“You can do better.” This sentence rings in my brain over and over again.

Something that I was told endless times and all my school life, I could never understand what the teachers meant. I tried and tried and tried but nothing ever changed. I was told by my parents to try and I did, but no one believed me. And then I discovered the world of sports…the more I practiced and tried, the better I became and very soon I was bringing home medals and some sort of feeling of achievement …..at long last.
I wondered as a child, how come that when I practice on the sports field I succeed but when I try to improve my grades, I just cannot.
At the age of 35, a mother of 4, I decided to study. What could I study? Of course there were no choices for me except to become a sports teacher. Which I did.
It was the most boring thing that I did in my life –standing with a whistle on the sports field trying to get kids to do the things that the educational department decided that they should be doing. So I moved over to special ed school and my days became more interesting. I became more and more creative and started connecting the body and cognitive ability. This was the beginning of mind and body connection for me and the search of how to improve cognitively and perhaps even the search of how to help children “do more” and succeed.
Today I help the child inside of me to succeed. Every person that I help is that child, is that memory of “trying hard and not succeeding”.
When I hear teachers say “he has to try harder and he will succeed”. My answer is always “teach him how to try harder….these are empty words for a child..they mean nothing.” And most teachers get stuck on this one –they too don’t know how the child must “try harder”.
That is what I try and do….teach each individual how to try harder and how to succeed and each person is different and each pupil is my teacher –making me look into the situation and try and find a new and creative solution.