Many students have nerve-wracking experience when it comes to reading in front of peers. Such situations can develop feelings of embarrassment, shame and frustration.According to the experts, children are sensitive towards reading skills and need social-emotional support from teachers in the foundational years.
As the student progresses to middle school and those who fail to achieve a proficiency in reading disengage from school activities, dropouts loses interest. The most affected are from low-income groups.
“When children are in their middle and high school, they find themselves vulnerable as they are still having a hard time coping with reading problems; they view it as an unachievable task and consider it their failure, which leads to low self-esteem,” said Neelam Agarwal, an associate senior professor in the University of Lucknow. Many students internally develop inferior complexity that they are not smart, and think that school is not the place for them and a notion stems that reading is not an interesting activity. In such cases, school can become battlefield for students, who don’t receive proper support and guidance from their teachers. They may be intellectually capable of understanding every concept but still fall apart on multiple fronts.
Teachers’ role is crucial here because only a teacher can help students overcome his/her reading flaws. Some of the ways by which teachers can help reduce anxiety and shame in struggling readers. Teachers can accelerate students’ positive feelings, mitigate negative emotions, and foster an atmosphere where students can freely share their problems related to reading, said Ms Nootan Verma, a school teacher in Delhi.
