The greatest waste
imaginable is a bored student mind. Here is a child ready to learn,
eager (hopefully still) to learn, in a school setting, and bored.
Something is very wrong with this picture.
The best school for bored,
and perhaps not so bored teens, is one which constantly challenges
them. Instead of teaching the curriculum to the middle majority, the
school focuses on teaching each child, encouraging them to go one
step higher, no matter what the subject or challenge. Instead of
teaching geometry from a book, the teacher gives the class a project
or problem and lets them work on it at each separate level. Through
collaboration, sharing final solutions, and guidance from the teacher
you have an immense amount of learning happening and no one is bored.
Also no one is lost. For though we all have strengths, we all have
weaknesses, too. Even the brightest brain can encounter concepts
that just don't compute easily.
The whole key lies in the
way that the classroom is envisioned and organized. Many teachers,
seeing a class of active, noisy students see only chaos. I see
opportunity and growth. I am not speaking about the free schools of
the 1960's for our school is founded on a strong commitment to the
basic skills that children need to succeed in life. Communication
(through literature, writing, art, computers), organization (through
math, essay writing, reports), finding themselves and their place in
society (through science, history, civics), gaining self-confidence
and self-expression (through art and the challenges of each day to
explore another facet of their world). Work ethic, morality,
justice, and compassion are on-going as students and teachers work
out ways to meet the needs of all and to encourage the strength of
both the individual and the group.
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