"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."
- John Hope Franklin
Ask a child what they think of when they hear the words 'school' and 'learning' and chances are the responses you will get will be some semblance of the following: a main dish of moans and groans with a side of whining, followed by dessert consisting of insecurity, and possibly a bit of animosity to top it off. Unfortunately, education in the United States has suffered a massive blow as of late, with the focus on learning taking a turn towards
teaching to the test, rather than teaching to instill passion, creativity, knowledge and thought. Like most of you, as an educator, I came up with a philosophy of education that would appeal to both myself and my students alike. I threw the rules and regulations out the window while spending hours trying to decipher logically what the education of my students meant to me and how, precisely, I would go about granting them the education they deserved while maintaining my passion for the job. Here's what I came up with:
I believe each child is a unique learner, one who needs a secure and stimulating environment to gain the most out of every experience. I support and encourage risk-taking in my classroom and more importantly, I welcome and crave the sharing of ideas. While some teachers frown upon social interaction within their classrooms, I thrive on it. In order to create such an environment, I believe it is vital to abide by the following guidelines --
1. The teacher acts as a guide. (Though the teacher is the authoritarian, so to speak, this does not mean the teacher is
solely a guide; I am a firm believer in learning as much from my students as they learn from me.)
2. Children are curious individuals. We must allow them to follow their natural instincts to be just that: curious. Their curiosity will actually direct their learning, and though this may knock us off of our path for any given amount of time, that is OKAY. Let it happen. You can make up for it later, but you can never take that glint in their eyes back when they realized they just learned something on their own accord, let alone were in control of the process.
3. Last but not least, a secure and comfortable learning environment is one that demands and receives respect to all people and things.
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| Zariki in Tanzania |
More often than not, we as educators are overwhelmed with the confines of a school's theology of education, not to mention the walls any textbook builds within our classrooms. There is an almost unnecessary amount of rules, regulations, stipulations, as well as a devastating focus on test scores in the school system here in the United States. All of these focuses have taken away from the ideology that our students should be taught solely to instill a passion within them that they were unaware they had, let alone to prepare them for the real world--something that has become, in my opinion, a not-so-subtle failure as of late. Since when has learning become so dull, boring, so force-fed? Gaining knowledge, especially when done in an amusing and entertaining way, should never be put on the back burner. It is our job, after all, to make children
want to learn; to instill a desire to be curious and to follow that curiosity.
Going Global is an interactive educational portal that relies on the collaboration of educators and students alike. There is a widely known African proverb that reads "It takes a village to raise a child" and Mackenzie's Virtual Passport is exactly that. Mackenzie has been a student of mine for almost two years now, whose passion for writing, knowledge and learning has inspired me as much as I've inspired her. Kenzie is a twelve year old girl with an endless imagination. She is unafraid to question what she doesn't already know and more importantly, she searches for her own answers. Even more eminent than that, however, is her eagerness and drive to learn. It is her hunger for knowledge that inspired this project and collaboratively, with your help and the help of those we meet along the way, we at Going Global would like to teach Mackenzie, and all of you, about the world and those in it, all the while having fun, with a hidden agenda.
