Back to School – Turning up the Volume
At Stonehill, we claim that high-quality learning takes place when “learners participate constructively in individual and collaborative efforts by being efficient problem solvers and skilled communicators”. We recognize a learner as someone who “seeks new understandings by exploring, experimenting and discovering and applies a range of skills to solve problems in a variety of situations”. In other words, the students are actively engaged in figuring things out, not passively waiting to be instructed in a discipline by an adult. The sheer energy on campus this week reminded me of the importance of active engagement in learning. We’ve already seen Student Council campaigns, countless CAS projects being initiated, bake and diya sales, real PE lessons, students making instructional videos in Kannada and Hindi, a whole media organization forming, Science Bowl preparations, plans for a D1 Drama Performance brewing, the boarding houses open, M1-M3 finally back on campus and a whole lot more. Our students have returned to campus full of energy and ready to make things happen. And, as teachers, we have discovered that the thing we missed most about ‘normal school’ was the ‘noise’. It turns out that active, engaged learners are really quite noisy human beings. There is a delightful murmur of conversation that you hear before classes and during break times, a slightly louder comical reflection on the day as students go to the buses, the shuffle of feet around the campus as students move from place to place, footballs and basketballs bouncing in the courtyard, innumerable hellos and goodbyes at the entrance and exit every day, questions, more questions, ideas and suggestions from young people who looked significantly different seventeen months ago. All of which, on Monday at 13.40, after the first full day with M1-M3s in the building, left some of us, in shock, looking at each other thinking, “What on earth just happened?” Long may the craziness continue. Joe Lumsden Secondary School Principal |
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