Open Day at School

Just returned from my son's school's open day, where us parents get to sit in the classrooms a bit and make sure the teachers are teaching / the kids are learning. I got there in time for a Maths test, so had to sit quietly while brains were racked and answers pondered.

I couldn't help thinking about the bit in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, where Aslan is freeing up Narnia and happens upon a school where the kids were being taught in tight and scratchy clothing in a confined classroom. Alsan roars, the walls fall down, the vines rush in and the kids are left to run free, barefoot on soft new grass.

Not here - they're confined to narrow hard seats, until the learning sinks in and they can move on to another room full of narrow hard seats. I'm not impressed. There could be so much more to learning, to enjoyment of learning, than sitting still all day and trying to "be good", then going home to hours of homework each night.

There has to be another way! Especially for my son, who has struggled to conform from day 1. He learns visually, hands-on - not much of that around. He found it hard to learn the way he was being taught in Grade 2 - his teacher tried to pressure me into doses of Ritalin to medicate him into line even though he's not hyper. Never considered it might be her problem - she's been teaching the exact same way for nearly 30 years! I'm so glad I didn't though. He's adjusted to absorbing what's taught in his own way, he interprets things the way he understands it, and it's all clicked finally.

But still I think there could be more. Learning has become a real chore for him. He doesn't want to learn outside school hours. All the joy of learning has been squashed out of him, leaving him to think it's almost a punishment!

A seed of a thought about how to help him has been growing, along with my thoughts on my own life-spring-cleaning. I don't have a final answer yet, but there could be a change down the line....