Last week, I had the chance (and the duty as a father of a 12y old boy) to attend two open nights in two High Schools in Limerick (Ardscoil Ris -ASR- on Monday and St Munchins College - SMC), as part of the selection process to choose a High School for next year.
As a father and a teacher, I went to these two open nights with high expectations and mixed feelings. My main worry was: "will they talk to us about the feeling in the classroom?".
There was a huge difference between the two schools.
The first open night was a mere reference to the achievements of the school, without any information on the learning aspects of the school. There were marvelous slides, pretty pics of trophies, excellent bar charts on student performances comparing ASR to Irish average in a very long - and some times tiring - presentation. After more than an hour long presentation..., I walked around the school with my wife and our boy without guidance...I left the school with my question above completely unanswered....
The second open night was a joy to attend. We had also with us our younger boy (10y old). When we arrived, both boys were collected by SMC students and were guided around the school for all the time that SMC staff presented the school. All presentations have been uploaded on the school's website. Transparency at its greatest.
All talks were short, concise and most informative.
The one that touched my heart was the talk of Donal Madden who talked to us about the balance of joy and teaching, participation, the jersey, the fun and why he became a Teacher.
At the end of the talks, we met our boys who guided us around SMC and they described to us all the experiments in the labs!
Going back to my initial worry...
"will they talk to us about the feeling in the classroom?"
In SMC, they did and their students did ...by guiding our boys around the school before our boys guided us.
A night to remember!
P.S. In Academia, where learning is more important than teaching, sometimes (or most of the times?) learning is ignored...or is second-ranked to teaching.
Passing information is the boring part in the Universities...we need to blend it with other techniques, e.g. Problem based Learning.
Making our students happy in the lecture theater should be the top priority! Is it, though?
Yannis Zabetakis
