Don't tell my son I told you this, but...

I know its a small thing, and I know it was as a parent not a teacher, but I still wanted to share an idea that I had.

My son Akiva, a fourth grader, had to make a book report on the BFG. It included a posterboard with images and captions, and also an oral presentation. This last part shut him down. He didn't feel he could do it. Worse, he was even afraid to practice and get better at it. He loved making the posterboard, and then he was done.

It was like the old Marx Brothers routine between Groucho as Capt. Spaulding and Chico as Signor Rivelli:

Spaulding: What do you fellas get an hour?
Ravelli: For playing, we get-a ten dollars an hour.
Spaulding: I see. What do you get for not playing?
Ravelli: Twelve dollars an hour.
Spaulding: Well, clip me off a piece of that.
Ravelli: Now for rehearsing, we make special rate. That's-a fifteen dollars an hour... That's-a for rehearsing.
Spaulding: And what do you get for not rehearsing?
Ravelli: You couldn't afford it. You see, if we don't rehearse, we a-don't play, and if we don't play (he snaps his finger) - that runs into money. 

Let's leave his psychology and our parenting out of the discussion for now. On a purely practical level, how could we get him out of this shut down loop? Dara got him permission from his teacher to present only to her instaed of the whole class. That was better, but we were still stuck.

I pulled out my iPhone, and said, "Why not make a voice recording of your presentation. Then you can see how it is."

I have no idea why it worked. Not only did he do it, he did it four times till he got it the way he wanted it. Well, I do have an idea why it worked. He later said he thought that maybe we could send the audio file to the teacher and he wouldn't have to present at all.  (I did consider this as a worse case scenario) But in the end he did it.

I don't know why the technology helped, but it did. I guess it made it really fun, fixable and not scary. In the end he did present to the teacher. But even if he didn't, he would have gotten a lot out of the assignment. Frankly, it would be a cool assignment. Kids could post their audio of video reports, and other kids could comment.
He would have loved that.

I'm just saying.