As parents, providing the best opportunities to our children remains our first priority. Choosing a school and deciding on a learning method means putting our kids through a long way of learning and gaining knowledge. To help us understand how we can choose the right fit, we spoke to Mr. Rajesh Bhatia, founder and CEO of TreeHouse Education & Accessories Ltd.
Read on to know what he had to say about how you can choose the school that best fits the specific needs of your child.
Albert Einstein once said, “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” He would know because after struggling with one-dimensional learning methods at school, he began to seek knowledge on his own and to question pre-established theories. This spirit of enquiry helped him become one of the greatest theoretical geniuses and physicists of all time.
The gist of what he said was not that schooling is not necessary but that educators
should generate a hunger for knowledge and initiate a lifelong quest for wisdom.
When you are choosing a school for your child, it is important that you know that this is going to be the place where your child will either fall in love with learning or come to dislike/fear it.
As a parent, do not underestimate your own insight into your child’s unique strengths and personality because it can go a long way in telling you which school will be the right fit for her/him. Still, here are a few broad guidelines you could follow while making a choice:
Make a wishlist
Is your child an introvert? Or outgoing, physically active, and with oodles of energy? What kind of stories and activities does she/he like? Is your child comfortable with large numbers or does she/he prefer calmer environments with focused attention? Often parents are guided by what they want for their children instead of focusing on the kind of environment that would be just right for them. To get clarity right at the onset, make a wishlist for the kind of school your child would want to go to. This may seem futile at the time of a pandemic where conventional education has been impacted like never before but we can hope that these conditions will not last forever.
So, what would be an ideal school for your child?
Should it have ample outdoor space?
Should the learning environment be formal, structured or spontaneous and informal?
Does the school have enough creative activities?
Will your child have avenues for self-expression via dance, sports, drama, music, art, and crafts?
Does the school teach children social skills?
Is the school sensitive to the unique learning patterns of the students?
Will your child get individual attention?
You can add more points to the list and then check which school checks the most
boxes.
Check the curriculum
In higher classes, where the stress to excel is more, students do better when the
pedagogy is in sync with their aptitude. A child who may do well in a state board
curriculum may not do as well in the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary
Education) format. Many students would thrive in IB (International Baccalaureate
program) and struggle with CAIE (Cambridge Assessment International Education). But how would you know what curriculum suits your child?
If they are doing well in one, it would make sense to not push them towards a completely different module just because it is more prestigious. Follow the learning curve of your child instead of planning the next ten years for her/him. Any child who learns without feeling stressed is more likely to exceed expectations than the one who is struggling to achieve pre-decided goal posts. Sure, some children do well when pushed but remember, education should ideally create a self-motivated student rather than someone driven by fear.
Check the virtual modules
We are currently living through a pandemic and online education has become
increasingly normative. So how do you, during this time, choose a school for your
child? You could start with learning more about the background of an online school and whether it has just emerged during the pandemic to benefit from the increasing need for digital modules or if it is a well-established institution with good testimonials and has invested in a well-researched digital module. Most of the time, you can gauge how efficiently a school will run its digital modules from its website. Something as simple as navigation and interaction ease, quick access to information about the study material, and professional responsiveness will tell you a lot about the digital proficiency of the school.
Make enquiries also about how the modules intend to make your child negotiate the lack of socialization, peer interaction, and a tangible connection with teachers. If it offers interactive activities. If the school has counsellors to address the unique
challenges that children are going through right now and proficient educators to help them develop their cognitive, emotional, and social skills. And how these educators intend to bridge the gaps that children have suffered during this time via audio-visual aids, reading, writing, and kinaesthetic learning. Some information about the student-teacher ratio will also help you make a decision about which module is perfect for your child.
Learn about teaching methodologies
Even if you are looking for a kindergarten for your child, it would help to know what kind of methodologies a school offers. The Waldorf system, for instance is not about imposition but recognition and helps children to think independently, innovatively and develop self-awareness as well as social and emotional intelligence. Encouraging them to be lifelong learners, the system sensitively caters to their unique intellectual, artistic, academic, cognitive, and emotional needs with engaging, practical, holistic lessons.
The Montessori method also remains one of the most popular pre-school choices in India as it is individualised, empathetic to different learning patterns, and fosters a sense of agency, independence, self-motivation, and self-regulation. It encourages critical thinking and self-confidence and fosters both a sense of freedom and collaboration. Most importantly, it teaches conflict resolution early by helping children develop their social as well as emotional skills.
So, choose the space where your child will feel the safest and happiest.
Check the infrastructure and policies
Given that sooner or later, children will return to brick-and-mortar classrooms,
parents would do well to explore the infrastructural facilities of the schools on their wishlist offer. In a post-pandemic scenario, do they have a health practitioner on campus? What are the sanitation facilities like? Do the classrooms look inviting, have enough ventilation and sunlight? Is the furniture ergonomic? What kind of learning equipment, digital tools, labs does it have? Does it have a good library? How safe are the facilities? Don’t also forget to ask what their policies regarding all forms of bullying and discipline strategies are.
Finally, it would be good to remember what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once
wrote, “Instruction does much, but encouragement everything.” Choose hence the environment where your child feels encouraged rather than pressured to excel. The
rest will fall into place by itself.
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