The perks of taking WRD 378 concurrent with WRD 205 — relational experiences galore. I’ve long believed early-mid childhood education to be extremely difficult, with a high skill floor to match. Educators have to take into account a child’s exterior aspects and consider it into curriculum (which is hard, considering children cannot formulate their thoughts into words completely), but teachers also need to make teaching fun to encourage children to like education. Children are unpredictable, highly volatile, and difficult to keep under control. It takes a damn good teacher to make a children’s childhood education both enjoyable, and educational.
High school and University teachers, on the other hand, augment a student’s existing notions — the foundation’s been set, and while teachers can change perceptions, the skill floor seems to be much more lenient: “don’t screw up too hard, make sure you get the information out. Effectively if possible.”
On Dyson’s article, childhood educators need ridiculous amounts of flexibility and open-mindedness to allow children to bring their exterior cultural influences in. Children are naturally more keen on cooperative work, but because of their volatile nature, the content/activity may be hijacked and rearranged to the children’s desires — this isn’t bad, but educators may feel compelled to tell them otherwise, and reformat the curriculum back to their intentions. The difficulty, I think, lies in receptive educators and an understanding on how to guide, not necessarily coerce, children.
Don’t remember much of elementary, I suppose there wasn’t anything too pivotal during that time?
