Kaip sukurti gražiausią klasę Vilniuje?
Kaip sukurti gražiausią klasę Vilniuje? Įsijausti ir įdarbinti jausmus. Mūsų mokykloje svečiavosi interjero dizainerė Eglė Rinkevičienė, kuri su vaikais atliko eksperimentą: kūrė ateities klasę. Mokytojas Kamal, iš pradžių svarstęs, ar interjero dizaino pagrindai nebus per sudėtingi, greitai pamatė, kad vaikai puikiai perpranta planų kūrimą, erdvės ir estetikos pagrindus. Štai kur nuveda jausmų tyrinėjimo projektas!
Lauko mokyklos mokytojo Kamal Ahamada mintys:
Why you should be one of our experts in our classroom?
Last week, for our project based learning entitled` how can we use our senses to create the most beautiful classroom of Vilnius?’, we invited Egle, an interior designer, to share her expertise and inspire our young learners for the making of their future classroom. To be honest, I thought that the connection with our main topic (senses) and interior design was a bit far-fetched, and that would be a bit too complex for our kids. I was wrong. The level of children’s engagement was so high that what was planned to be a 15min presentation ended up being a 1h15min course/workshop with the most exciting activities.
From the very start, our expert managed to catch kid’s attention by giving them the real plan of our future school. Children were really enthusiastic to create/ design / imagine what would be their ideal classroom. In this task, they had to consider a couple of things such as space, esthetic, practicality. Another workshop that won their hearts and minds was to touch and feel the sample materials that Egle kindly brought to them in order to make the whole experience more realistic and more meaningful. Our kids could hardly contain their excitement. The visual was as much overwhelming as the touch!
And it seems that they were not the only ones being inspired. Our guest confessed that she was a bit shy before the start and did not ‘expect that the kids would be so interested and so proactive’. Well, we neitherJ. At least not to that extent. For the first time one of our kids, who is usually very shy was the first to volunteer and present his work in front of the whole class. And all of them actually happily did so without any of us asking for it. We were also nicely surprised that all of our youngest kids stayed in the classroom and showed as much interest as their peers.
Welcoming other voices in the classroom, preferably our close community provides an invaluable experience to learners. Having a guest speaker not only enhances student’s learning but it also broadens their minds, open new personal and professional perspectives. Learning can finally makes senses as they can easily make a direct connection between academic knowledge and the real world. And this has a great impact on the learners because no matter how good and dedicated the teacher is, nothing can beat a real-life example!
So, we encourage parents, friends, organizations, and other stakeholders to come and share their skills, passion, or expertise and get involved as much as they can, simply because learning beyond text books does make a real difference in child’s social and cognitive development.
Kamal Ahamada is an educator, traveler, and activist who grew up in France, studied in Denmark and is now based in Vilnius, where he currently works as a teacher in Lauko mokykla. His areas of academic interests include: Postcolonial-decolonial theories, Pedagogy of liberation, alternative education, arts and cultures of resistance, psychoanalysis and race, transgenerational trauma, solidarity politics, Africa and Middle East politic.
