Saturday, June 6, 2009

Areas of Focus

The following is a list of thoughts I have had while thinking about what's really important in education. Obviously this list can never reach the multitude of important topics that exist, but rather what areas cross my mind more frequently than others. This list will constantly be added to and edited. All work is by Max Morrissey, 2009.

Communication: How and why it's one of the most pressing problems in any topic, ever. In education, it's misuse and neglect leads to most of the common problems, as well as those that were avoidable.

Student motivation: We can go deeper into intrinsic and extrinsic. There are so many reasons to this. How many can we come up with?

Respectively, student resistance: Where can we look to find what is really steering students off track? There is a lot more to it than we think.

Politcally: ethics, morals, principles

What and who are schools for? (S Swidler)

Enveloping universal ethics connections in rural schools and communities

Combined instruction fusing Montessori and traditional Teacher-centered classrooms unlike that of which has been seen

We can use music—multicultural and domestic—constantly in everyday instruction.

Exhausting possibilities: encouraging students to search for what they really want to do, and not to settle.

RELATED TO ABOVE

Finding a balance between your students’ aspirations and their parents. What will happen when you push the student to do what they want, and not what their parents want?

Inculcating the philosophy that working towards your education, no matter the vocational compensation, will not only be beneficial to oneself, but to society as a whole. We have to look at how it’s affecting us and how it’s affecting our environment, and what affects it could have in any dimension.


An overall question:

Are we cognizant of the similarities between everything that happens in school, whether small or large, and the domino effect? This may not mean exactly what you think it means.