CREATIVE SCHOOLS: GIVING AN ANSWER TO STUDENT NEEDS IN THE 21ST CENTURY - SEVİNÇ ÇİSEM YÜKSEL

We all have an education system no matter where we are from. The problem is that our education systems are not perfect. Or course we don’t expect them to be perfect completely but they have to satisy the needs of the era. By changing, adding and removing something we can do that because education is one of the most important aspects of being a human. We are the teachers of the future. So we have to be aware of the current problems and we should be ready to solve them in order to create a better educated generation.

Before we start our project, we discussed the problems that we have in our countries and we compared them. It was very interesting to learn the systems of different countries so we decided to share our information with our colleagues. Turkey and Spain are quite similar to each other in terms of educational problems meanwhile Germany seems to not have so many problems but while we were presenting the problems, our teacher said that in Germany, children have to decide what they are going to study at the age of 10. This is way too early to make such an important decision. I think this is a huge problem. Giving them such a big responsibility in that early age forces them to grow up early and makes them  anxious about their future. Because they are too young to choose a domain. In that kind of situations, mostly parents have to decide what their children are going to be in the future but this choice should belong to the children themselves. And also many parents are not aware of their kid’s capabilities. So there should be some days for parents to come to the class and observe theie children. So they can see what their kid is doing, how well s/he is doing. Then parents and teachers share their ideas about what kind of path they should follow to maket he kids happy. This is not for only Germany but also all systems should have that kind of observation sessions with parents to collacorate with the teachers.

 We see an example of the lackness of parental knowledge in Ken Robinson’s speech. There is an insprational story about how Gillian Lynne becomes a great dancer. But at first, both her parents and teachers think that she is an hyperactive kid and she doesn’t fit the class atmosphere. But being different from the others doesn’t mean that you are sick or something like that. You only learn by that way. That’s all. So the system should be fixed according to that and also parents should be educated not to label their kids according to their success in just scientific lessons. Because there is an hierarchy in education. But all the subjects have the same value. Being good at arts doesn’t make you unsuccessful and it doesn’t mean that you are the bottom of the hieararchy. This makes you a very successful artist. But the creativity is not rewarded in society. This is the main problem why this hieararchy and that kind of problems occur.

The another idea which Ken Robinson underlies is that all children have creativity and they are not afraid to be wrong. This is why they are creative at that point. You have to be prepared to be wrong in order to be creative. He tells a story about a girl who is exactly ready to be wrong  and therefore to be creative. She is not good at all subjects but drawing. Apart from all subjects, she can focus on what she is doing in drawing lessons. She draws a picture and the teachers asks her what she draws, she says ‘ I am drawing a picture of God’. We all don’t know what God looks like and of course she doesn’t, either but she doesn’t think that I can’t draw something that I don’t know beforehand. She is not afraid to be wrong about that. But the systems doesn’t allow children to be creative. They are exposed to much theory and many teachers don’t want them to be creative. They want their own truths but the truth is a relative thing. We can accept that we should teach children that they can do whatever they want and they can be whatever they want.

And also we don’t have to controll them and protect them from everything. They should learn something by doing and by experiencing them. We can say a kid that if you run too fast, you can fall and this hurts you. But unless s/he experinces it on her/his own, the kid can’t learn it completely no matter how many times we say that. In order to create this, Takaharu Tezuka designed a aspheric kindergarten in the middle of the nature without a roof or definite classes which are already located. All children learn together, share together and collaborate with each other to live together happily. The school consists of trees, gren areas and portable equipments. They run all day, spend their time very effectively by discovering new things and discovering the beauty of the nature. Teacher allows them to do whatever they want but also they want them to collaborate the other kids. There are no definite classes because in closed areas, the kids feel bordered. But the main point is to make them feel free. He says that if you put a child in a closed area, s/he will try to escape that borders and s/he will find a place to hide but instead of doing this, he designed a aspheric area for children. He explains the main point underlying this concept by saying that if you give a child a circle to spend his time, even if he tries to escape somewhere else, he will return where he was before. Because it is a circle. He has no choice. They learn how to talk, how to respect, how to share and tolarate to each other. This is one of the most important things in education. Teaching good values. He also takes an advantage of having physical activities in the school by designing this kindergarten. Kids are always active. By running the half of the school, a kid runs 400 metres a day. If we consider how many times they do that, the amount is very satisfied.

While we were talking about how to get rid of the participation problems, we also thought about introducing new entertaining subjects. And this kindergarten is a big example of this. Our taughts were like that;  Children mostly don’t want to go to school because they are exposed theory oriented classes. But rather than this, teachers should teach how to use the theory in the real life instead of just teach the theory itself. So we can add some entertaining subjects to implement real life tasks. For example if we study geography, we can arrange a trip to see what kind of things we’re going to see throughout the semestr. And of course, we should add some courses that can be interesting for students to see. Like music classes, swimming classes or chess tournaments to have some effective time to spend with each other. Because having just theorotical classes can be way too boring for students and they can’t focus on the school well. We suggest that there should be any kinds of subjects and children can attend whatever they want without thinking credits. There shouldn’t be an hieararchy.

Our other concern is to supply the same opportunities to all children. Because both Spain and Turkey suffer from an economic crisis and  money effects the quality of the education very much. All students should have the same opportunities in their education lives. Because all our education systems in Turkey, Spain and Germany; private schools have more opportunities than public schools and this situation creates a knowledge gap between students. Money shouldn’t be one of the most important aspects of having a good education. Yes, we should supply new technologies to increase the effectiveness of the education but this doesn’t mean that if you don’t have that opportunities, you don’t need to teach complicated things. We saw that everything is possible when you really want to teach in Arvind Gupta’s video. He creates so many toys and simple machines to teach something and also instead of throwing them, he makes them renewable. They are not so expensive or hard to find. We can find them almost everywhere. This also improves children’s creativity. In order to teach children how an engine Works, we don’t have to bring the class an actual engine. We can make a fake engine all together. They will understand better when they are included the process of making it. And also they will understand better the way it works,too. He als designes a toy for blind children to draw and this is amazing. He just used a box, rope and a mechanism to spin the rope. By that way we also have an inclusive education system in our schools.

Our thougts about diversity and inclusive education system were like that; Schools should have an inclusive education system. The main idea of having an inclusive education system to respond to learner diversity in the classes. And this includes working with disabled children without labelling them as a disabled learner, having all kinds of children in each class without looking at their differences. If a student learn very slowly, that shouldn’t be a problem. We should adopt that quote ‘ It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop’. Our fisrt aim to encourage students to never stop.

Inclusion is a process which means that we never stop searching better ways to respond to diverstiy. It is about identification and removal of barriers. We need the presence, participation and achievement of all students to say that we have an inclusive education system. They need to attend the classes both reliably and punctually, they need to have well quailified experiences whilst they are at school and the outcomes of learning should be beyond the curriculum, not merely test or examination results.With all of these, we can provide more effective educational responses for all children.

We have 2 important factors to facilitate the promotion of inclusive practices in schools. They are clarity of definition in relation to the idea of inclusion which means that we should know what exactly expect from inclusive system. And the other one is forms of evidence that are used to measure eudcational performances of children. By starting point for making decisions about the evidence we sohuld have a point of view that ‘ Measure what we value’ rather than ‘valuing what we can measure’. 

Finally, we should have 4 themes for our inclusive education system frameworks. They are;

1. Concepts
2. Policiy
3. Structures and systems
4. Practice ( But let me say that the focus musn’t only be on practice but also it must address and sometimes challenge the thinking behind existing ways of working)

            We also want more breaks and less homework in the school. Children can get bored very easily especially when they are exposed lessons too much. They need breaks to fresh their minds, to eat something to drink something or to talk with their friends. This can be very good for Spanish education system because we already have many breaks during the day and also Germany has many breaks. But we have the same homework problem. Children already spend so much time at school and what’s more, they have to spend too much time to do their homeworks at home. But they are too young to sit and do homework all day long. They need to spend time outside the house and school. So teachers give free time to do their homework at school and they shouldn’t push children so hard by giving a lot of homeworks.

We’ve learnt so many things from our colleagues’ presentations,as well. They are all very good and well made. In general all groups aim to have an inclusive education system. Because the main point to get a better system is to have an inclusive system.

I remember the Modern Students’ idea of having animals in the class but there is a difficulty about that there are many children who are afraid of animals. How can we ensure that they will be confortable with that? As a person who scares animals very much, I can’t imagine having a class with a rabbit or a frog. We can teach them to respect animals but I think it is not a good idea to share a class with them. In spite of this, their work is very well and their main points are very good. They want to provide a teacher to give children advices and feedback, push them to think critically and teach some values like respect,trust, equality. I really like the ideo of having a box for sharing ideas. This also help pupils to know each other better and they can meet their needs and wishes so there won’t be so many problems.

Apart from our work, Wonderlust also give some information about other countries’s education systems. ( Finland, USA, Netherlands, Indonesia) So it was nice to know different systems. They want their pupils to learn through other’s opinions so they push them to share their ideas. It is a useful way to promote brain-storming in the class. Their school is located in a natural environment so that pupils can be integrated with the nature and learn to be grateful for the nature. The best thing that they provide schools to have solar panels. That is an amazing idea to not waste energy. We already have our renewable resources thanks to nature so we should use them instead of wasting our energy for a thing which we already have a solution for.

Cronicas Viajeras pointed out the crisis generally. They want to provide pupils to have second hand workbooks for the lessons because they are really expensive and all children have to have them in order to follow the curriculum. And there is a transportation opportunity to make pupils’ lives easier. Transportation is really expensive, as well. In order to reduce the effects of the crisis, they seem to be good for pupils. Apart from the crisis, they also provide bilungual lessons to promote diversity. It can be good to have a well qualified language lessons for children coming from different countries. As an Erasmus student, I really support that idea.

Musical Chairs want to have an assesment with sense. This means that rather than having an exam, pupils should be evaluated daily and teacher should give feedback immediately. Teachers should see the pupils as small adults and let them solve their problems by discovering and consulting each other. This is a good idea to have a good relationship between both pupils-pupils and pupils-teachers. Their ideal school should educate pupils not only academically but also socially. This means that they have to teach how to be a good person besides how to be a good student. They want to use 5 senses in the classroom to have a real-world knowledge not only theory. This also helps pupils to understand better.

Team Perk wants to have a cooperative learning to deal with the diverstiy well. They want to promote flexible class hours for pupils to feel themself comfortable. This can be a good idea but i think there should be a schedule anyway. Because if you let them do whatever they want, you can’t stop them again. They also want to have spare areas in their school to help pupils spend time together and do some activities.

Dumbledore’s Teachers Army talks about the same things more or less. But they pointed out the bullying as well as talking about general ideas that we already know. They want to teach values to get rid of bullying. They see this one of the most important problems of schools. They are right. We can also teach empathy to understand the bullied kid.

The Unknown’s most prominent suggestion is to make people donate their schools because of the crisis.

To sum up, there are many problems and there are many solutions. It requires time to change the whole system but we can start somewhere. We have the power. We all have great ideas and the most important thing is that we are aware of that we have problems in terms of education systems. We don’t accept them like the way they are now. We shouldn’t follow the traditional path that all previous teachers follow. We will be the teachers of next generations. Our primary aim is to teach how to be a good person, and then we can deal with anything else.