I just finished reading this article about creating innovation for the kids. It basically listed nine ways that the educational system should change into. And here, I am going to give my feelings on these changes.
1: Spur greater parental participation:
Parents are one of the most important characters in any child's life. With these parents participating in their child's education, it is fair enough to say that it will give positive booms. Because parents only wants the best for their kids. They will ask for fairer things for their children. They will also provide the kids a sense of protection knowing their parents are participating in their educational life.
2: Make school smaller:
I could give personal examples for this one. I've been studying in small schools for most of my life. And I found out that knowing everyone in my school really made me think to them as families, and I don't want to disappoint them. There are stronger school spirit and more bonding between teachers and students. These kind of bonding also made me work harder. However, when I am in larger school, I loose that kind of feeling. I stopped pushing myself because I know only a few people will see my achievement.
3: Utilize community service to foster civic engagement.
I really enjoy community services. It is like a spiritual break which you get to really understand your neighborhood or surrounding and do something about it. It allows the students to interact more with the community and build up their philanthropic will. I believe this is more important than any other points.
5: Fund extracurricular activities.
This is very critical. Extra curriculum are where kids find their interest in certain things. Kids learn how to play instruments in after school music class, learn to play sport in sport clubs...etc. This also build up teamwork spirit, leardership abilities and even social skills. We need to increase these kind of activities for our kids, not decrease the fund. These funds are great investments for the kids to do well in their future life.
6: Model a high school on a community.
Students are the core of a school. Faculties are not the main character, students are. And since their are the main character, they should get more camera time. There should be more students taking on harder jobs like teaching other kids. In HIS, we have a period after school called peer tutoring. This is a time when the elder kids can share their knowledge to the younger kids. It is beneficial to both the younger kids and the older kids. Also, students should have more power over school decisions. A lot of the time, faculties are making decisions that they think is beneficial, but when it comes to the core, some of those decisions are not at all beneficial to the children. Only they know what they want, teachers can only imagine what they want.
7: Create opportunities for meaningful youth contribution.
Internship. HIS integrate internship with normal school time. On wednesday, most of the Seniors will go to their internship learning what could possibly be their future jobs. This is a great example of using student's like wisely. Sometime, kids are learning things that are meaningless to them. For example, do artist need biology? Also, having kids doing meaningful things to the community, like after school community services is also a great way to teach kids to be philanthropic.
Changing education could mean so much in the future. We need a better educational system to boost our youth's future!
3 comments:
I really like the way you express your feelings! I had same feeling as you when I finished read article. But, I have different ideas on small school. I've been big schools most of my times, So, I don't know details about small schools but, I just want to say that the fact of big schools have more strong education systems and students who graduating from those of school, they get into high level of universities anywhere in world. Although, most of universities prefer to have some students who graduating from big and famous schools.
Overall, It's really good post. good job Jack !!!
My big question is how to take all the energy and engagement students have for co-curricular activities and bring it into the regular classroom?
You articulate yourself well Jack. I like the way you word things: #1 and #2 especially. For instance, the part about trying harder in a small school b/c you don't want to disappoint your school "family" and your points about community service are definitely strong.
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