"I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. I believe that the school must represent life--life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the play-ground."
I love this quote. I love the idea about making school a place of living, not just a place to learn things that will help us live later. I think this means that we should not just preparing our students for critical thinking that might happen in later grades, but allowing them to think and create their own opinions right now. I know that in my own schooling I was never taught that I was allowed to have my own ideas or think for myself. I was taught how to take exams and get good grades. I wasn't really taught how to think for myself. I think rooting our teaching of basic skills in real life issues kids are facing right now will give the skills context. Our students will be able to learn better this way. That is the way they learn naturally outside of the school. That kind of learning seems to be much more effective and longstanding than simply giving our students almost random and independent information without context and connection to real life and living.
How can we make our classrooms a place of living rather than just learning?
I think a way we can do this is by opening up a discussion that all the students can contribute to. This could even be done when we are presenting a book...we could address an issue in the book that is something they come face-to-face with regularly and discuss ways to resolve those issues. This would help them in two ways...to better understand the book and their reading and also to better understand how to deal with life's issues. I think open-discussions are a great place for learning to occur.
ReplyDeleteWith all the talk of assessment we have been doing in psychology I like the thought of authentic tests. Making real life action oriented tests, and assignments too I think is a way we can bring life into the school room. Anything really, that is getting them out of their desks writing things on paper. Allowing students the freedom to choose, and decide what they want to do with their time, relates them to being independent people. Inquiry and exploration is good, because they are interested in what they are doing, so they are actually the ones doing the learning. And of course whenever we can, give them real life examples of how this will help. "such and such uses this to do this and that" type model I think sets the purpose and helps the motivation.
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