Principals Comments 3.6.22

Kia ora e te whanau

The hardest part of mowing my back lawn is removing all the “stuff” on the lawn - garden seats, sports equipment etc. A well-mowed lawn means all the obstacles are removed so that the lawn has perfect edges and a shiny green surface! Unfortunately, too many of us adopt the lawn mowing approach to a child’s education. Parents and teachers quite rightly don’t want their child to fail so they subconsciously smooth the path. Examples can be:

• Parents who remove all life obstacles in front of their teenagers and then panic over their child’s anxiety to face life issues and personal decisions.
• Parents who prevent their children from facing adversity, struggle or even failure. They have the cover and smother tactics to prevent growth.
• Parents who make excuses for their child’s tardiness in getting to school or not fulfilling their commitments at school...then blame the teacher, the discipline policies of the school etc.

• Parents who resort to bad-mouthing the school, the weather, the Government..anyone actually..for their child’s lack of action.

I have sat through many enrolment interviews where the new student is asked a simple question e.g. “what is your reading like?” and the parent replies “He/she is doing very well in reading - also in Maths and Sports”! Rather than them growing the confidence to speak for themselves- they are spoken for. Perhaps have been all their life.

Every person in education, teacher and parent, would want their young person to be confident, achieving, and on the road to adulthood. The unfortunate fact is that many students lack the ability to "get-back-on-the-horse" when they are tipped off. It is called resilience. Some ways we can encourage resilience and life’s opportunities for our young people:

• Remind your child about the commitments they have made to their school, their sporting team, or other activities. Expect them to honour their commitments. This includes self-directed study after school.

• Don’t let them blame the referee for the poor performance. In fact, don’t let the blame game be part of their life at all. Remind them that life is occasionally unfair.

• Remind them that failure is part of life. Not to be sought, but once given is to be worked through.

In Luke 9:23, Jesus looks at his disciples and tells them, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

Lawn mowing parents could reflect on that phrase. For those who wish to read more about lawn mowing parents, I invite you to watch this video.

Today’s newsletter is not intended to cause offence to anyone, but it is a call to reflect on what we do as parents to clear the lawn for our children- is it helpful? Will it set them up for future success? Our antiquated traditional ways of schooling by spoon feeding information is no longer fit for purpose. Any student can now find all the knowledge they need by searching through google.

Spoon feeding in education is:

• The process of ‘telling’ students what they need to know.
• Has been the dominant educational paradigm in schools since the invention of the assembly line and is still prevalent today.
• Occurs in teacher-directed settings.
• Results in students thinking very little about what or how they are learning.
• Seems to be driven, in part, by an over-reliance on traditional and standards-based testing (“OK students, listen up, I’m going to tell you what you’ll need to know for the upcoming test.”)
• Is kept in place by a societal belief that ‘this is the way education happens.’
• Tends to create ‘learned helplessness’, a condition resulting in students becoming reliant on the spoon-feeding.
• Results in 'lazy' students who take little responsibility for their own learning - students who lose handouts on a regular basis, who appear engaged ONLY when gaining the teacher’s undivided attention.
• Creates the dynamic where the teacher invests considerably greater effort into the learning process than his/her students yet with disappointingly poor outcomes.
• The alternative is self-directed learning, and it must be taught, modelled and repeated over and over.

Self-directed learning in education is:

• Students asking questions of themselves and others.
• Students knowing what they do and do not understand.
• Students who think about their learning as they inquire.
• Schooling that values understanding, problem solving, reasoning and student ownership of learning over traditional test results.
• Identifying learning goals – you can’t achieve what you haven’t envisioned.
• Questioning the significance of things and not taking things at face value and caring about the answers.
• Seeking out interesting challenges – Identifying a problem you care about and rewarding yourself by solving it.
• Monitoring and measuring your progress against your own learning goals.
• Being collaborative with other learners either in person or online.
• Valuing progress over performance.
• Practicing using the knowledge that has been gained and creating something from what you have learned.

These are scary changes and ideas for many of us because it was not how we were taught and we turned out fine, right! We need to move on from the assembly line of feeding through the knowledge to inspiring a true love of learning in our students where they want to complete some study after school, not wait for the teacher to spoon feed between the hours of 9 to 3, or depend on extra expensive tuition because they did nothing in class during the week.

Next week we have some exciting events coming up with the Life Education Trust coming to educate our Year 10 and 11 students on the dangers of vaping and our Year 9 students on how to be financially smart. We also have the junior sports quad happening in Dunedin and the Eastern Primary cross-country champs. Have a wonderful and restful Queens Birthday weekend, stay safe and help us keep our Covid cases down.

Charity Fulfils the Law

Tara Quinney,
Principal