some thoughts on education of children

HIYA!

I've been thinking for a while now that educating children is like hammering a block into a round hole. Bam bam bam, pound, smash, bang, bang, bang. Violent, in a way.

I can understand why it "needs" to be this way, but it sure seems incredibly unfortunate. Seems there is enormous diversity among children (and of course adults). So to try to squeeze everyone into any one way of understanding, thinking, speaking, and acting seems harsh and severe. You see the effects in classrooms. Some kids enjoy the lessons, other hate them. Most are sort of in the middle, conforming to the concept of "Bell Curves".

I know there are other ways and I'd sure like to work with something, and of course, get better results than what I'm currently getting. My students are enjoying lessons a bit more than before, but I don't feel they're learning more. They enjoy the games, card games and bingo mainly. They're are a couple of games that I've dreamed up that are big hits but I only use them with the littler kids.

What I want is some way to get kids interested. That may mean to give them something they themselves decide they want to learn, or, I don't know. My boss says we can change the curriculum at the end of the year so I don't want to try to make lots of changes just now. I'm reading about learning and making small changes but I don't want to do anything major until the end of the year. I don't have lots of time between classes so lengthy planning for each class is impractical. I do of planning for several classes before I start my first class of the day, but I don't usually prepare for the later classes of the day. Time. I don't want to go in so early to really extensively prepare. So, a book that kids like would be great. And various other materials.

I've been teaching some card games but without the betting. We've played Go Fish, a game that I made up, and most recently, Black Jack. Kids love these games. I want to give them new ones so we can learn new language.

Had a speech contest today at the local Ramada Hotel. 50 or so kids from 7 schools got together at the five-star hotel for a few hours. A Canadian guy and I were the judges. Had a pretty good time and the kids from my school were generally pretty good. I get along pretty well with most kids. Especially since I introduced more games, more when I started the card games, then most recently when I started giving the kids "noogie" (I learned from Saturday Night Live years and years ago), which is knuckle taps on their heads, just for fun. They love it.

The curriculum and the books I'm supposed to use are way inappropriate. Apparently the situation at my school is typical in Korea.

Troy.