School and family responsibilitySchool and family responsibility : SCHOOL AND FAMILY ARE BOTH RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR CHILD’S MOTIVATION TO LEARN We never use only test results to evaluate a student and we don’t give credit for teachers that do. Some have done so in the past because it was a tendency (trend) in education and/or in educational psychology, it was a demonstration that they were up-to-date in that area, showing that it was important to test the children. Either that, or the motives were merely political, to identify the most capable in order to point out which race, country or nation had the best talents. That fever is gone. The importance of the IQ test started to lose its pace with the rise of creativity tests and with the spreading of the possible existence of multiple intelligences. And the hypotheses that supported the work of researchers have changed and with their findings, or their denial, we have reached further evidence as to how to evaluate our children.
Tests only serve to help, to indicate traces and the superficial profile of the children. They are data from a whole. To watch a potential talent has always been very attractive to me. That which is different in a child makes him/her unique, among many, that’s what matters, not that which equals him/her with the rest, making him/her ordinary. Perhaps this is my tendency for being from the area of the arts. The artist wants to be unique and he/she has that right, especially for having to, at any given moment, take chances. He/she risks his/her reputation and creativity every time he/she exposes him/herself, for to him/her what matters are the work’s communication and the emotion “gushing out” that the work engenders in people. It is known that learning can take place in many different ways. With or without test results, children learn and astonish. The teacher and the parents must remain very alert in observing the children. The settings in the classroom and inside the family home change rapidly and are not traditional, comfortable day-to-day environments anymore; those that the parents and most teachers are used to dealing with. It is necessary to update what is known on children starting from their habits, from the speed at which facts are taking place and being communicated to them, through family, modern communication means, and school. In learning, to memorize facts and collect data are not guarantees that the children will be motivated to learn. If they memorize, it is because they did it for other reasons, such as via action followed by the conscience of the action, and by means of the use of contents in some task that interests them. In the gathering of data and its preservation, the computer performs this task better than all the students put together, with the help of the teacher and all. Since the facts are all stored for consulting, it is not needed that the children pile up, in an automatic fashion, the data in order to learn. It is known today that children no longer learn through repetition, they do so through internal motivation. And, aided by the augment of new technologies, they search for facts, and it is their curiosities that assure learning. What the teacher needs to do is help them use the data they find in midst of this curious pursuit. Nowadays, learning occurs in a dynamic manner, with students building their knowledge from whatever calls their attention, starting from their own rhythm and interests. They ask and search for the answer, go back and check with the teacher the results, and create individual projects and develop hypotheses on the direction they want to give to their knowledge’s production. The teacher’s role is to orientate them so that they don’t abandon their projects, at their different stages, aiding them to move on, with persistence to achieve the goals at hand. The teacher will help them think, will suggest new solutions for the problems in question, seek new facts to support the discoveries in the process and above all, help them so that they develop the capacity to synthesize, criticize, analyze and seek success. The children must be aided by the teacher in the art of recognizing the best ways of thinking, in order to strengthen their own styles of finding things out. It is preferred to observe the contents that are being learned and utilized by the kids and evaluate them in their strong points, talents and styles of learning. We must also take into account their weaknesses, the experiences they bring from the settings they live in and, moreover, what they do with their spare time. It is necessary to take control and get to really know the children and the teacher must not be afraid to approach them, seeing them as developing human beings. Children are not defined and described as results of one or more tests. They must be defined from what we perceive of them, and we must step out from our selfishness to value them, much more than we’ve done lately. We must understand them in their desires, motivations, fears and objectives. It is crucial that the teacher steps down from his/her pedestal, approach the children’s families and get involved with their future. A child can no longer be just another filled seat in the classroom.
Or visit our Babies Can (and did!) Read Ebook page. 2007 School and family responsibility |