Schoolbus

What are we doing?

Starting this actual journey, but also the inspirational journey has begun. Sunday we saw a whole lot of NY, such a big city, but in some places it feels small also. It’s an adventure for sure.

Now that we have seen three schools you get a sense of the type of education that they want to provide. Want is a important word, because wanting something and the  ability of providing it are not the same. Of course that’s also true in our educationsystem. What I saw the past few days was impressive. The teachers are so invested in the children en they want to create as much possibilities as they can for these children to learn and experience. They don’t use fancy materials or expensive stuff. They just use what they have and the most of the time it’s just simple stuff. The thing that really stood out was the time they take for assigments. Immediatly I thought: We put far too much assignements in too little time. Children always have to finish their work in the same week that we gave them the assignment. Here they take some much time and reach so much more depth! Children have a say in what they are going to explore and they take time to just talk about the subject and discuss. And it’s oké when this takes time, this is as much part of the learning process as everything else. When I look at our lessonplan, we skip that part a little bit, we’re going way too fast. There is too little room for the input of children. We provide too much context and the frames are way too narrow. Here children make up the assignments together and then they get so much room to carry out the work. That is certainly going to be something I am going to take with me. So I think I now have at least a couple of things that can help to keep chikdren more motivated. We have to give them time to investigate, to explore and we have to give them choices. That’s makes more ownership. Now I have to learn to let go and put my trust in the children. That’s probably not going to happen overnight… I also need to give it time.

Recommended3 recommendationsPublished in 02: Less is more, depth over coverage, Reis2023

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2 reacties

  1. Gertie, ja zeg wat zijn we allemaal aan het doen. In meerdere opzichten een steen goede vraag. Ben zo nieuwsgierig naar hoe jij initiatief meer bij kinderen gaat laten, hen meer tijd geeft, eigenaar laat zijn. Ik denk dat het stiekempjes wel ‘over night’ kan 😉. Durven beginnen. Na stap 1 komt stap 1. Veel moois ook in Boston gewenst!

  2. Hey Gertie,
    Ik ben heel benieuwd wat je meeneemt naar je eigen ‘praktijk’ nu je weer terug bent in Nederland. Wat heeft de reis met je gedaan? Waar ben je vandaag mee begonnen? Ik ben heel benieuwd of je het bij de kinderen een beetje ‘los’ kunt laten.
    Liefs Daniëlle

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