My job is to educate, my passion is to inspire.
When I go to work, I need to remind myself that I am there to put in place the building blocks that will help children to become strong, resilient and enquiring adults who can thrive as a future generation.
Skills such as mental computation and spelling are important - but for tomorrow's generation, they certainly won't be as necessary. My computer alters most of my typing errors, underlines words for me that don't seem quite right, offers alternatives. Most people's phones, watches, PCs and who knows what 'gadget of the future' will calculate discounts, taxes and any other numerical needs. Most of us don't know more than 4 or 5 phone numbers or passwords anymore as our devices have learned them for us. Any fact we need (what's the capital of Greenland, who got the Oscar for Best Actress in 2014, which Queens did Henry VIII behead...) is now 'googled,' and answered in milliseconds, rather than rote learnt over much time.
When was the last time you used a paper dictionary, hand wrote something longer than a note, mentally calculated a string of numbers?
Are we teaching our future generation the skills they are going to need?
I have to teach children the skills they will need to perform jobs that haven't even been invented yet.
I need to teach my students skills to deal with things I know nothing of.
It's such a wonderful feeling to create an air of electricity in the classroom. To have children so excited about what they are discussing, that they are bursting with enthusiasm and can't wait to share their own opinions and experiences. It's wonderful to see so many 'lightbulb' moments, when a child realises with joy, that they've discovered something new to them.
The scope for individuality as a teacher and as a learner is narrowed every time the government creates another policy that stipulates curriculum requirements. However, encouragingly, much of the new curriculum is aimed at moving forward, towards tomorrow and away from traditional classroom practices. There's much mention of technologies, the environment and sustainability. The problem is that there's just too much of it - so many subject areas, and with a stronger emphasis on social-emotional skills, self-reflection and student led reporting, there's just not enough time to do everything.
What then, I have to ask, is it most important to get done in the precious time I have with those children. What will they learn? What will they retain? What will they need to know? What will inspire thnt to make the new curriculum work for me, in my classroom? I want to give my children the opportunity to explore what interests them and present it in a way that builds their confidence and self-expression and gives them the opportunity to practice the skills they'll need to function in our future, as well as inspiring others around them.
Now, I'd better get down to some programming....
