Teaching can be tough and never more so than at the most junior level. All it takes is a few little tykes to cause maximum mayhem. Turn your back for a moment and someone starts eating the PlayDough and the noise in the ‘quiet corner’ becomes deafening.
Thankfully, it’s hugely rewarding too and on s1jobs there are vacancies for teachers in schools across the country where you can use your knowledge and experience to shape the next generation.
Meanwhile, as you pick Mega Blocks out of the sand pit and wipe fingerprints off the class computer, take heart from the fact that by encouraging 20 or so three and four-year-olds to play together for a few hours every day you’re significantly improving their social skills and learning potential.
Why? Because new research has shown that, at pre-school level, the good kids have a positive influence on those who are badly behaved.
As far as the nature/nurture debate goes, this is big news, because while genetics still forms the core of the human psyche, the research finds personality traits are ‘contagious’ among children.
This flies in the face of common assumptions that personality is ingrained and can’t be changed, according to Dr Jennifer Neal, associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University and co-author of the study.
The researchers studied the personalities and social networks of two pre-school classes for a full school year.
One class was a set of three-year-olds and one a set of four-year-olds.
Children whose friends were hard-working or extroverted gradually took on these personality traits over time.
But children whose peers were anxious or easily frustrated did not take on these traits.
Study co-author and psychology expert Dr Emily Dublin said kids are having a far bigger effect on each other than people may realise – it turns out three and four-year-olds are big change agents.
And the influence doesn’t just stop there. In primary school, teachers will frequently sit a conscientious pupil at a table with students who fail to concentrate.
“Some children have the ability to work through distractions and eventually their concentration begins to rub off on those around them,” says teacher Ann Forester.
So next time you feel tempted to separate out the joking jesters, why not try moving them around the class and use peer pressure to improve their behaviour?
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