Children should know that their thoughts and feelings are valued by adults, and that they can think and speak for themselves without worrying about being wrong or of anyone making fun of them. Education should be for developing self confidence and self worth in order that children feel comfortable with themselves whilst in the school environment.
The aim of school should be to produce well rounded individuals who have a creative and critical way of thinking. I believe that high quality teaching is the most effective way to achieve this. From the 1PP1 placement, I found that as long as children are interested in the lesson, then they are learning, so we should all be making sure that what we teach is interesting to the children we work with.
Education should always be inclusive of all learners. If somebody is making an effort to turn up to school, then they deserve to be included fully in the education system. Saying this, if children are not, or do not want to make the effort to come to school, then we should look to the education system and see what may have disillusioned the learner and look to make changes as opposed to blaming the learner. I believe that school should promote a disciplined approach to education. I do not think it is a massively important point to make, of course teachers should be aware of behaviour management techniques, but they should not be a main focus.
Schooling should offer as many subjects and experiences as possible. The aim of education, in my opinion, is to produce well rounded individuals. I think that the best way to do this is to give them knowledge and experiences. They should study the basics in order to understand the more exciting specific subjects, ie. should be able to read so that they are not focusing on the reading but engage with what they are actually reading. In my opinion, the Curriculum for Excellence does this really well, the idea of one topic spanning several curriculum areas is a really positive one. I think that all children can benefit from such a system.
Teachers were some of the best role models for me throughout school, I always admired them for the way they seemed to know everything. Despite this, I remember one occasion while I was in high school when somebody asked the biology teacher a question and he answered it, but the next lesson he told us that he had given us an incorrect answer and that he had asked another teacher and found out the correct answer. I remember this as, I can imagine, being a teacher it must be difficult to admit to not knowing an answer, and certainly to come back having made an effort to find out the correct answer was admirable to me. This particular teacher, to me, was an example of a teacher who is willing to go the extra mile and therefore was a role model to me.
School should offer the opportunity to achieve academically, but for me there should be more to it than just passing through a system and come out the other end with a certificate of exam results. Of course children should learn some academic skills, they should have developed language and mathematics skills, and plenty experience of RME, Social Subjects, Technologies, Expressive Arts, Health and Wellbeing and Science. They should be able to experience so much more from their time in school: experience success, critical thinking skills, creativity and social skills. They should be directed, but be given enough space to develop in their own way and at their own pace.
