Playtime? Nature Study? What’s Dat?
I had a really interesting experience today. Our topic for these two days is Learning Styles. We are learning about our individual learning styles and how that affects our learning. Sheryll, our lecturer who is also our base director, used to be a school teacher so this topic was right up her alley.
As she was teaching, she got us to reflect on what we enjoyed most about school or hated most about school. As she did that, she started to share what she enjoyed most about school in New Zealand and she said "Playtime" and "Nature Study" and I was like going, "Huh? What’s that?!?!".
It took me a while before it dawned on me, oh ya we used to have recess time and we did attempt to do some sort of nature study. But thing was that, it wasn’t a big part of my school days at all. I hardly remember it. I remember eating really fast, playing some games and we were back in class. I even remembered that sometimes I used that time to study for the upcoming test in the next period. How long were our recess times anyway? 30 mins? In NZ, they have 1 hr!
We have such different education systems. It’s amazing that I managed to survive ours without much scars. I guess I’ve always did pretty alright in school and it wasn’t so stressful during my time (yet.). I’m also thankful that my parents hardly put any pressure on me.
Anyways, it was interesting to note what was missing in our education system. Guess I’ve always known it and tried to expose Sophie to as much of that as possible. Sheryll also got us to pray and redeem those moments when we had scars from learning and said to ourselves, "I’ll never learn that again!" and it was a powerful time. It’s amazing how many people have been hurt through the education process either by teachers or fellow students.
I also learnt that both James and I are visual and kinesthetic learners. No wonder we can’t hear each other very well! Ha! Looks like we’ve gotta write to each other more. It’s amazing to also note that so many of us are visual and kinesthetic learners but so much of our education system is auditory learning! No wonder so many didn’t get it!