SYNERGISM IN EDUCATION

JESUSA MALOLOYON GARCIA

This is a term that caught my attention when one of our topics in the graduate studies is about Leadership. Synergism. I first encountered this term in an advertisement expressing a marketing strategy of a product promoting something about technology. But at that time, i was not yet fascinated with it. But when we talked about it in our class,I actually got to appreciate it aside from it is new and that it sounded nice. I want to go down deeper with this term. Looked at its meaning in the dictionary that I’m using and voila! Synergism is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects working together. To add, it’s the effort of two in order to have excellent results. What a beautiful set up for a collaborative group work. This has made me think of the saying “Two heads are better than one”. Which has been the favorite phrase when it comes to gathering of ideas.

In the classroom set-up before, making noise is a no-no. In the present times, students who are doing a group activity or they are working on their group project and produce noise, that is called productive noise. It’s a kind of noise that is acceptable, it is educational, or with a greater purpose. Well, that is referring about HOTS or Higher Order Thinking Skills. In the sense of educational synergism, the term I invented myself, at this point, hopefully hasn’t been conceptualized yet, is a collaboration of great minds, having to spit out ideas and as a result, making productive noise that is significant in the learning situation. Considering the fact that this kind of noise is agreeable in the teaching-learning situation, teachers should pay close attention to be able to distinguish productive noise from noise pollution to apply proper synergism among the students in the classroom.

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The author is Teacher I at Pampanga High School