could actually infect others, scientists would need to culture it from fecal samples in a special biosafety containment area, but these experiments have not yet been done. So overall, should parents be reassured by this study?

“Yes, I think so. It’s a small study, but every large or small piece of data we are getting suggests kids don’t get severe disease from this virus, although they get infected at similar rates and they might be spreaders of the virus,” said Williams.

However, there are many unknowns about coronavirus, and research is ongoing. Here is what we know now.

Can children catch coronavirus?

Yes. They can be infected with and appear to be able to transmit coronavirus, even if they do not have symptoms. That is why it is important for children to practice social distancing and hand-washing, even if they do not appear ill.

How does coronavirus affect children?

It is generally believed to cause milder symptoms in children, but the specific impacts by age are becoming clearer as the outbreak goes on.

Much of what we know today is based on reports out of China, where the outbreak began. There 2.4% of all identified cases were in children under 19 years old. An even smaller number within this group of children had severe symptoms, 2.5%, or what the World Health Organization (WHO) described as “a very small proportion”. But more research is being done and a clearer picture is still emerging.

Why does coronavirus affect children differently?

That remains unknown. Dr Jay C Butler, deputy director of infectious disease at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, “The phenomenon is very significant,” on a live-streamed show hosted by the Journal of the American Medical Association, but that the mechanisms are “really unknown”.

People aged 60 and older or with existing health conditions remain the most vulnerable to the coronavirus. That includes people with conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and chronic respiratory conditions, according to the WHO.


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