We continue to imagine and contrast opinions on how to make an ideal school real this season in which children have returned to school. We continue today with the second part of the interview with teacher Nayra Álamo We started yesterday.
Are learning and freedom compatible?
Nothing should be imposed, and when we talk about learning less.
The learning process is a biological process of internal development, arises from an internal need of the individual, from curiosity, from the need to seek answers to their own questions.
How does the learning imposed harm?
The imposed learning does not allow our students to know themselves, to know what they like, what they are good at, what style of learning they have. I think this is one of the main triggers of the failure of the current education system. Students learn what we want them to learn, not what they want or need to know.
Does that make them have less initiative?
Yes, this is why students do not set goals, they do not feel the desire to challenge themselves and face new challenges. In addition they have not developed the skills or possess the necessary tools to cope successfully with a challenge or the unknown because they have always been guided, they have been led to the response that the teacher considered he should know or was the most successful.
What things should be banished from the organization of schools?
Definitely should avoid the notes, prizes and penalties to start. And it is not difficult. Just change the chip.
If instead of grades and based on an individualized learning program, we included at the end of each quarter a detailed report of the progress of our students and of what they are capable of doing or of what is still in process, it would be more than enough .
Isn't it worth doing exams to evaluate correctly?
I would remove the exams. The exams as they are put into practice in the classroom leave aside something very important in every learning process: the error. Rather than putting it aside, they demonize it. They make it something to avoid and not something to learn from. Children only learn from the correct answers. That is why our children suffer high levels of frustration in many everyday situations, since they have seen error as something to avoid. In relation to prizes and punishments, he would simply eliminate them because it is not about students learning motivated by an external stimulus, but because they want to do so to respond to their own interests.
Is it due to these problems that there is so much school failure?
School failure is a product of the failure of the educational system. The failure is to stop to look for guilty parties and not solutions. School failure is the inability of the system and its agents to empathize with the needs and motivations of students.
School failure occurs when the system insists on continuing to do the same despite its own failure.
Can actions be taken that increase children's motivation?
In my experience, learning takes place when what motivates us leaves the heart and / or has somehow influenced our emotions and feelings and is installed in the form of knowledge in our brain. Any vital experience serves as learning for the child. Now, if I consider the nature of the child, the main source of motivation is the game. Through play we can ensure any type of learning in children. Free play in nature is crucial. In my classroom I try to ensure that students have varied resources at hand; especially many board games, construction games, authentic and attractive materials. And I let them play with them, experiment, manipulate them, create ... If in addition to this we provide them with tools (among them the most attractive for them are usually the ICTs) and the emotional and cognitive support necessary to develop freely, learning will be assured.
We thank teacher Nayra Álamo the time she has given us for this interview and, really, I have to tell her that I am proud to have spoken with her and to recover the faith that the change of the system is possible.
