steam-oregon.academy

Today’s schooling is where traditional subjects are covered with the idea that these topics will give the student a solid and sufficient foundation for her/his future. This future normally involves further studies and certifications that would allow employment in profitable careers. But times have made these topics insufficient and the time spent in the school building or in the home-school framework is not giving young people enough skills for a continuos changing society. More so when it is about soft skills which are necessary for a functioning society. Skills like knowing how to be part of a working team, social communication and being able to have a wide perspective on complex issues. The ability to listen and see other’s points of view. Skills that have become scarce.

This is where we need to go beyond tutoring. As tutoring, today, normally involves helping the student to get good grades in a particular subject, say writing, math, physics, or chemistry. Of course, tutoring this subjects is necessary and important but the way has to be done is based on a wide integration of personal experience from the tutor who becomes more like a mentor, or a life coach.

A lifelong kindergarten (Book by Mitchel Resnick) guides us into what it is necessary with tutoring/mentoring and in fact with formal schooling. We need to bring back the joy of learning. Or if it is not “bringing back” it should be instated for the first time. There is no leaning when there is stress, anxiety, or sorrow. The brain is incapacitated to learning or creating new ideas when it feels that it is under some kind of stressful situation. The situation creates in the brain the need for an exit, the need to survive and even if survival depends on creative new ideas the mind need to be relaxed. It is an important skill that people who are in constant danger develop.

The memory of a painful act can last for a long time, but there is hardly any learning from this pain. On the contrary, there can be a lot of learning during a playful experience even if these experiences can’t be remember, but the lesson learned will last forever.

There are variants of the saying “If you aren’t having fun; you are doing it wrong”. I tell my students in class: If you aren’t having fun; you aren’t learning. It is absolutely true.