HOW TO KNOW IF YOUR CHILDREN’S SCHOOL PROVIDES THEM WITH QUALITY EDUCATION | CHARACTERISTICS OF A CHILD-FRIENDLY AND STUDENT-CENTRED SCHOOL | WHAT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR CHILDREN’S PLACE OF LEARNING | PROVIDING INFORMATION ABOUT THE SCHOOL EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND BETTER LIFE
SCHOOL EDUCATION SYSTEM FOR FUTURE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND BETTER LIFE
Do you as a parent have sufficient information about the capability of the children’s school to provide quality education for future sustainable development and better life? Is your children’s place of learning child-friendly? Does it promote robust student-teacher, student-student and teacher-parent interpersonal relationship?
How is their child-centred & student-centred approach to education, child-care giving and value-sharing like? Can they turn your child’s weaknesses into strengths? Do they promote hard work as a culture? What area of competencies, knowledge and skills is the school known for?
Do you think I have exhausted the major points on ‘what to expect from the school’?
The home and school are the two major children’s place of learning for knowledge and skills acquisition. School children and students were their parents’ first home pupils and some still are. Certain foremost knowledge and skills pertaining to life the eventual school kids learnt from these first set of teachers, especially as babies, like how to suck their mother’s breast milk, couldn’t have been taught better in schools.
Parents still enrol their children in schools and school kids tend to spend substantial formal learning time there, the homeschooling foundations notwithstanding. Hardly do you find parents whose children don’t attend a school, all things being equal. Undoubtedly, the society has general acceptance of school as the reliable children’s education and socialization agent.
There is a host of good reasons to justify such action from parents. With such importance placed on schools, what then is required of them in this 21st Century education.
How then would you feel as a parent if your children’s school fail to build them up totally as expected, virtually, if not completely, defeating the purpose of the academic engagement?
Let me walk you through it in the next 6 minutes or so, providing you a teacher, an educator, a parent or a guardian with requisite information about what to expect from your children’s places of learning in today’s 21st Century education.
ENCOURAGEMENT OF CHILD & STUDENT-CENTRED APPROACH TO EDUCATION, CHILD-CARE GIVING AND VALUE-SHARING
Education trends in the 21st Century has shifted from teacher-centred to child & student-centred education. It broadly encompasses teaching methods that shift the focus of instruction from the teacher to the student. Child & student-centred education focuses on skills and practices in lifelong learning in subject areas, independent problem-solving and excellent performance – a school education system that develops learners’ autonomy and independence.
PROMOTION OF GOOD INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP
One of the parameter of assessing a school’s readiness to provide sustainable development and better life through 21st Century education is its ability to provide an environment that promotes good student-teacher, student-student and teacher-parent interpersonal relationship?
I think you’ll feel more comfortable with your children’s school if your child confesses to you that she has a family in school; reflecting on her school activities – class discussion sessions, presentations, among others. It just appears to you like a support network that can’t be broken easily considering her shared experiences.
Such a good student-student, student-teacher and teacher-parent interpersonal relationships put a parent’s mind at rest as far as child & student-centred approach to education and child-care giving is concerned. Pull your child out of such school, you become her greatest enemy and she may lose interest in school education system.
Why do you think your child discusses personal feelings and issues to her school teacher first and then invariably reports herself to you in an unperturbed manner? It means she confines in her school teacher and the school’s child-friendly.
If you, a married female parent, pick up a quarrel with your husband at one night and have a kid in such a school that enhances student-centred approach to education and encourages interpersonal relationship, don’t be surprise that her school teacher will get to know about it in the school the following.
A boy once confessed that his family was so amazed that even though he had become an alumnus from a university graduating class, he still gets phone calls, care packages, emails from his old high school staff. He said that made him feel he was always welcome there.
Child caring-giving, being child-friendly and value-sharing is a glamorous parenting tip a child or student enjoys most often from family. So, imagine how a child or student feels when she enjoys it from school as much as or more than she does at home.
School authorities that recognise the roles their school-parents play and contributions they make in promoting the school education system are better favoured than those that do not. It would also be memorable to celebrate them from time to time.
TURNING CHILDREN’S WEAKNESSES INTO STRENGTHS
Some people think that there are some dreams that cannot become true. For me, ‘Nothing is Impossible’ and it is an assertion built on the innate power of strong belief.
Ability to turn children’s weaknesses into strength has become a criterion for rewarding teachers in many organised school education systems and institutions of learning as well as one of teaching skills of a 21st Century education.
Children’s weaknesses may include but not limited to poor development; peer negative influences, gender stereotype and unwholesome enticement and engagement in other out-school activities, learning difficulties. Others are academic incompetence, poor level of achievement of academic goals, unharnessed innate talents. They can be in different stages and degrees and can vary from school children to school children.
The climax of the turning point is that school teachers & educators should invent and reinvent school children’s untapped hidden talents and potentials even if it demands they beat their head against a very tough wall. Every child is an intellectual.
One good way of achieving discovering a child’s hidden talent is for the school to provide vast learning opportunities for all their categories of learners.
CREATION AND PROMOTION OF REAL ATTRACTIVE MODELS
Attractive futuristic real models should create both value and excitement in the school education system all the way. School kids and students should be eager and ready to get started on their work and learn aggressively in school every time. With these in play, school kids who had struggled in the past academically try to overcome her poor achievement in high spirit.
A robust articulated real model has the capability of sustaining the gains of the school if consistently managed. It strongly emphasises on important reflections of the school which can be shared continually. It promotes interaction and collaboration among school staff and between the school authorities and parents.
By a way of functionality of the model, school teachers with 21st Century skills will be committed to their jobs, analyse their work experiences, appreciate their school kids, the entire school work value as well as create and sustain other relevant educational matters.
CREATION AND PROMOTION OF HARD WORK-ORIENTED ENVIRONMENT
Hard work culture is inevitable in a good school that offers quality education. School children must learn to work hard, work hard, learn to learn, learn, do their school work diligently and dutifully. There are no alternatives and the school must instil the culture them.
They must attend classes and tutorials, do assignments, classwork, practice exercises, have seminars, hold discussions and presentations, attend trainings unfailingly. School work is not a show business. It should be flexible enough to accommodate criticism.
In that way, they can unravel the children’s hidden talents, help them acquire 21st century knowledge and skills and guide them to have respect for societal values of their different prospective countries of abode as they develop their future potentials.
SHOW OF COMMITMENT TO STUDENTS’ FUTURE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND BETTER LIFE
The world is changing and soon unskilled workforce will begin to struggle harder for share of jobs and available resources consequently.
School movement should be passionately educative and must show commitment to students’ sustainable development and better life in future – no sentiments attached, otherwise it would be tantamount to falling to any available thing. It should be a movement that values students as individuals; families as integral part of each child’s learning; communities as resources; and educators as change agents who, together, have the power to better lives globally.
It shouldn’t just be setting up buildings incessantly where teachers come to teach a group of students like the proliferation of churches and mushroom prayer houses in some developing countries of the world.
School work must be objective and purpose-driven and school activities should be holistic aimed at building a total child. It should at every point in time measure and evaluate students’ progress against real-life standards.