Leading the Way

I believe the best teacher will get to know her students before she decides what will be the best learning style for the class room. With large classrooms this can be difficult, but I believe it is important to know how a student learns best, and what he or she can already know or do. The student should be guiding the teacher, not the other way around. When a student comes into a classroom the teacher should get to know the students to the point where she can tell how each child learns the best, so she can guide the child with their learning.

Young children are just starting to have a feel for how they learn best so the teacher should be trying multiple ways to help her students. Children should be in charge of their learning. Learning is like building blocks, you can’t learn to read before you know the sounds of letters, and you can’t learn to add before you can learn to count. We all learn at different paces, and it is impossible to give a child the best care when they are in a classroom of 15-20 other students that are all at different levels. If a child misses a step or a level they are behind and sometimes it is hard for the child to catch back up to the other students. Students need to go at there on pace when they are ready.

Education should not be structured into a classroom. Children need to go along when they are ready, and the teacher should be there to guide them to the next level. Teachers should be in the classroom to guide not to teach. Out system right now is teachers giving us information and excepting us to writing it back to them on a test. That is not learning, that is remembering that for a test then forgetting what you remembered as soon as you pass in the test. Children learn best when they play for a reason, they learn because they are using their imagination when they are working and they are learning as they go.

That’s how they should learn. With materials around them to work with, books that can read, and actually going outside and experimenting firsthand. They are more likely to remember process of a plants life if they have the opportunity to plant something. Kids need something tangible to learn from, they need something to keep their interest. In a classroom setting when they do paperwork the children lose focus easily and what they learn doesn’t retain.

Children need a classroom setting where they are in charge and can tell when they are ready to go to the next building block. Sitting behind a desk and listening to a teacher may get the point across to some of the students, but when it comes to the education of students it’s better to make sure they know what they are study instead of getting the point across.