New year, old practices?
Posted on: January 9, 2017
My hunt for an elusive video brought me to the Singapore Ministry of Education’s Facebook page.
While I did not find what I was looking for, I found a series of images. They served as a helpful reminder of what teachers should stock up on to prepare for the new year.
It was also a stark reminder of the mindset and expectations of teachers. The technologies are not current. If they were, there would be reminders to change passwords, renew VPN plans, update software, check digital archives, etc.
The call to arms was: You will be needing these and more to make a lasting impact on that one student. I get that message and stand behind it because it is a call to individualise, difficult as that will be.
I hope that teachers read this as reaching out to more than just that one student because all students are that one student. However, this task is impossible with the traditional tools and methods because they are largely about centralisation, standardisation, and control.
The newer tools are about decentralisation, individualisation, and self-regulation. This will only happen if school leaders and teachers change their mindsets and expectations about which tools to focus on and how to use them.
January 10, 2017 at 12:37 pm
haiz there’s still this sense that students are fools who cannot self-regulate… this mindset probably comes from the idea that “even after I scold and nag he/she doesn’t learn, what more if I let go?”…. I wish more would realise that when a student or any person is trusted and given ownership, that person will, more often than not, surprise us….
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