“One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.” — Jeannette Walls

Hands-on, relevant projects that take more time are critical for students’ learning.

When I recall my time teaching summer school in the early 2000s, most of what I remember is seating in the midst of students and getting immersed in hands-on learning. During the long summer hot days, the last thing I would do as an experienced teacher was bombard students with dreary long notes or repetitive tasks. I took my students outdoors to explore and focus on hands-on projects. It is imperative to make learning fun for these students, as they are already reluctant to be indoors when they perceive that their classmates are having fun during the summer.

Over the long break, we had over 50 children in our STEM bootcamp program and we kept hearing from the parents that the children were more engaged in our program than they were school. Children who had behavioral problems during school where too involved in their projects to think of acting up.

I have reflected on why holiday programs work well for children. There is a cap on the number of children who are a part of the program, the curriculum need is limited, and the pace is tightly defined. Also, there are no tests and innovation is highly welcome. During the holidays, it is OK to cut out certain topics to focus on projects. Above all, children are given ownership over their own learning, as they work their ways through tasks and hack the engineering design process.

I have reflected on why holiday programs work well for children. There is a cap on the number of children who are a part of the program, the curriculum need is limited, and the pace is tightly defined. Also, there are no tests and innovation is highly welcome.

As we dwell upon the quality of teachers and teaching on the World Teachers Day holding tomorrow, I would like to enjoin both teachers and parents who are partners in the desire for students to succeed, to break out of the norm and adopt what we do during the holidays for our students. This include prioritizing the learning experiences of students in ways that are engaging, teaching students how to collect and analyse data, to identify patterns, break down complex problems into their more controllable parts, deduce solutions, construct models and develop algorithms. Projects, more than lecturing, gives students opportunities to enhance these skills, and thew holidays, as it turns out, are the perfect time to practice this.

Experimenting with our curriculum by testing hands-on lessons that, among other things, had students understand how drones work and man themselves. Studying about climate change or discussing the application of math to the real world created major improvement in comprehension for our students. Radicalizing learning created holiday successes with our group, which in turn boosted the self-confidence of our children. Our goal should be to create quality teaching that would inspire teachers year-round to embed more computational thinking in their classrooms.

Let’s have our students go beyond assignments and become creators. The 21st century belongs to the creators, as we can see in superstars in almost every field of endeavor lately.

Adetola Salau; Educator / Speaker / Author/ Social Entrepreneur / Innovator

She is an Advocate of STEM Education and is Passionate about Education reform. She is an innovative thinker and strives for our society & continent as a whole to reclaim it’s greatness. She runs an educational foundation with the mission to transform education.

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