pedagogical thoughts
what does it mean to teach and learn at the idea school?
Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it. At IDEA School teachers engage, share, collaborate, facilitate, assist, encourage, but we do not teach. This single fact is the basic premise upon which our little school is built. We don’t ever force kids to do anything they don’t want to do. We don’t expect them to do anything that can’t be rationalized as useful and meaningful to them. While we don’t have a list of facts and figures that we think every kid of whatever age should learn and know, we do spend a lot of time building objectives around areas of competency that nurture independent learners. What I mean by this is, simply, that we show kids how to learn on their own, how to organize that learning, and how to share it. We know that the amount of information at all of our fingertips is limitless and one of the most important things is to know how to evaluate that information and how to use it to transform the world. We also have to nurture in children the understanding that they are responsible for their own learning. Students are given the time, space, and guidance to follow any question that comes up. Our work is to expose them to a multitude of ideas, people, and places and to provide them with the tools and resources to answer the questions they want to ask. We do know that there are foundational skills we have to provide kids with so they will be prepared for this self-directed work. These include things like reading fluency and number sense. We are constantly working on creative, engaging, and discreet ways to nurture these skills. While there is a time frame that we think is developmentally appropriate for our children to acquire these skills, we appreciate and assert the fact that every child’s process is different and kids will learn these skills in their own time if provided with gentle guidance and encouragement. It’s extremely difficult to trust in this process. We sit back while our babies learn to walk and our toddlers learn to talk, but as soon as our kids begin school, we begin to worry about benchmarks and standards. We label kids as either good or bad at regurgitating the learning we have selected for them in the time frame we choose. Some kids fall behind in school because they, for whatever reason, miss the deadline for learning a particular skill. They become lost in the tsunami of right and wrong answers and compounding expectations. Kids do not need us to force them to learn, in fact that can be extremely detrimental to their developing independence, intrinsic motivation, and agency. They need us to model curiosity, passion, and most importantly a love of learning. Anything, any of us want to learn, or make, or do can be achieved if we have the intrinsic motivation and the practice at learning independently. If your child’s intrinsic motivation is left intact; if their curiosity and inquisitiveness survives beyond their toddler years, we know that they will continue discovering, wondering, investigating the things that they are meant to. This is by far the hardest teaching gig I have ever had. There are no teaching manuals with color coded script that cue me as to what to say during an instructional time. There’s no section at the back of the manual with worksheets I can copy to keep my kids busy while I do individual conferencing. I spend countless hours planning opportunities for my kiddos; experiences I think will provoke their innate curiosity and prove engaging. It’s been challenging and I am learning how to be a thoughtful planner, how to evaluate information, and organize my learning, how to reflect on my experiences and to take risks. I’m a little behind the curve -at IDEA School the kids are already way ahead of me.
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