Through the last six months of being under lockdown, education has been forced to take on new forms and new channels in order to
maintain momentum – even the responsibility of who does the educating has shifted.
This has brought about a new perspective for both educators and parents alike, with each appreciating the roles that the other fulfils and realising that it is a team effort to coordinate teaching and learning when the normal mechanisms are not in place.
As a mother, educator and business owner, I found myself juggling those three roles and switching proverbial hats, sometimes on a moment by moment basis. To be fair, I created my own rod by turning our garage into a classroom of sorts with desks, a board and even a tuckshop box where the kids could earn rewards throughout the day and spend them on snacks from the box at the end of the day.
What made it even more challenging was that other parents were suffering with the same “role-switching” fatigue and after a few weeks, my home classroom had five children attending lessons. I found myself back in front of a room of children teaching again for the first time in 15 years!
Here is what struck me as the major shifts that have happened in education over the past months:
1. Learning is not and should not be centred around a single venue. It is fluid, cyclical and is continuous. It can literally be teaching units of measurement while baking a cake, or having an art lesson while learning how the ancient Egyptians made paper. Most of all it should be fun!
2. The role of the teacher is not to dish out knowledge, but to use the online resources available and teach critical evaluation of that knowledge and how to assimilate information from various sources. Many of our lessons were structured around mastering how to research and present information coherently.
3. The pace of learning can be self-determined, even at a young age. By asking kids often if they are comfortable enough with what they have learnt in order to teach others, kids can decide for themselves if they are confident in their understanding of a topic or subject. By preparing aids in order to help show others what they have learnt, they can gauge their own gaps – and then plot the steps needed to fill those gaps. In many of the mini-projects we did, the kids in the home classroom taught one another concepts after teaching themselves and were given multiple opportunities to improve on their attempts, thus setting their own pace of learning and self-determining their areas of growth.
While the traditional school classroom is not a redundant concept by any means, the lockdown season has certainly highlighted one simple truth – learning and education is a thing you do, and not just a place you go.
By Lisa Illingworth. For more info visit www.futureproof.co.za.