TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO THINK

Rouenn M. Rodriguez

"It is not only in the home that we can build a family. The school serves as our teaching and learning environment; consists of different levels serves as our developmental growth, consists of classrooms serves as our homes, each classroom is consists of a family, the teacher as the parent and the learners as the children. It is not the flesh and the blood that will make us parents to them and themselves as our children, but our hearts filled with UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, DEDICATION, and PASSION to our PROFESSION."

This was my own version of teaching philosophy when I was in college. As I looked at the past, many things have changed. The government, way of transportation, additional languages, culture, accepting diversity, prices of goods, socialization, including the way of teaching.

When we look back on our own school days, our strongest memories are probably a mix of big occasions—field trips, plays, and sports days alongside more personal events tinged with strong emotion. Things that happened that were really funny or sad, or that made us feel excited, interested, exhilarated, or angry. We don’t tend to remember vividly all that happened.

All of which leads to us making the entirely reasonable hypothesis that if we want students to remember what we teach them, then we need to make our lessons more like the spectacular one-off special events, or, at the very least, involve something specially selected because it’s exciting and possibly unusual. Memorable events, in this view, should form the template for creating memorable lessons.

When we recall our elementary, high school or even college days, we remember the ceiling fans which are not working, the blockbuster line at the canteen, even tasteless food or juice. Annoyingly, we may remember these things more strongly that the things we really want to remember. Teachers probably have had this experience with classes. W hen teachers ask students to remember what they were learning the previous day, the students remember all sorts of things: that you announced bring seeds tomorrow, that Roosvelt was late, that you spilt your buko juice, that Kenny made a hilarious joke. The actual lesson content? Memories of that are much weaker.

If you want to remember something, you need to think about it, not just experience it. The more you have thought about something, the more likely it is that you will remember it. So teachers have to make sure that lessons give students the opportunity to think the things we actually want them to remember, rather than some extraneous other thing. We need them to think about the message of the lesson, rather than the medium we use to teach it.

When teachers plan lessons, we need to be mindful of what children will be thinking about during each part of the lesson, rather than what they will be feeling or doing. Have we planned activities that will ensure children think hard about the right things? If not, don’t be surprised when children remember very little beyond the confines of that specific lesson. Very young children, regardless of background, by definition have less rich life experience, so need more memorable experiences as a sort of “welcome to the world” primer pack. We want to help form children who are emotionally literate and morally responsible too.

Given this difficult circumstances that we have, let the children focus on academic study hoping that this good education can give them a better and a meaningful life, and never forget that what matters most is our deepest faith to our Almighty God.

The author is Teacher

--oOo-

I at San Agustin Integrated School (Main)