Interviews on Education

The culminating paper for my Foundations of Education course states my philosophy of education. I’d say that my philosophy of education has been in formation (and will continue to evolve) since I was about 6 years old. The practical experience I gained as an educator in my 3 years of teaching at PSCS really helped refine my thinking on education. In an effort to continue to refine my thinking, I decided I would interview students, parents and teachers from two very different schools. I figured that learning from those who are in the throws of education would balance the perspective I have been developing from reading all the books for this course.

METHODOLOGY

I started out with the hope of interviewing two parent-child pairs and two teachers in two schools with sufficiently different educational approaches. As I started the process of trying to schedule the interviews, I found that interviewing 12 people in the span of time I had left was more than I could do. So, I decided to interview one parent-child pair and one teacher from each school.

THE SCHOOLS

One set of interviewees were connected with more main stream public schools while the other set were all connected with the Puget Sound Community School (PSCS). I am assuming that most readers of this report will be well-versed with American public school education so I will save my own description of it.

Here’s a little bit about PSCS —

PSCS is a progressive urban school located in the University District of Seattle. It provides education for junior and senior high school age students. It is small in that there are a total of about 30 students and 4 full-time teaching staff members that make up its immediate learning community. The school is founded on the belief that all people are intrinsically motivated to learn and will do so when provided a safe, caring and nurturing environment. In this environment, students are honored for who they are, with all legal and safe student pursuits being given equal value and support. Students are not required to study any particular academic subjects, instead they are encouraged to pursue their learning interests. Staff and volunteers teach ‘classes’ based on student interest. Students who choose to graduate with a state diploma can do so by creating a plan for how they will earn the required credits. The follow their plan by requesting and taking classes that support their interests and also help them earn credits.

THE PEOPLE

Josie Olney: Josie is a Junior at PSCS with a keen interest in visual art and music. When not being quiet, sensitive, clever and shy, she is found to be ferociously sketching comics.

Brandon Hua: Brandon is a 5th grader at Audobon Elementary in Redmond, WA. He is a keenly intelligent fellow with a particular interest in Mathematics. His other talent lies on the playground in playing most any sport he can be a part of.

Leslie Olney: Leslie, mother to Josie and her older brother has always been sensitive to her particular daughter’s needs. Her keen sensitivity is what helped her listen to her daughter’s demands to go to a different school than the one she was at. This is what brought them to PSCS.

Thanh Hua: Thanh, mother to Brandon is a caring and pragmatic woman. She cares to give her son the best while recognizing that certain social values are critical for a child’s growing years. She chose to move Brandon from a very ‘successful’ private school to a public one because she believes that Brandon needs to experience greater diversity socially. She has already seen the fruits of this tough change.

Mari Brockhaus: Mari is what anyone might call a veteran teacher. She has been in the field of education for over 25 years having taught at the progressive Little School in her early years before moving to the alternative Thornton Creek Elementary where she teaches a first-grade classroom. Besides interviewing her, I have had the opportunity to observe Mari in her classroom. She is an efficient, honest teacher who cares to create a safe space for her students to learn.

Liana Green: Liana is a relatively new staff member at PSCS. She is a professional musician and also a professional summer camp instructor, if I may say so. She started teaching when she was in high school and clearly has a talent for it. In her short time at PSCS, she has helped many students ‘find’ themselves and their talents.

THE PROCESS

I created a set of questions, one for each of the category of interviewees (student, parent and teacher) with the aim of uncovering their beliefs about education. In the process I came to realize that our beliefs on education and heavily influenced by our own educational experiences. This prompted me to include several personal educational experience questions in the interview.

I interviewed each parent-child pair together with the child being interviewed before the parent. The interviews were audio recorded. The participants were informed of this and the fact that the interviews would be made available on the Internet.

THE QUESTIONS

The questions are included in the Word file located here.

One of the questions includes a description of my own dream school. You can hear this description through this recording.

THE INTERVIEWS

Four of the six interviews are posted below. Two of the interviews, both with parents were not recorded due to technical difficulties.

Josie Olney, Junior at PSCS
Brandon Hua, 5th Grader at Audobon Public School
Mari Brockhaus, 1st Grade Teacher at Thornton Creek Elementary
Liana Green, Staff Member at PSCS

THE LEARNINGS

I am pleased and grateful for having been able to conduct these interviews. Not surprisingly, my greatest learning (which is what I will focus on in this section) was the overwhelming commonality across both sets of interviewees in terms of what they believe education should be like and their hopes for the young of today.

What is this commonality?

– Students want to be able to play, literally and figuratively. They seem to learn more and better when they are able to play. They seemed be more alive and excited about learning when it involved play.

– Students love and learn well from those teachers who are enthusiastic as people and passionate about what they do. It was also important to students that the teachers made the teaching personal to each student.

– Students seek freedom in how they learn and when they learn. For example, Brandon wishes he could go to the library whenever he has free time and not just during the library period. Josie loves the flexibility of being able to choose her classes at PSCS.

– It was surprising how most of the children and adults think they learn best audio-visually and not just through verbal instruction though most all instruction in schools is verbal.

– Parents care most for their children to find their passions and be happy.

– Both teachers appreciated having freedom in how they taught and cared to get to know their students as individuals.

– Both teachers described their greatest teaching moments as being those in which they could see that their students had learned. Interestingly, the examples they used to illustrate this involved the students demonstrating or applying their learning in self-initiated (as opposed to teacher required) activiti
es. This affirms my view that when learning does eventually happen and when it is apparent that it has happened, it happens through an intrinsic process the outcome of which is purely magical.

– When asked about their most memorable educational experience most all interviewees were moved by an event that was experiential in nature. Additionally, the event was in some way character building. I make this point to highlight the fact that we learn best through experiences rather than books and other less interactive media. We also seem to learn best when the teaching is personal in nature which is why character building experiences have such a huge effect.

– Nearly all interviewees found my idea of an optionally residential school unappealing. They did not really want the school to be residential in any way. The students thought this would be socially tough and the parents did not want their children to be away from home. Teachers thought it would be difficult to have staff available as needed for the nights when some students did decide to stay at the school.

– Few interviewees were surprised with a significant portion of the factual information I shared with them on the future of society. This was interesting to me. It seems like we all know we are headed into a very different and unknown future, yet we choose to live our lives in a manner that ignores these facts. There is something very appealing about staying with what is known and assuming it won’t change, especially when we don’t know how it will change. While I understand why we all do this, it scares me that we do.

CONCLUSION

In the face of this overwhelming commonality of hopes that all families have for their children, it has been fascinating to observe the significant difference in choices being made by both sets of interviewees to fulfill their hopes. Circumstances including where families live, what schools are present in their neighborhood, financial abilities, the specific needs of their children are all factors in the choices that families make. Despite of these differences in choices, I have been excited and encouraged by the commonality of hopes. It affirms the fact that we are indeed all alike. This commonality will form the basis of my paper on philosophy of education.

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