Teaching Practice

February 13th, 2009 Filed under: Pre-School, University, Work | Tags: children, teaching, Work

Teacher’s College has started up again, so I’m back in to Uni on Wednesdays. We had our first day last week and were told we would be going on teaching practice (TP) this week. Not much notice for me to tell my pre-school that I would be away for the next two weeks on TP.

For those of you not in the know. I am in my final year of a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education. I’m studying at Canterbury University in their College of Education via their Centre Based route. This allows me to work four days a week at a pre-school and come in to Uni one day a week to study. You are actually only required to do 16 hours of work a week, but I have bills to pay so I do the full 32 hours plus whatever shifts I’m needed at the liquor store.

Anywho, twice a year I am required to go on TP at another centre. This is a great opportunity to observe and learn how other centres work and stimulate learning among their children. In other words a great time to steal others ideas to use in your own centre. The problem with this is you don’t get paid while on TP. So that leaves me out of pocket for two weeks now and three weeks at the end of the year.

So, I have been on TP for the last week at the Airmhor Montessori. This is the first time I have worked at a Montessori school and I am really enjoying it. This particular Montessori has moved with the times and adapted there policies to be more up to date with todays early childhood teaching strategies. This has made them less strict with the children allowing more self exploration learning through free play while still providing wonderful structured learning activities. Resulting in some truly magnificent children who respect their environment and others within it, are academically ahead of their peers. All the while having a fun time and enjoying their childhood.

Working in Kindergartens in Taiwan I was amazed at how much the children were academically learning, but also upset with the lack of social interaction that was taking place. Most kids enjoyed the classes while there attention could be held, but often got over tired or upset with not being able to focus more on what they personally enjoyed. Resulting in incredibly academically smart children who were happy at the beginning of the session but turned into robots with in an hour or so, only to spark back into life when a particular subject they were truly interested in would be discussed. This allowed the kids to learn great amounts of knowledge through rote learning, but quite often the children found it hard to adapt that knowledge to solve real life problems.

After returning to New Zealand and working in pre-schools here I found the tables had been completely switched. Children were encouraged to learn through free play while the teachers were almost completely taken out of the picture and only used as observers and guidance. These kids have a fun time, but seem to be quite often under stimulated. They are still learning basic academic skills through play like maths through blocks and pattern matching games etc. But teachers seem almost scared to help push them to the next level. Afraid to use real academic strategies in fear that it won’t be fun for the children. I have noticed this almost unlimited freedom seems to result in a lot of behavioral problems with in the classrooms.

I could see the benefits of both cultures education systems, but believe neither were offering a balanced one. That is why my goal is to open my own centre and work towards offering children a balance learning opportunity. Thanks to Airdmhor Montessori my minds picture of how that center will operate is much clearer now.

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