EMG Quote of the Week –Remember this next time you feel bad for pushing a student to work it out on their own

The current generations have been taught how to think and solve problems. In the past, learning was somewhat centred on rote learning – doing something over and over again until you have it totally mastered and remembered. Today though, rather than just remembering, students need to be able to think and break down the understanding of what they are learning – deconstructing and reconstructing what they have learnt. In a world where problem solving skills are so important to ever-changing fast paced nature of the world outside a classroom, our students need to be able to adapt quickly. Taking it from the point of view of each student being unique as well, we don’t want robots that regurgitate information and basically become carbon copies of each other. What we would hope is that our students would be given the skills to adapt to an ever changing world and that they have greater opportunities as a result. The opportunities within the next decade are going to be far beyond what we currently can comprehend. New roles, new technology and new problems to solve are being created each day. As well as this, we have some roles that are being super-seeded. If our students, and us collectively, stand still, then the wave will catch us out and we will be caught in no man’s land. Ultimately we want each of our students to be able to catch their own wave.

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Written by Michael Dunn – EMG Consultant and Primary Teacher