Category Archives: Discussion

(Introduction to LOCUS)

A Good Teacher

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A good teacher should love the people she will be teaching – be they adults or children. She should have knowledge of and enthusiasm for the subject she will be teaching. She should be lateral thinking, flexible, warm and able to guide without being intrusive. A good teacher should be encouraging to the more advanced student. Nurturing to the more needy. She should be passionate about what she is doing, be aware of all aspects of ‘learning’ and should also herself be eager to learn and glean more knowledge for the growth of self and pupil. ‘Light and Life’

A-MM – educator

A good teacher is an educator in the fullest sense of the word i.e. someone who cares for each and every child – academic, social and emotional. That person should never be intrusive but at the same time must act when necessary. As regards the academic side the good teacher must encourage those in his care to think out of the box-lateral skills are essential. You know all about it with your wide range of interests.

Frank Simmonds – educator – ex head St Andrew’s School

A person who is passionate about what they do and who has great enthusiasm for the task.  It goes without saying that a love of children or young people is a given as is a marked intellectual capacity for the discipline/subject that they are teaching.  I hold firm on the importance of subject specialists at Roedean.  I hope this helps.  If teachers are passionate and love what they do, they will deal with all the other challenges that they face in the current educational climate.

Mary Williams – Educator – Head of Rodean

one who shows people where to find a beam of light that illuminates them and waits around till he/she sees their eyes glow?

Dorian Haarhoff – English Lecturer – Author

As a teacher and a trainer of teachers, I have a deep commitment to accountability and to what I believe that we can realistically hold teachers accountable for. Included on this list are:

  • A classroom that provides the structure and discipline needed for effective learning
  • Teacher knowledge of the subject, for teaching effectively
  • A teacher’s personal commitment to work hard, to be caring, to be a learner, to be enthusiastic
  • Paying attention to each child and treating each child fairly
  • Working with students’ families to help children learn

The work of teaching and learning is more complex than we know. There is increasing discussion these days about "highly qualified teachers" as if that alone was going to solve all educational problems.  Evaluation and testing, much emphasized today, do not turn poor students into good ones. They are not teaching tools. At best, they check in on what is test-able, not necessarily on what’s been learned. While good tests serve diagnostic functions, just as X-rays and MRI’s at the doctor’s, most testing in school is still used for grading and sorting purposes. Many test results don’t even come back until the end of the school year…too late to do any good.

Education is about the transfer of knowledge and "lighting the fire." This occurs in an environment that supports it. One of the biggest lessons I have learned as a teacher is about the extraordinary value of encouragement. This is often seen by "macho" politicians and educators as a soft and weak concept. Quite the opposite, encouragement is a key to educational improvement for teachers as well as students. And it is vastly underused.

Dorothy Rich – American Educator

Additions to this list invited

LOCUS Principles and Elements

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(‘Design’ refers to the modus operandi and ‘curriculum’of the LOCUS as much as to the physical spaces it will occupy.)

The final LOCUS design must take into account that :

(To save time and space please only agree silently. Submit comments of only debate, requests for clarification, suggestions for other items for inclusion on this list)

  • LOCUS is an acronym for Learner Oriented CampUS. In order to be truly learner-oriented and to foster a healthy internal locus of control for the children who attend, it is important that the LOCUS be designed in harmony with the latest and most complete understanding of children’s rights possible, including children’s right of participation. Thus, furthermore:
    • It is important that children are actively involved in the design of the LOCUS, even if all of them do not end up attending it. This active involvement should take the form of ethically meticulous ‘co-search’ with interested children, and no false hopes must be generated.
    • It is important that the children who do eventually attend the LOCUS are actively involved in the ongoing development and further evolution of the LOCUS.
  • It is important that different age-groups, as well as children with different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, as well as different arrays of ability can learn from each other vs being artificially segregated as is currently common in South African educational facilities.
    • In an environment that focuses on individual ‘next readiness’ rather than group aggregates, it should be viable to accommodate the so-called ‘differently abled’ child alongside their peers.
  • Peer mentoring is NB – opportunity for a child to really learn and integrate by helping another child understand as well as chance for other child to be facilitated in an age-suitable way vs only by an adult.
  • The importance of being actively part of the overall human and natural ecology vs being either an artificial ‘consumptariat – child factory’ or an isolated ‘freak farm’.
  • The need for different levels of access to the LOCUS – e.g. full-time, part time, occasional, casual ; as well as structured and unstructured, special activity, etc to accommodate both ‘home-schoolers’ and families with full-time working parents, as well as different desire in kids
  • Balance between voluntary self-chosen ‘curricula’ and facilitated navigation, boundaries, deadlines ‘completions’ etc. NB to ensure sufficient literacy, numeracy, and a degree of rounded spread; as well as solo and group; mind, soul, heart and body activity.
  • Total accountability of LOCUS for learner’s needs – not necessarily by direct supply, but by facilitation of research into options, etc.
  • Necessity of educating whole family in order to support child in LOCUS learning culture. e.g. issues around participatory communication, nutrition, TV, discipline, etc.
  • Importance of starting in womb, through baby-hood, all the way up.
  • Balance between LOCUS ‘recommendations’, bottom-lines, and accommodation of different choices.
  • Child-empowering facilitated learning resource-centre angle vs the dictatorial ‘school’.
  • Importance of rights and respect – that all adults and all children are all equals, just with differing needs and roles.
  • The importance of the inclusion of nature and animals as respected participants rather than as ‘objects’ of study.
  • Need to evaluate and/either translate or grade different methods e.g. de bono shades, so that they can be offered and used appropriately to age\developmental and next-readiness levels.
  • Need to create evaluation structures that leave children relatively free of external pressure and labelling while still allowing parents to monitor their child’s learning progress relative to children in other educational models.
  • Need to de-emphasise competition between children while fostering a culture of personal excellence and mutual supportiveness.