The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not always reflect the views of Reverb.
I love keeping children curious and excited about learning, as well as allowing them to decide what they’d like to learn about. Guiding students and bringing their curious sides out is incredibly important.
Education has become too test prep oriented and with this, children can lose their excitement for learning.
One anecdote
One anecdote I have is from teaching an open ended coding class for 6th graders.
At one point, I asked my students to stop working at their computers and join me in discussing their projects.
One boy said the following: “Ms. Hart, I can’t stop working to have a meeting. I’m too busy with my project and don’t want to stop.”
I realized something very good was happening:
- The student didn’t want to stop working!
- The flow of the classroom was such that he could express what he needed to do next to progress.
A watershed moment
I believe that many teachers and administrators recognize that we are at a difficult moment where education is not meeting the needs of many children.
On top of this, we now have a pandemic.
Until class sizes are smaller and education is implemented in a way that addresses student interest, I don’t believe we’ll make a lot of progress in making schools better.
However, finally, it looks as if the moment is here for this to change.
