The involvement of children in their own education is vital in the learning process. The Freedom of Self Inquiry represents the application of the varied abilities residing within a classroom. These varied abilities are indicative of varied socio-economic factors as well as an individual child’s own strengths and weaknesses within the classroom. As the value of self-inquiry is so important, it is my role within the classroom to avoid disrupting learning outcomes by interjection, my physical presence, or inserting my views. The three central thematic elements of a self-taught classroom are more confident students, students who want to push themselves academically, and discussion which represents more in-depth thought about a given text.
In entering the classroom, my biggest concern will be that I will interfere with the “self-taught” learning process when I start to see the children struggle. After reflecting on my own education process, I realized that I had a tendency at the age range I will potentially be instructed to look to my professor for the answer to a problem before digging into the issue. In Rockbridge county, I would expect that similar to my own habits, the younger students would most likely look to me and their teacher for answers to problems they run into first before attempting to solve issues themselves.
One of the biggest problems facing public schools today is the difficulty in ascertaining when at what point we as instructors are leading our students too far in one direction. The influence of a teacher, as I’ve already said, can have an invaluable effect on the learning experience and can mean the difference between guiding children to come up with the answer on their own, and being told it. While I believe there are situations where it is alright to provide the answer to a question or problem to a class, by in large the learning benefits are far greater for those that solve issues themselves. In my experience assisting and leading discussions this semester, I want to really explore where that line between feeding answers and guiding directed thought lies.
