Five Practices for Building Positive Relationships With Students.
The objective is posted. The Do Now is ready to go. Your well-planned lesson is aligned with state standards, includes a variety of instructional methods, and offers opportunities for both summative and formative assessments.
What might still be missing? A strong positive relationship with your students, the kind of connection that makes them want to go above and beyond in your class.
Can you have a good lesson without having a positive relationship with your students? Yes. But can a strong relationship lead to an even higher level of academic success? Absolutely!
As education researcher Robert Marzano has pointed out, "Positive relationships between teachers and students are among the most commonly cited variables associated with effective instruction … A weak or negative relationship will mute or even negate the benefits of even the most effective instructional strategies."
Most of us have a general sense of what "positive relationships" means in the classroom context. We learned in our teacher preparation classes that we need to encourage our students to achieve the high goals we've set, treat all students equally, and always show them respect.
But how this looks on a daily basis depends on us—our personalities, but also our strategic efforts to make sure we're building relationships.
Here are five practices that have helped me develop positive relationships with my students:
1) Leave yourself reminders on your laptop.
I only see my doctor once a year, but every time I go in, he asks about each of my children by name. Of course, I know he checks my file before he walks into the room, but it still shows me he cares and makes me want to treat him with respect.
We need to do the same for our students. That's why I often have post-it memos stuck to my laptop with reminders, such as "ask Ari about her sister" or "check on Kristi’s tennis match." I wish I could say that I am capable of remembering everything without writing it down, but those days are gone!
Recently, I casually asked Brandon, one of my sophomore students, if his father was feeling better after his accident. On his way out of class, in typical high school boy fashion, Brandon gave me a nod and quietly said, "Thanks for remembering about my dad." No matter how many times I had told the class that I cared, that one simple gesture proved it to Brandon. If I had not followed up with Brandon about his dad's accident, I would have indirectly told him that I didn't care.
2) Never let the other students see you react inappropriately to a student's comment.
I'll never forget the moment when I realized that this was a critical part of forming a positive relationship with the students in my class.
Andrew, a junior who definitely marched to the beat of his own drum and had trouble fitting in, raised his hand to answer a question. His response was not only incorrect—it was something he should have known. The room became silent. Students began glancing around and grinning awkwardly. Every eye in that classroom was on me.
In that moment, I knew that I could not let my eyes veer even slightly from Andrew's, nor could I allow the merest hint of a smile to show. Yes, by looking at the other students with a smirk, a pitiful face, or a confused look, I could have "bonded" with the class. I could have been part of the group that "got it" and knew Andrew's answer was off. Instead, I looked only at Andrew, thanked him for answering, responded quickly, and moved on.
In a single moment, all 26 kids in that class learned three important things: 1) No matter how foolish your answer is, you will not be ridiculed in this class; 2) All of my students are equally important to me; and 3) While I want to have a close relationship with you, it will never be at the expense of another student.
3) Actually use the information you receive from a first-day student survey.
While this seems obvious, I must admit that I didn't always do it. I spent years developing what I think is a pretty great first day information sheet for my high school students. Certainly I would read and reread the surveys throughout the semester—but it was only last year that I found some concrete ways to use that information.
I now make a list of the hobbies, interests, and extra-curricular activities that they write about on their surveys. I also write down their responses to such questions as, "Do you prefer to work alone or with a partner?" and "Do you like doing math?"
As a reminder to myself (I've already established that I need reminders and post-it notes!), I keep all of this information on my desk throughout the semester so I remember to use it as I group students, plan lessons, or arrange seats.
Almost every semester, some brave student asks if I'm really going to read their responses. It's a fair question.
Think about it: What does it say to a student if she writes that she doesn't like sitting in the back or working with a partner, but I seat her in the back and assign partner work without so much as a comment?
4) Schedule "bonding" time.
Before you dismiss this one, hear me out. I must admit, I'm not a fan of using icebreakers or getting-to-know-you activities at the high school level. Students work hard in my class, and I need to make sure they are learning during every available minute. In addition, with 25 to 30 students in a class, it can be a challenge to find time to bond with each one who walks through my door.
I've realized that I can get to know students effectively while they are doing problem-solving activities or small-group work. There's really no need for extra activities.
For example, while small groups of students did practice work on functions last semester, I remember walking around the class very purposefully and connecting with certain students. I used that time as an opportunity to ask about their activities or lives outside of school.
If I notice that the dynamics are off in a particular class, I will schedule an activity that does not require much guidance from me just so that I can use the time to reconnect.
5) Finally, and most simply, learn your students' names immediately.
This has been, by far, the best first-day-of-school advice I've ever received. I know it may seem like a tired old saw, but this strategy is effective. I always know my kids' names by the time they leave my classroom on the first day. In their eyes, it's a very impressive feat to learn so many names in 90 minutes. I just have to make sure they never find out that I have access to their photos and names before they ever enter the room!
If you're like me, you may sometimes get so caught up in the act of teaching that you forget the heart of teaching. Many teacher-preparation programs for secondary teachers tend to focus on content knowledge, which is obviously critical. But, in the process of mastering what I'm teaching, I don't ever want to forget whom I'm teaching.
Read more at http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2012/08/07/tln_clark.html?tkn=QOUFZuCVjmgUSA3UYr6NgT6p82r247YnR9kc&cmp=ENL-TU-NEWS1
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Lessons from the Global Classroom: Supporting Girls Through School Can Transform Communities
Lessons from the global classroom: Supporting girls through school can transform communities.
As a poor girl in rural Zimbabwe, Bridget Moyo padded barefoot behind her friends to the school gate "just to see what it was like". Then a charity stepped in to pay her school fees. She worked hard, went on to study business at university, and when she graduated last year, so many people in her home district gathered to cheer her success "that I could not believe that they were all there for me".
Now she's setting up a business selling airbeds, while devoting her free time to working as a mentor and community volunteer, encouraging other girls to aim high. And the Cambridge-based organisation that picked up the tab for her seven years ago is fast moving on to the global stage as the go-to agency for governments and funders in search of educational development that really works.
This year it out-bid UN agencies and major international charities to win £12m of new British aid money to extend its work in Zimbabwe and, with funding from the MasterCard Foundation and Google, is setting up a training programme in Ghana that will benefit a million people. It is consolidating a new schools programme in Malawi and fielding a growing number of requests from African governments to work in their countries.
It has caught the attention of world leaders like Bill Clinton, gained the backing of Hollywood superstars such as Morgan Freeman, won awards for social entrepreneurship and reeled in top bankers and lawyers as supporters. Yet the unsexily titled Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education) International does nothing unusual. It pays for girls in poor rural areas in Africa to go to secondary school and gives them training to set up small businesses afterwards, aiming to give girls the same chances as boys, and to foster the multiplier "girl effect" (girls who finish secondary school earn more, delay childbirth, avoid Aids and have fewer children and keep them healthier and send them to school, thereby creating a better future for everyone).
It is how it does it that makes the difference – and after 20 years working in rural Africa it can show that its unique model prompts transformational changes even in the most disadvantaged areas on earth.
The organisation has few UK staff and runs through national offices in the countries in which it works: Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi. These set up committees of local leaders to decide which students most need bursaries, often orphans living in dire poverty. "It's easy to work with children who have potential," Angeline Murimirwa, executive director of Camfed Zimbabwe, says. "But we take on the downtrodden, disliked and disowned."
Groups of community volunteers support these girls through secondary school, after which the girls join an alumnae network – Cama – which offers training, support and friendship. As a result, 90,000 teachers, parents, students and local officials are actively working together to help vulnerable local children. Camfed doesn't work with the community. It is the community itself. Then ripples spread. Cama women set up small businesses, farm their fields better, volunteer in their communities and club together to support more poor students in school.
"I buy and sell clothes and have many plans," says Tambudzai Kashoti, who lives a two-hours drive east of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. "People now see what I am doing and come to me for ideas, and I also help pay my husband's fees while he is training as a teacher."
Older mothers and grandmothers, spurred on by their example, set up their own support groups. "In my district they work in the fields all day, come home and clean themselves, and then go to school to clean the boarding house and the toilets," Rosemary Mukwenya, a mothers' leader from northern Zimbabwe, says. "They also pay for soap, sanitary towels and footwear for students."
This prompts the men to make classroom furniture, dig latrines and build school dormitories. "We were challenged by what the mothers were doing," admits Lovemore Chiriga, from a fathers' group in eastern Zimbabwe. "What I learned from Camfed is that you can help children who are not your own."
Attitudes change, skills develop, solidarity grows and even in the face of great difficulty these changes hold. In the darkest days of Zimbabwean political upheaval and hyperinflation, villages with Camfed programmes kept their schools open by banding together to pay and feed the teachers who worked in them.
"We are funding girls' education in a way that builds a community's power and social capital," says Ann Cotton, an executive director and a former teacher who founded Camfed after working in Zimbabwe as an educational researcher. "When people get involved like this they learn about their rights and responsibilities, and realise what they can do."
But even this does not fully explain Camfed's impact – other organisations have copied its model without success. "It's because everything we do is based on personal relationships and respectful partnerships," Lucy Lake, CEO of Camfed International, says.
"Camfed treats us as partners, not as problems to be fixed or crooks to be avoided," says Lawford Palani, a district commissioner in Malawi, where the programme is being nurtured by Camfed activists from Zimbabwe. "We are not micro-managed. We are supported and challenged to do more and better all the time. Camfed really consults us and listens to us."
"And in Camfed we value a child as a child," Faith Nkala, deputy executive director of Camfed Zimbabwe, says. "We deal with every child, not with all children." Bursary recipients are individually tracked and are given clothes, toiletries, books and stationery while in school. They are checked on regularly, coaxed back if they drop out, and allocated a teacher mentor to protect them from bullying and sexual abuse.
As a result, young lives are transformed. "Cama is full of amazing women," Melody Jori, who has launched a business magazine in Harare, says. "We respect ourselves, our families and our communities. We give strength to each other, defy the odds and break through barriers, because where people think something is not possible, we believe it is and we do something to make it happen."
But involvement with Camfed appears to prompt personal journeys for everyone. "In our culture we used to pay for things with girls," Chief Hata, a traditional tribal leader from eastern Zimbabwe, says. "I myself would settle cases by awarding someone a girl. But through Camfed I saw that girls are human beings, too. We were doing the wrong thing, and must support them. Now many fewer girls drop out from school because of pregnancy. And I too am supporting a child through school."
The organisation has helped 1.5 million girls and vulnerable boys in school, put 60,000 girls through secondary school and trained 5,000 teacher mentors; 1,000 girls have been helped through college – including women who are now doctors, lawyers and community leaders – and 7,700 businesses have been helped; 17,500 young women belong to Cama and last year they helped support 96,000 students through school with their own money.
And research shows Camfed's work has a wider general influence on civic standards, lowering school drop-out rates and encouraging local philanthropy. The organisation is now looking to help raise school standards and foster job opportunities, knowing that fledgling ambitions must not be thwarted. "We have to keep moving forward," Cotton says, "always bearing in mind what is best for the child."
Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/lessons-from-the-global-classroom-supporting-girls-through-school-can-transform-communities-7936300.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
As a poor girl in rural Zimbabwe, Bridget Moyo padded barefoot behind her friends to the school gate "just to see what it was like". Then a charity stepped in to pay her school fees. She worked hard, went on to study business at university, and when she graduated last year, so many people in her home district gathered to cheer her success "that I could not believe that they were all there for me".
Now she's setting up a business selling airbeds, while devoting her free time to working as a mentor and community volunteer, encouraging other girls to aim high. And the Cambridge-based organisation that picked up the tab for her seven years ago is fast moving on to the global stage as the go-to agency for governments and funders in search of educational development that really works.
This year it out-bid UN agencies and major international charities to win £12m of new British aid money to extend its work in Zimbabwe and, with funding from the MasterCard Foundation and Google, is setting up a training programme in Ghana that will benefit a million people. It is consolidating a new schools programme in Malawi and fielding a growing number of requests from African governments to work in their countries.
It has caught the attention of world leaders like Bill Clinton, gained the backing of Hollywood superstars such as Morgan Freeman, won awards for social entrepreneurship and reeled in top bankers and lawyers as supporters. Yet the unsexily titled Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education) International does nothing unusual. It pays for girls in poor rural areas in Africa to go to secondary school and gives them training to set up small businesses afterwards, aiming to give girls the same chances as boys, and to foster the multiplier "girl effect" (girls who finish secondary school earn more, delay childbirth, avoid Aids and have fewer children and keep them healthier and send them to school, thereby creating a better future for everyone).
It is how it does it that makes the difference – and after 20 years working in rural Africa it can show that its unique model prompts transformational changes even in the most disadvantaged areas on earth.
The organisation has few UK staff and runs through national offices in the countries in which it works: Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi. These set up committees of local leaders to decide which students most need bursaries, often orphans living in dire poverty. "It's easy to work with children who have potential," Angeline Murimirwa, executive director of Camfed Zimbabwe, says. "But we take on the downtrodden, disliked and disowned."
Groups of community volunteers support these girls through secondary school, after which the girls join an alumnae network – Cama – which offers training, support and friendship. As a result, 90,000 teachers, parents, students and local officials are actively working together to help vulnerable local children. Camfed doesn't work with the community. It is the community itself. Then ripples spread. Cama women set up small businesses, farm their fields better, volunteer in their communities and club together to support more poor students in school.
"I buy and sell clothes and have many plans," says Tambudzai Kashoti, who lives a two-hours drive east of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. "People now see what I am doing and come to me for ideas, and I also help pay my husband's fees while he is training as a teacher."
Older mothers and grandmothers, spurred on by their example, set up their own support groups. "In my district they work in the fields all day, come home and clean themselves, and then go to school to clean the boarding house and the toilets," Rosemary Mukwenya, a mothers' leader from northern Zimbabwe, says. "They also pay for soap, sanitary towels and footwear for students."
This prompts the men to make classroom furniture, dig latrines and build school dormitories. "We were challenged by what the mothers were doing," admits Lovemore Chiriga, from a fathers' group in eastern Zimbabwe. "What I learned from Camfed is that you can help children who are not your own."
Attitudes change, skills develop, solidarity grows and even in the face of great difficulty these changes hold. In the darkest days of Zimbabwean political upheaval and hyperinflation, villages with Camfed programmes kept their schools open by banding together to pay and feed the teachers who worked in them.
"We are funding girls' education in a way that builds a community's power and social capital," says Ann Cotton, an executive director and a former teacher who founded Camfed after working in Zimbabwe as an educational researcher. "When people get involved like this they learn about their rights and responsibilities, and realise what they can do."
But even this does not fully explain Camfed's impact – other organisations have copied its model without success. "It's because everything we do is based on personal relationships and respectful partnerships," Lucy Lake, CEO of Camfed International, says.
"Camfed treats us as partners, not as problems to be fixed or crooks to be avoided," says Lawford Palani, a district commissioner in Malawi, where the programme is being nurtured by Camfed activists from Zimbabwe. "We are not micro-managed. We are supported and challenged to do more and better all the time. Camfed really consults us and listens to us."
"And in Camfed we value a child as a child," Faith Nkala, deputy executive director of Camfed Zimbabwe, says. "We deal with every child, not with all children." Bursary recipients are individually tracked and are given clothes, toiletries, books and stationery while in school. They are checked on regularly, coaxed back if they drop out, and allocated a teacher mentor to protect them from bullying and sexual abuse.
As a result, young lives are transformed. "Cama is full of amazing women," Melody Jori, who has launched a business magazine in Harare, says. "We respect ourselves, our families and our communities. We give strength to each other, defy the odds and break through barriers, because where people think something is not possible, we believe it is and we do something to make it happen."
But involvement with Camfed appears to prompt personal journeys for everyone. "In our culture we used to pay for things with girls," Chief Hata, a traditional tribal leader from eastern Zimbabwe, says. "I myself would settle cases by awarding someone a girl. But through Camfed I saw that girls are human beings, too. We were doing the wrong thing, and must support them. Now many fewer girls drop out from school because of pregnancy. And I too am supporting a child through school."
The organisation has helped 1.5 million girls and vulnerable boys in school, put 60,000 girls through secondary school and trained 5,000 teacher mentors; 1,000 girls have been helped through college – including women who are now doctors, lawyers and community leaders – and 7,700 businesses have been helped; 17,500 young women belong to Cama and last year they helped support 96,000 students through school with their own money.
And research shows Camfed's work has a wider general influence on civic standards, lowering school drop-out rates and encouraging local philanthropy. The organisation is now looking to help raise school standards and foster job opportunities, knowing that fledgling ambitions must not be thwarted. "We have to keep moving forward," Cotton says, "always bearing in mind what is best for the child."
Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/lessons-from-the-global-classroom-supporting-girls-through-school-can-transform-communities-7936300.html
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Universities Reshaping Education on the Web
Universities Reshaping Education on the Web.
As part of a seismic shift in online learning that is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, will announce on Tuesday that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In the fall, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally.
Even before the expansion, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, the founders of Coursera, said it had registered 680,000 students in 43 courses with its original partners, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.
Now, the partners will include the California Institute of Technology; Duke University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Washington; and the University of Virginia, where the debate over online education was cited in last’s month’s ousting — quickly overturned — of its president, Teresa A. Sullivan. Foreign partners include the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne, a technical university in Switzerland.
And some of them will offer credit.
“This is the tsunami,” said Richard A. DeMillo, the director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech. “It’s all so new that everyone’s feeling their way around, but the potential upside for this experiment is so big that it’s hard for me to imagine any large research university that wouldn’t want to be involved.”
Because of technological advances — among them, the greatly improved quality of online delivery platforms, the ability to personalize material and the capacity to analyze huge numbers of student experiences to see which approach works best — MOOCs are likely to be a game-changer, opening higher education to hundreds of millions of people.
To date, most MOOCs have covered computer science, math and engineering, but Coursera is expanding into areas like medicine, poetry and history. MOOCs were largely unknown until a wave of publicity last year about Stanford University’s free online artificial intelligence course attracted 160,000 students from 190 countries. Only a small percentage of the students completed the course, but even so, the numbers were staggering.
“The fact that so many people are so curious about these courses shows the yearning for education,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. “There are going to be lots of bumps in the road, but this is a very important experiment at a very substantial scale.”
So far, MOOCs have offered no credit, just a “statement of accomplishment” and a grade. But the University of Washington said it planned to offer credit for its Coursera offerings this fall, and other online ventures are also moving in that direction. David P. Szatmary, the university’s vice provost, said that to earn credit, students would probably have to pay a fee, do extra assignments and work with an instructor.
Experts say it is too soon to predict how MOOCs will play out, or which venture will emerge as the leader. Coursera, with about $22 million in financing, including $3.7 million in equity investment from Caltech and Penn, may currently have the edge. But no one is counting out edX, a joint venture of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Udacity, the company founded by Sebastian Thrun of Stanford, who taught the artificial intelligence course last year.
Each company offers online materials broken into manageable chunks, with short video segments, interactive quizzes and other activities — as well as online forums where students answer one another’s questions.
But even Mr. Thrun, a master of MOOCs, cautioned that for all their promise, the courses are still experimental. “I think we are rushing this a little bit,” he said. “I haven’t seen a single study showing that online learning is as good as other learning.”
Worldwide access is Coursera’s goal. “EPF Lausanne, which offers courses in French, opens up access for students in half of Africa,” Ms. Koller said. Each university designs and produces its own courses and decides whether to offer credit.
Coursera does not pay the universities, and the universities do not pay Coursera, but both incur substantial costs. Contracts provide that if a revenue stream emerges, the company and the universities will share it.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium-of-colleges-takes-online-education-to-new-level.html?ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
As part of a seismic shift in online learning that is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, will announce on Tuesday that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In the fall, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally.
Even before the expansion, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, the founders of Coursera, said it had registered 680,000 students in 43 courses with its original partners, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.
Now, the partners will include the California Institute of Technology; Duke University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Washington; and the University of Virginia, where the debate over online education was cited in last’s month’s ousting — quickly overturned — of its president, Teresa A. Sullivan. Foreign partners include the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne, a technical university in Switzerland.
And some of them will offer credit.
“This is the tsunami,” said Richard A. DeMillo, the director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at Georgia Tech. “It’s all so new that everyone’s feeling their way around, but the potential upside for this experiment is so big that it’s hard for me to imagine any large research university that wouldn’t want to be involved.”
Because of technological advances — among them, the greatly improved quality of online delivery platforms, the ability to personalize material and the capacity to analyze huge numbers of student experiences to see which approach works best — MOOCs are likely to be a game-changer, opening higher education to hundreds of millions of people.
To date, most MOOCs have covered computer science, math and engineering, but Coursera is expanding into areas like medicine, poetry and history. MOOCs were largely unknown until a wave of publicity last year about Stanford University’s free online artificial intelligence course attracted 160,000 students from 190 countries. Only a small percentage of the students completed the course, but even so, the numbers were staggering.
“The fact that so many people are so curious about these courses shows the yearning for education,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education. “There are going to be lots of bumps in the road, but this is a very important experiment at a very substantial scale.”
So far, MOOCs have offered no credit, just a “statement of accomplishment” and a grade. But the University of Washington said it planned to offer credit for its Coursera offerings this fall, and other online ventures are also moving in that direction. David P. Szatmary, the university’s vice provost, said that to earn credit, students would probably have to pay a fee, do extra assignments and work with an instructor.
Experts say it is too soon to predict how MOOCs will play out, or which venture will emerge as the leader. Coursera, with about $22 million in financing, including $3.7 million in equity investment from Caltech and Penn, may currently have the edge. But no one is counting out edX, a joint venture of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or Udacity, the company founded by Sebastian Thrun of Stanford, who taught the artificial intelligence course last year.
Each company offers online materials broken into manageable chunks, with short video segments, interactive quizzes and other activities — as well as online forums where students answer one another’s questions.
But even Mr. Thrun, a master of MOOCs, cautioned that for all their promise, the courses are still experimental. “I think we are rushing this a little bit,” he said. “I haven’t seen a single study showing that online learning is as good as other learning.”
Worldwide access is Coursera’s goal. “EPF Lausanne, which offers courses in French, opens up access for students in half of Africa,” Ms. Koller said. Each university designs and produces its own courses and decides whether to offer credit.
Coursera does not pay the universities, and the universities do not pay Coursera, but both incur substantial costs. Contracts provide that if a revenue stream emerges, the company and the universities will share it.
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium-of-colleges-takes-online-education-to-new-level.html?ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Saturday, August 11, 2012
UK Teachers Often Lack Degrees in Subjects They Teach
UK Teachers Often Lack Degrees in Subjects They Teach.
One quarter of mathematics teachers in England don’t have a degree in the subject according to the data released by the Department of Education. In all, that means that 9,500 teachers around the country don’t have the expertise that comes from obtaining a university diploma in the subject that they teach. The worst news of all might be that the number of such teachers has grown by nearly 1,000 in the past year and is expected to go up even more in the future.
Although the situation isn’t as dire among English Language Arts instructors – only 20% lack a university English degree – among teachers of the sciences subjects like geography, only about two-thirds have the requisite expertise.
This is very bad news, according to the director to the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University Alan Smithers. Instructors who lack good academic background in the subject that they teach risk alienating their students and reduce their enthusiasm. The impact of being “turned off” due to sub-part instruction could haunt the students years down the line and reduces the number of university entrants who choose to major in mathematics or the sciences.
“The absolute essential thing is that a teacher has a good understanding of the subject at the level they are teaching it,” he said. “Our best indicator of that is holding a degree or post-A-level qualification.”
Prof Smithers added: “If you have a biologist teaching physics, even at age 11, it may well be that their enthusiasm for physics isn’t there, and the child isn’t excited by it and moves in another direction.
“It’s the understanding and enthusiasm that’s important.”
The decreasing number of properly-educated teachers could be due to an ongoing severe instructor shortage, especially in the “hard” subjects. Schools are being forced to place staff that has expertise in other areas in classrooms in order to make sure that there’s at least someone instructing the students. Over the past several years, English schools have experienced difficulties in recruiting staff qualified to teach math, science and foreign languages, so inexperienced instructors are almost an inevitable development.
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “If we want an education system that ranks with the best in the world, we have to attract outstanding people into the profession, and give them excellent training – at the start of – and throughout – their careers.”
The government is overhauling teacher training and offering better financial bursaries to top science, maths and languages graduates to encourage them to become teachers, she said.
Read more at http://www.educationnews.org/international-uk/uk-teachers-often-lack-degrees-in-subjects-they-teach/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
One quarter of mathematics teachers in England don’t have a degree in the subject according to the data released by the Department of Education. In all, that means that 9,500 teachers around the country don’t have the expertise that comes from obtaining a university diploma in the subject that they teach. The worst news of all might be that the number of such teachers has grown by nearly 1,000 in the past year and is expected to go up even more in the future.
Although the situation isn’t as dire among English Language Arts instructors – only 20% lack a university English degree – among teachers of the sciences subjects like geography, only about two-thirds have the requisite expertise.
This is very bad news, according to the director to the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University Alan Smithers. Instructors who lack good academic background in the subject that they teach risk alienating their students and reduce their enthusiasm. The impact of being “turned off” due to sub-part instruction could haunt the students years down the line and reduces the number of university entrants who choose to major in mathematics or the sciences.
“The absolute essential thing is that a teacher has a good understanding of the subject at the level they are teaching it,” he said. “Our best indicator of that is holding a degree or post-A-level qualification.”
Prof Smithers added: “If you have a biologist teaching physics, even at age 11, it may well be that their enthusiasm for physics isn’t there, and the child isn’t excited by it and moves in another direction.
“It’s the understanding and enthusiasm that’s important.”
The decreasing number of properly-educated teachers could be due to an ongoing severe instructor shortage, especially in the “hard” subjects. Schools are being forced to place staff that has expertise in other areas in classrooms in order to make sure that there’s at least someone instructing the students. Over the past several years, English schools have experienced difficulties in recruiting staff qualified to teach math, science and foreign languages, so inexperienced instructors are almost an inevitable development.
A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “If we want an education system that ranks with the best in the world, we have to attract outstanding people into the profession, and give them excellent training – at the start of – and throughout – their careers.”
The government is overhauling teacher training and offering better financial bursaries to top science, maths and languages graduates to encourage them to become teachers, she said.
Read more at http://www.educationnews.org/international-uk/uk-teachers-often-lack-degrees-in-subjects-they-teach/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Friday, August 10, 2012
Number of Students Increasing Rapidly, Universities Getting Overloaded
Number of students increasing rapidly, universities getting overloaded.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, there are 46 universities and 17 junior colleges in Hanoi. Besides, there are also nearly 40 vocational high schools with the total number of students accounting for 43 percent of the number of students in the whole country. Meanwhile, there are 112 schools in HCM City.
Hanoi and HCM City are the two big cities where most of the key universities with very high numbers of students are located.
Material facilities poor, number of students increasing rapidly – what to do?
Tran Thanh Binh, Director of the School Design and Research Institute under the Ministry of Education and Training, said that the average area of schools is too low Most of the schools have the land of less than 10 hectares, lack basic functional areas, and their the education environment is generally bad.
Analysts have blamed the current situation on the too rapidly increasing number of students. Meanwhile, schools’ actual land area have been reduced because parts of the land have been used for different purposes.
The Hanoi University of Technology with 34 hectares of land was designed in 1960s to fit 2000 students. Meanwhile, the number of students has increased 10 times.
newly established schools have been running in even worse conditions. The classrooms are located on small areas or in houses which were not designed as classrooms. It is common that students of the same schools have to go to classrooms located in different places. Meanwhile, the schools are not located in easily accessible areas.
some schools have made large investment of hundreds of billions dong to upgrade their facilities. The Hanoi Economics University, for example, carried out the project to fit 15,000 students of the school. However, the school is located on Giai Phong Road near the key traffic point. Meanwhile, many other schools are located in the area with no urban roads, thus making it difficlut to travel.
Relocating schools to suburb areas? It’s not easy
The only solution to the current problem is to relocate the schools to suburb areas, where the there is more available land. The HCM City authorities have reserved 2210 hectares of land in Dong Bac new urban area for 50 schools to move in.
Hanoi is also planning to bring 40,000 students of the Hanoi National University to Hoa Lac new urban area, 30 kilometres from the city centre More than 10 universities and junior colleges will be moved to satellite urban areas such as Gia Lam (the area will gather agriculture, polytechnique and technology schools), Soc Son (polytechnique and information technology), and Son Tay (social sciences, pedagogical and tourism schools)
However, experts have warned that it is not easy to relocate and re-equip the schools, because the project will need a huge sum of capital which goes beyond the capacity of schools, while the state budget remains limited.
Then a new solution has been suggested that schools can exchange their campuses in the inner city for the capital to be invested in suburb areas.
This measure has been applied by the HCM City University of Physical and Sports Education is after getting the approval from the Ministry of Education and Training and HCM City authorities. This means that the city’s authorities will auction a land plot (which has the same value with the current land plot of the school) in order to get money to help the school build a new campus. After everything is prepared at the new campus, the school will hand over its current campus to the city.
However, the project is facing a lot of difficulties. An official from the school said that the land plot for auction has not been sold.
Dr Pham Van Nang, President of the HCM City Economics University, said that the school has been talking about the relocation for the past 10 years. However, no considerable progress has been made so far.
Read more at http://www.vnnewstime.com/education-news/number-of-students-increasing-rapidly-universities-getting-overloaded/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, there are 46 universities and 17 junior colleges in Hanoi. Besides, there are also nearly 40 vocational high schools with the total number of students accounting for 43 percent of the number of students in the whole country. Meanwhile, there are 112 schools in HCM City.
Hanoi and HCM City are the two big cities where most of the key universities with very high numbers of students are located.
Material facilities poor, number of students increasing rapidly – what to do?
Tran Thanh Binh, Director of the School Design and Research Institute under the Ministry of Education and Training, said that the average area of schools is too low Most of the schools have the land of less than 10 hectares, lack basic functional areas, and their the education environment is generally bad.
Analysts have blamed the current situation on the too rapidly increasing number of students. Meanwhile, schools’ actual land area have been reduced because parts of the land have been used for different purposes.
The Hanoi University of Technology with 34 hectares of land was designed in 1960s to fit 2000 students. Meanwhile, the number of students has increased 10 times.
newly established schools have been running in even worse conditions. The classrooms are located on small areas or in houses which were not designed as classrooms. It is common that students of the same schools have to go to classrooms located in different places. Meanwhile, the schools are not located in easily accessible areas.
some schools have made large investment of hundreds of billions dong to upgrade their facilities. The Hanoi Economics University, for example, carried out the project to fit 15,000 students of the school. However, the school is located on Giai Phong Road near the key traffic point. Meanwhile, many other schools are located in the area with no urban roads, thus making it difficlut to travel.
Relocating schools to suburb areas? It’s not easy
The only solution to the current problem is to relocate the schools to suburb areas, where the there is more available land. The HCM City authorities have reserved 2210 hectares of land in Dong Bac new urban area for 50 schools to move in.
Hanoi is also planning to bring 40,000 students of the Hanoi National University to Hoa Lac new urban area, 30 kilometres from the city centre More than 10 universities and junior colleges will be moved to satellite urban areas such as Gia Lam (the area will gather agriculture, polytechnique and technology schools), Soc Son (polytechnique and information technology), and Son Tay (social sciences, pedagogical and tourism schools)
However, experts have warned that it is not easy to relocate and re-equip the schools, because the project will need a huge sum of capital which goes beyond the capacity of schools, while the state budget remains limited.
Then a new solution has been suggested that schools can exchange their campuses in the inner city for the capital to be invested in suburb areas.
This measure has been applied by the HCM City University of Physical and Sports Education is after getting the approval from the Ministry of Education and Training and HCM City authorities. This means that the city’s authorities will auction a land plot (which has the same value with the current land plot of the school) in order to get money to help the school build a new campus. After everything is prepared at the new campus, the school will hand over its current campus to the city.
However, the project is facing a lot of difficulties. An official from the school said that the land plot for auction has not been sold.
Dr Pham Van Nang, President of the HCM City Economics University, said that the school has been talking about the relocation for the past 10 years. However, no considerable progress has been made so far.
Read more at http://www.vnnewstime.com/education-news/number-of-students-increasing-rapidly-universities-getting-overloaded/
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Got the Next Great Idea?
Got the Next Great Idea?
EVERYONE, it seems, has an app or a genius idea for one. Credit the lackluster job market plus facile tools and technology — no Ph.D. in programming required — for the rise of campus hack cultures that reach far beyond engineering and computer science majors and Stanford and M.I.T. Big rewards like the $100 billion public offering for Facebook, which was conceived in a Harvard dorm, and its $1 billion splurge on Instagram only feed the fantasies of code-writing college students.
In 2010, four Emory students — Ian McCall, Nir Levy, Giovanni Hobbins and Pat Shea — met in Mr. Shea’s dorm room to upgrade the Web site of a student group but instead decided to build a portal to organize campus life. Thus was born Campus Bubble, a platform for university information and postings from campus groups, students and businesses.
Now headquartered in Mr. Shea’s apartment (he graduated in May), the founders have four summer interns and are working madly to launch version 2.0 next month after a pilot run last year attracted 4,000 users. Mr. McCall, a senior, recalls early meetings as “really exhilarating.” He’ll also tell you that the adrenaline rush of hatching a hot idea comes with a counter-rush: What now?
Instinct may suggest you head west. That’s the play if you land a spot in Y Combinator (despite a YouTube plea, Campus Bubble did not). Admission to the three-month program is more competitive than Harvard or Yale, and comes with cachet. You give up a percentage of your start-up’s equity. But those who get in, like Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta (Mr. Zhao is on leave from the University of Pennsylvania and Mr. Mehta from New York University), say the advice, speakers, community and high-power tech network is worth the price. “They provide you with so much value from Day 1,” says Mr. Zhao, who with Mr. Mehta developed FamilyLeaf, an online site for sharing family photos and news. The accelerator connected them with two additional founders, and $170,000 in initial financing. And their March “Demonstration Day” performance (sporting T-shirts hand-painted the night before with their company name) earned them several new investors.
Inclusion in private incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars is coveted because of their strong track records with start-ups (Dropbox, Bump, Loopt) and the Silicon Valley icons who serve as mentors. But young entrepreneurs can find good help without leaving campus. “It’s possible for a 20-year-old to create something that changes the world,” says Bryce C. Pilz, a University of Michigan law professor who works with student start-ups.
That’s revolutionary thinking for a university culture that has long focused on the inventions of graduate students and faculty. But campuses are beginning to put their bets on undergraduates. Who better understands the social media mindset? And what campus wouldn’t want an Instagram founder as an alum?
Campus incubators are growing. New data from the National Business Incubation Association show that about one-third of the 1,250 business incubators in the United States are at universities, up from one-fifth in 2006. Even nontechie campuses like Northern Kentucky University, Duke and Syracuse have jumped in the pool, recently adding or planning to add start-up incubators.
On campus or off, incubators are not always useful. Some do little more than provide free or cheap space and a coffee machine. What entrepreneurs really need is guidance and like-minded peers.
That’s why George Washington University decided to offer “soup-to-nuts support” for start-ups when it created the Office of Entrepreneurship two years ago, with workshops on crafting an elevator pitch and talks like “Student Start-Ups: From Dorm Room to Board Room.” Jim Chung, the program director, notes that today’s start-ups are led not just by business and computer majors but by “designers, musicians, anybody with good ideas,” so universities need to connect these students to experts and to one another.
“When students are doing crazy stuff, they need to be around other crazy people who think they’re sane,” says Moses Lee, assistant director of TechArb, a four-year-old university-sponsored student incubator (he prefers “start-up hive”) in the basement of a parking garage at the University of Michigan. Getting into TechArb is competitive. Last fall, 65 teams applied for 20 spots. Its curriculum has students pitching to potential users or customers and leading a monthly board meeting to learn how to justify themselves to investors.
Mr. Lee, who is starting up an online student portfolio for job hunting, says that talking about your vision and getting feedback are key early steps. Incubator offices are buzzing at 4 a.m.
Although universities tend to view incubators aimed at undergraduates as the equivalent of a career office, they can also have claims on a student’s I.P. (start-up parlance for intellectual property), says Todd Sherer, president of the Association of University Technology Managers, whose members turn campus inventions into commercial deals. Dr. Sherer, who is also director of Emory’s technology transfer office, says undergraduates are typically considered sole owners of their inventions, but there are exceptions: if a student receives a university grant or is paid by the university for the work, if the idea is developed with faculty, or if a student uses significant campus resources to develop the idea.
At the University of Michigan, students had feared that bringing a project to class or sharing with a professor “would trigger university ownership,” Mr. Pilz says. The language in its policy — that it could claim ownership if student inventors relied on “direct or indirect support of funds administered by the university” — was having a chilling effect. In 2009, the university gavestudents sole ownership of their inventions, even if they work on the idea in a course or use university equipment.
An Entrepreneurship Clinic, in which law students provide free help to undergraduate start-ups, began in January and is now the most popular clinic at the law school; 97 students vied for 16 clinic spots for the fall.
Mr. Chung notes that universities would rather foster positive relations than collect shares in student businesses. “Successful alumni breed successful schools,” he says. Yahoo! started on Stanford servers, but the university never sought ownership. Jerry Yang and David Filo, the founders, endowed a $2 million chair in the School of Engineering and Mr. Yang and his wife have given $75 million.
Google is another story. Stanford owns patents on technology developed by two graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Federal filings for 2011 show the company paid Stanford $400,000 in royalties, and donated $3 million. Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, is on the Google board and some 1,300 Stanford graduates work at Google.
The Campus Bubble founders initially “worried about Emory taking some ownership,” says Mr. McCall. But they needed the cooperation of the university — it is The Emory Bubble they are attempting to introduce — so they hired a lawyer and made a deal, giving Emory shares for use of the trademark. Charles Goetz, their teacher in an entrepreneurship class, became their adviser. He says the deal has opened doors, including landing the start-up’s first investor. Mr. Shea agrees: “The fact that we were working with the university gave us some legitimacy.” The $25,000 infusion means the founders, who did Web development on the side to pay living expenses and a $2,000 legal bill, can now pay their interns and focus on their project.
Few student start-ups become Facebook. Most don’t even make a profit. Jeffrey Babin, business adviser for Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program at the University of Pennsylvania, an incubator with 31 student start-ups, warns that “ideas are a dime a dozen — whoever gets it to market in the fastest and most effective manner wins.” Success is elusive, Mr. Babin says, and young founders often decide that it makes more sense to work for someone else. But, he adds: “The value of the venture may be zero. What you have learned? It’s invaluable.”
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/education/edlife/campus-incubators-are-on-the-rise-as-colleges-encourage-student-start-ups.html?ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
EVERYONE, it seems, has an app or a genius idea for one. Credit the lackluster job market plus facile tools and technology — no Ph.D. in programming required — for the rise of campus hack cultures that reach far beyond engineering and computer science majors and Stanford and M.I.T. Big rewards like the $100 billion public offering for Facebook, which was conceived in a Harvard dorm, and its $1 billion splurge on Instagram only feed the fantasies of code-writing college students.
In 2010, four Emory students — Ian McCall, Nir Levy, Giovanni Hobbins and Pat Shea — met in Mr. Shea’s dorm room to upgrade the Web site of a student group but instead decided to build a portal to organize campus life. Thus was born Campus Bubble, a platform for university information and postings from campus groups, students and businesses.
Now headquartered in Mr. Shea’s apartment (he graduated in May), the founders have four summer interns and are working madly to launch version 2.0 next month after a pilot run last year attracted 4,000 users. Mr. McCall, a senior, recalls early meetings as “really exhilarating.” He’ll also tell you that the adrenaline rush of hatching a hot idea comes with a counter-rush: What now?
Instinct may suggest you head west. That’s the play if you land a spot in Y Combinator (despite a YouTube plea, Campus Bubble did not). Admission to the three-month program is more competitive than Harvard or Yale, and comes with cachet. You give up a percentage of your start-up’s equity. But those who get in, like Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta (Mr. Zhao is on leave from the University of Pennsylvania and Mr. Mehta from New York University), say the advice, speakers, community and high-power tech network is worth the price. “They provide you with so much value from Day 1,” says Mr. Zhao, who with Mr. Mehta developed FamilyLeaf, an online site for sharing family photos and news. The accelerator connected them with two additional founders, and $170,000 in initial financing. And their March “Demonstration Day” performance (sporting T-shirts hand-painted the night before with their company name) earned them several new investors.
Inclusion in private incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars is coveted because of their strong track records with start-ups (Dropbox, Bump, Loopt) and the Silicon Valley icons who serve as mentors. But young entrepreneurs can find good help without leaving campus. “It’s possible for a 20-year-old to create something that changes the world,” says Bryce C. Pilz, a University of Michigan law professor who works with student start-ups.
That’s revolutionary thinking for a university culture that has long focused on the inventions of graduate students and faculty. But campuses are beginning to put their bets on undergraduates. Who better understands the social media mindset? And what campus wouldn’t want an Instagram founder as an alum?
Campus incubators are growing. New data from the National Business Incubation Association show that about one-third of the 1,250 business incubators in the United States are at universities, up from one-fifth in 2006. Even nontechie campuses like Northern Kentucky University, Duke and Syracuse have jumped in the pool, recently adding or planning to add start-up incubators.
On campus or off, incubators are not always useful. Some do little more than provide free or cheap space and a coffee machine. What entrepreneurs really need is guidance and like-minded peers.
That’s why George Washington University decided to offer “soup-to-nuts support” for start-ups when it created the Office of Entrepreneurship two years ago, with workshops on crafting an elevator pitch and talks like “Student Start-Ups: From Dorm Room to Board Room.” Jim Chung, the program director, notes that today’s start-ups are led not just by business and computer majors but by “designers, musicians, anybody with good ideas,” so universities need to connect these students to experts and to one another.
“When students are doing crazy stuff, they need to be around other crazy people who think they’re sane,” says Moses Lee, assistant director of TechArb, a four-year-old university-sponsored student incubator (he prefers “start-up hive”) in the basement of a parking garage at the University of Michigan. Getting into TechArb is competitive. Last fall, 65 teams applied for 20 spots. Its curriculum has students pitching to potential users or customers and leading a monthly board meeting to learn how to justify themselves to investors.
Mr. Lee, who is starting up an online student portfolio for job hunting, says that talking about your vision and getting feedback are key early steps. Incubator offices are buzzing at 4 a.m.
Although universities tend to view incubators aimed at undergraduates as the equivalent of a career office, they can also have claims on a student’s I.P. (start-up parlance for intellectual property), says Todd Sherer, president of the Association of University Technology Managers, whose members turn campus inventions into commercial deals. Dr. Sherer, who is also director of Emory’s technology transfer office, says undergraduates are typically considered sole owners of their inventions, but there are exceptions: if a student receives a university grant or is paid by the university for the work, if the idea is developed with faculty, or if a student uses significant campus resources to develop the idea.
At the University of Michigan, students had feared that bringing a project to class or sharing with a professor “would trigger university ownership,” Mr. Pilz says. The language in its policy — that it could claim ownership if student inventors relied on “direct or indirect support of funds administered by the university” — was having a chilling effect. In 2009, the university gavestudents sole ownership of their inventions, even if they work on the idea in a course or use university equipment.
An Entrepreneurship Clinic, in which law students provide free help to undergraduate start-ups, began in January and is now the most popular clinic at the law school; 97 students vied for 16 clinic spots for the fall.
Mr. Chung notes that universities would rather foster positive relations than collect shares in student businesses. “Successful alumni breed successful schools,” he says. Yahoo! started on Stanford servers, but the university never sought ownership. Jerry Yang and David Filo, the founders, endowed a $2 million chair in the School of Engineering and Mr. Yang and his wife have given $75 million.
Google is another story. Stanford owns patents on technology developed by two graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Federal filings for 2011 show the company paid Stanford $400,000 in royalties, and donated $3 million. Stanford’s president, John L. Hennessy, is on the Google board and some 1,300 Stanford graduates work at Google.
The Campus Bubble founders initially “worried about Emory taking some ownership,” says Mr. McCall. But they needed the cooperation of the university — it is The Emory Bubble they are attempting to introduce — so they hired a lawyer and made a deal, giving Emory shares for use of the trademark. Charles Goetz, their teacher in an entrepreneurship class, became their adviser. He says the deal has opened doors, including landing the start-up’s first investor. Mr. Shea agrees: “The fact that we were working with the university gave us some legitimacy.” The $25,000 infusion means the founders, who did Web development on the side to pay living expenses and a $2,000 legal bill, can now pay their interns and focus on their project.
Few student start-ups become Facebook. Most don’t even make a profit. Jeffrey Babin, business adviser for Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program at the University of Pennsylvania, an incubator with 31 student start-ups, warns that “ideas are a dime a dozen — whoever gets it to market in the fastest and most effective manner wins.” Success is elusive, Mr. Babin says, and young founders often decide that it makes more sense to work for someone else. But, he adds: “The value of the venture may be zero. What you have learned? It’s invaluable.”
Read more at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/education/edlife/campus-incubators-are-on-the-rise-as-colleges-encourage-student-start-ups.html?ref=education
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Reasons For Choosing Montessori
A Mother's Reasons For Choosing Montessori.
This is the time of year when the parents of many preschoolers must decide where their child will attend school in the fall. I wanted to take this opportunity to share my experience with Montessori preschool education.
My son is completing his second year in a Montessori preschool program and attended from the age of 3 1/2.
I chose Montessori for several reasons. First, my son is a bright, inquisitive child who already had a sound grounding in recognition of his alphabet, numbers, shapes, and colors before he started preschool. I was worried that he might be bored in a more traditional preschool. Montessori's highly individual program means he is always challenged and interested. In addition, my son is a very active child and the Montessori program gives him lots of opportunity for free play outdoors and indoors as well as more freedom to move about, stand, or even lie on the ground while working on his lessons in the classroom.
In my opinion one of Montessori's great advantages is the fact that the child drives the educational experience. My son's interests and abilities determine his unique educational program and so his lessons may overlap but are not identical to those of his classmates. This makes him an eager and motivated student.
The education program offered by Montessori also includes many advantages. My son's experience includes the arts, math and science, language, and life skills. He regularly impresses our friends and family with his knowledge of science, sign language, and other areas not traditionally included in preschool programs.
I also like the fact that his classroom includes a wider range of ages so he has friends who are both younger and older. In addition, he really enjoys having regular contact with the elementary-age students who serve as both role models and friends.
Finally, as a parent, I cannot stress enough the benefits that a program like Montessori offers in terms of life skills. All students are expected to be responsible for their own personal hygiene as well as maintenance and cleaning of the classroom and food areas. While support is offered by adults and older children, even young children can learn to clean up after themselves. It has certainly had an impact on my son's willingness and ability to help out at home.
Recently I compared preschool experiences with a friend whose child is completing her second year in what most people consider to be the top preschool program in our community. We compared our children's skills to the checklist provided by our school district of 60 skills (including cognitive skills, listening and sequencing skills, language skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and social/emotional skills) that will help children transition into kindergarten. My son has all 60 skills while her daughter lacked skills in each of the areas.
I recommend every parent at least consider Montessori for their child as it is a child-centered learning approach that can provide an excellent foundation for a child's future growth and learning.
Read more at http://www.edarticle.com/article.php?id=199
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
This is the time of year when the parents of many preschoolers must decide where their child will attend school in the fall. I wanted to take this opportunity to share my experience with Montessori preschool education.
My son is completing his second year in a Montessori preschool program and attended from the age of 3 1/2.
I chose Montessori for several reasons. First, my son is a bright, inquisitive child who already had a sound grounding in recognition of his alphabet, numbers, shapes, and colors before he started preschool. I was worried that he might be bored in a more traditional preschool. Montessori's highly individual program means he is always challenged and interested. In addition, my son is a very active child and the Montessori program gives him lots of opportunity for free play outdoors and indoors as well as more freedom to move about, stand, or even lie on the ground while working on his lessons in the classroom.
In my opinion one of Montessori's great advantages is the fact that the child drives the educational experience. My son's interests and abilities determine his unique educational program and so his lessons may overlap but are not identical to those of his classmates. This makes him an eager and motivated student.
The education program offered by Montessori also includes many advantages. My son's experience includes the arts, math and science, language, and life skills. He regularly impresses our friends and family with his knowledge of science, sign language, and other areas not traditionally included in preschool programs.
I also like the fact that his classroom includes a wider range of ages so he has friends who are both younger and older. In addition, he really enjoys having regular contact with the elementary-age students who serve as both role models and friends.
Finally, as a parent, I cannot stress enough the benefits that a program like Montessori offers in terms of life skills. All students are expected to be responsible for their own personal hygiene as well as maintenance and cleaning of the classroom and food areas. While support is offered by adults and older children, even young children can learn to clean up after themselves. It has certainly had an impact on my son's willingness and ability to help out at home.
Recently I compared preschool experiences with a friend whose child is completing her second year in what most people consider to be the top preschool program in our community. We compared our children's skills to the checklist provided by our school district of 60 skills (including cognitive skills, listening and sequencing skills, language skills, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and social/emotional skills) that will help children transition into kindergarten. My son has all 60 skills while her daughter lacked skills in each of the areas.
I recommend every parent at least consider Montessori for their child as it is a child-centered learning approach that can provide an excellent foundation for a child's future growth and learning.
Read more at http://www.edarticle.com/article.php?id=199
http://www.languagecorpsasia.com
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