What is an ideal school?
To me, an ideal school is a place where schools allow students to have the freedom to be creative.
The teachers then become assistants for the children instead of the classroom leader.
The main purpose of a teacher should be to provide guidance, rather than force anything on the students.
In an ideal school, teachers would give questions and projects that allow all students to use their creative ability and learn something new. Eric Sheninger once said, “We need to create an experience that is less about us and more about our kids." Teachers and educators already know what they want to do in life, so let's look at ways we can help support students' creativity.
An ideal school would allow students to have access to any tools they need.
It’s important to let the students feel they're not limited to what they can use to create things. For example, they could use legos, play Minecraft, and other objects.
The schools should allow students to bring their materials like laptops, paints, and musical instruments in order to work on them at school. Students should feel like what they do in their free time at home is no different.
An ideal school would take away the grading system. Students shouldn't be graded on how well they’ve learned the information, but on what they’ve learned and what new things they have discovered about their passions.
This can be monitored by having an online program where the students can send in their work or write about what they’ve learned that day.
The students can have monthly projects answering questions like these:
- Have you discovered something new?
- Did you perform any real-world activities?
- Are you connecting and collaborating with others?
These are all questions teachers can ask students to see how they're progressing in their work. This way it gives students tasks to complete and objectives to keep their brain thinking.
Schools should create buildings students would enjoy.
Students should come to school and feel like they're not in a school setting. For example, a school in Denmark called Ørestad Gymnasium (picture above). It encourages students to work in a wide-open setting and be in a more relaxed learning environment.
Schools need to make learning more individualized for the students. They need to trust in the students to know what’s best for them and discover their own sense of learning. I understand it’s a lot of freedom, but students are always going to be intrigued by something.
If schools provided the tools needed for that to be possible, students would have so much fun and learn a lot. At the end of the day, the student is what it’s all about, right?
