Let's EDUCATE - not teach!

(Adapted from my opening Academic Address - January 2016)

To me, it's important that we all strive to be educators rather than teachers. Teachers teach – they impart information and prepare children for tests. Educators on the other hand, strive to do all that and more, they strive to prepare children for adulthood. Educator's are always looking ahead to see what children might need – both in the immediate and distant future. We work alongside parents to ensure that they become solid citizens who add value to society. We do research to predict what their future will be and work to shift our own paradigms of education so that we can serve today better for the future we anticipate for them. Our aim is not just to prepare your child for a test, but to equip them for life.

Every aspect of the curriculum from academics, to culture, to sports is focused on this goal of ensuring that EVERY child is a masterpiece. This – I’m sure you’ll agree is a monumental task – in fact for parents, it’s a lifetime’s work – we, as educators, only have a few years here at prep school level to be as influential as we can.

In today’s dynamic global economy, research shows that success in the marketplace:

* is centered on the development and exchange of knowledge and information – hence an IT programme with the emphasis on knowledge creation as opposed to knowledge consumption – even at Foundation Phase level - is crucial.

* depends on individuals being fluent in several disciplines and they must be comfortable moving among them – a diverse curriculum is paramount in preparing children for this future. A balance of academics, culture and sport must be authentic, allowing many children to achieve across these various disciplines.

* requires the highly valued skills of creativity, critical reasoning and collaboration – team-teaching, group work, and an interdisciplinary approach in the general day to day running of classrooms both teaches and exercises these essential skills at every level.

Our aim as a school, has been to place greater emphasis on integrated studies, which, at times, involved the combination of two or more subjects in a lesson, project, classroom, or curriculum. In this way we, as educators, can draw interdisciplinary connections by forging relationships between different subjects, and/or by working with other educators in teams across subjects. So doing, we model a collaborative and creative approach in our own teaching.

Our aim as educators, is to look into the "crystal ball" of future projections for the children of this generation and provide them with the core skills necessary for them to be successful, namely the ability to think critically and creatively in order to solve problems, and to be able to collaborate and communicate effectively with their peers and the broader community. This type of education cannot be merely content driven since content in the form of facts and figures is at their fingertips and a push of the button away. We are obliged, however, to teach children how to manage, curate and evaluate the content they come across and furthermore, encourage them to become content creators – the pioneers of their own dreams, so doing they learn that challenges are merely opportunities.

Sir Ken Robinson puts modern education this way, “We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.”