“The best education for the future is one that teaches the student how to think critically and creatively, how to work with others in small groups of people, and how to communicate clearly and think analytically.” RC President-Elect Bradley Bateman, February 14, 2013, Lynchburg, VA
Dr. Bateman “speaks my mind.” At New Vistas we strive daily to not only assist students as they raise essential skills (such as those required for reading, writing, computing, and communicating), but to enable them to problem-solve, think independently, and USE information, not only acquire it.
When I taught at New Community School in Richmond for sixteen years ago, our touchstone for our teaching philosophy was the ancient Chinese proverb:
“I hear, I forget
I see, I remember
I do, and I understand.”
I still don’t think we can get any better than that in terms of a “guiding” instructional principal. In schools today much information is still presented in a “sit and get” fashion: I tell you, the student—you’re supposed to learn. If you don’t get it from what I say, read the chapter. Sometimes we supplement that with visuals—handouts, boardwork, charts. The problem is that children need to be DOING to truly understand and own—and in that doing, they need to be able to try out ideas, make mistakes, figure out what went wrong, try again, come up with new solutions, learn from the process. They need to be out of their seats working with one another, collaborating.
Information is available now to children in about a minute (I was recently at a lecture on the “Nanosecond Culture”), whether we like it or not. Young people—as young as two years old—are learning to manipulate technology to find what they need/want. So access to information is no longer the mark of an educated person—applying, analyzing, launching ideas from that information is what matters, not in a decade—now.
I had the pleasure of meeting John Hunter, a teacher in the Charlottesville Public Schools, at a recent VAIS Heads of School Conference. In 2011 he had the “most innovative idea” of the year. Go to John Hunter Ted Talk online to see what that idea was: essentially, getting fourth graders to generate world peace. In that twenty minute video the essence of experiential learning is portrayed; more importantly, the impact it has on young minds is what I celebrated.
At NVS we’re exploring how our students can become even more hands on. New Board member Bob Gillette worked in experiential education for forty years. He’s a storehouse of ideas and a well of enthusiasm. He’s excited about helping us extend our learning opportunities “beyond the walls” even more. Like Dr. Bateman, we at NVS want to prepare our students for THEIR future, not our past.
