This week has been tremendously helpful as far as furthering my understanding of education and knowing not just where my students are coming from, but giving me ideas of how these things might be carried forward into high school.
There’s a lot that is going to have to happen from within an existing system. As an education student I don’t have much sway with the organization as a whole, but that doesn’t mean I can’t keep notes and track ideas that I have and how they might correspond to improving what we can so that the students will learn better.
It was really interesting to be put into a team with teachers who are currently working on a team together to see what presented itself as issues and what needs to be discussed to move forward. It was also really amazing to put forward ideas that may not have been considered and to see how those ideas could redefine the idea of being stuck in a system. Small things – maybe not always necessarily possible – but the idea of looking outside of the box and bringing up these ideas if possible was really cool.
In addition to all of the tools needed to get a good team off the ground and trusting each other – whether they are a multi-age or single grade level team – were all the tools to keep the parents involved and to get the students interested in the topics being covered. Many of the tools to get parents involved in their child’s education are tools that don’t even really take up much of the parent’s time. Some of them are things that the parents can then get credit for at work if they put in the time the right way. It all depends on the parents availability. If the parents are actively invested in their child’s education, then the teacher and parents can create a solid – and similar – front for the child making both home and school even-keeled environments that the students will know what to expect from.
(More to come…)