Cum să alegi o școală și să nu greșești: 6 criterii noi

How do we choose a school for our children? The main criterion for most parents is whether they teach well there, in other words, whether the child will receive the amount of knowledge that will allow him to pass the exam and enter a university. Many of us, based on our own experience, consider studying to be a bonded affair and do not even expect that the child will go to school with joy.

Is it possible to gain new knowledge without stress and neuroses? Surprisingly, yes! There are schools where students go every morning without prompting and from where they are in no hurry to leave in the evenings. What can inspire them? The opinion of five teachers from different cities of Russia.

1. Let them speak

When is a child happy? When they interact with him as a person, his “I” is seen,” says Natalya Alekseeva, director of the “Free School” from the city of Zhukovsky, which works according to the Waldorf method. Children who come to her school from other countries are amazed: for the first time, teachers seriously listen to them and value their opinion. With the same respect, they treat students in the lyceum «Ark-XXI» near Moscow.

They do not impose ready-made rules of behavior — children and teachers develop them together. This is the idea of ​​the founder of institutional pedagogy, Fernand Ury: he argued that a person is formed in the process of discussing the rules and laws of our life.

“Children do not like formalism, orders, explanations,” says the director of the lyceum, Rustam Kurbatov. “But they understand that the rules are needed, they respect them and are ready to discuss them with enthusiasm, checking to the last comma. For example, we spent a year solving the question of when parents are called to school. Interestingly, in the end, the teachers voted for a more liberal option, and the children for a stricter one.”

High school students are even invited to parent-teacher meetings, because teenagers “can’t stand to have something decided behind their backs.” If we want them to trust us, dialogue is indispensable. Freedom of choice is extremely important. Education without freedom is generally impossible. And in the Perm school «Tochka» the child is given the right to choose his own creative work.

This is the only school in Russia where, in addition to general disciplines, the curriculum includes design education. Professional designers offer about 30 projects to the class, and each student can choose both a mentor with whom they would like to work and a business that is interesting to try. Industrial and graphic design, web design, blacksmithing, ceramics — the options are many.

But, having made a decision, the student undertakes to study in the mentor’s workshop for six months, and then submit the final work. Someone is fond of, continuing to study further in this direction, someone is more interested in trying himself in a new business over and over again.

2. Be sincere with them

No beautiful words work if the children see that the teacher himself does not follow what he declares. That is why literature teacher Mikhail Belkin from the Volgograd Lyceum «Leader» believes that not the student, but the teacher should be placed at the center of the school: «In a good school, the director’s opinion cannot be the only and undeniable one,» says Mikhail Belkin. — If the teacher feels unfree, afraid of the authorities, humiliation, then the child is skeptical about him. So hypocrisy develops in children, and they themselves are forced to wear masks.

When the teacher feels good and free, radiates joy, then the students are imbued with these sensations. If the teacher doesn’t have blinders, the child won’t have them either.”

From the adult world — the world of etiquette, conventions and diplomacy, the school should be distinguished by an atmosphere of ease, naturalness and sincerity, Rustam Kurbatov believes: «This is a place where there are no such frameworks, where everything is wide open.»

3. Respect their needs

A child sitting quietly, obediently listening to the teacher, like a small soldier. What a joy it is! In good schools, the spirit of the barracks is unimaginable. In Ark-XXI, for example, children are allowed to walk around the classroom and talk to each other during the lesson.

“The teacher asks questions and assignments not to one student, but to a couple or a group. And the children discuss it among themselves, together they look for a solution. Even the most shy and insecure begin to speak. This is the best way to relieve fears,” says Rustam Kurbatov.

At the Free School, the main morning lesson begins with the rhythm part. 20 minutes children are on the move: they walk, stomp, clap, play musical instruments, sing, recite poems. “It is unacceptable for a child to sit at a desk all day when his growing body requires movement,” says Natalya Alekseeva.

Waldorf pedagogy is generally very finely tuned to the individual and age needs of children. For example, for each class there is a theme of the year, which responds to those questions about life and about a person that a child of this age has. In the first grade, it is important for him to know that good triumphs over evil, and the teacher talks to him about this using fairy tales as an example.

The second grader already notices that there are negative qualities in a person, and he is shown how to deal with them, on the basis of fables and stories of saints, etc. “The child is extremely inspiring when we help him deal with his unspoken and not yet realized questions,” says Natalya Alekseeva.

4. Awaken the creative spirit

Drawing, singing are additional subjects in the modern school, it is understood that they are optional, the director of the author’s school «Class Center» Sergei Kazarnovsky states. “But it is not for nothing that classical education was once based on three pillars: music, drama, painting.

As soon as the artistic component becomes mandatory, the atmosphere in the school is completely transformed. The spirit of creativity is awakening, relations between teachers, children and parents are changing, a different educational environment is emerging, in which there is room for the development of feelings, for a three-dimensional perception of the world.”

In the «Class Center» each student graduates from general education, music, and drama school. Children try themselves both as musicians and as actors, invent costumes, compose plays or music, make films, write reviews of performances, research on the history of the theater. In the Waldorf methodology, music and painting are also of great importance.

“Honestly, it is much more difficult to teach this than mathematics or Russian,” Natalya Alekseeva admits. “But relying only on intellect is not enough, the child needs to experience inspiration, creative impulse, insight. That’s what makes a man a man.» When children are inspired, there is no need to force them to learn.

“We have no problems with discipline, they know how to manage themselves,” says Anna Demeneva, director of the Tochka school. — As a manager, I have one task — to give them more and more opportunities for self-expression: to organize an exhibition, to offer new projects, to find interesting cases for work. Children are amazingly responsive to all ideas.”

5. Help you feel needed

“I believe that the school should teach the child to have fun,” Sergey Kazarnovsky reflects. — The pleasure of what you have learned to do, from the fact that you are needed. After all, how is our relationship with the child usually built? We give them something, they take. And it is very important for them to start giving back.

Such an opportunity is given, for example, by the stage. People from all over Moscow come to our school performances. Recently, children performed in the Muzeon park with a song program — the crowd gathered to listen to them. What does it give the child? Feeling the meaning of what he does, feeling his need.

Anna Demeneva agrees with this: “It is important that children at school live a real, not imitation life. We are all serious, not pretend. Conventionally, if a child makes a vase in the workshop, it must be stable, not let water through, so that flowers can be placed in it.

For older children, projects undergo professional examination, they participate in prestigious exhibitions on an equal basis with adults, and sometimes they can fulfill real orders, for example, to develop a corporate identity for a company. They discover for themselves what sometimes the family cannot give them: the values ​​of creativity, the ecological transformation of the world.”

6. Create a friendly atmosphere

“The school should be a place where the child feels safe, where he is not threatened by either ridicule or rudeness,” emphasizes Mikhail Belkin. And the teacher needs to put a lot of effort into harmonizing the children’s team, adds Natalya Alekseeva.

“If a conflict situation arises in the class, you need to put aside all academic affairs and deal with it,” advises Natalya Alekseeva. — We do not talk about it directly, but we begin to improvise, inventing a story about this conflict. Children perfectly understand allegory, it acts on them simply magically. And the apologies of the perpetrators are not long in coming.

Reading morality is pointless, Mikhail Belkin agrees. In his experience, the awakening of empathy in children is much more helped by a visit to an orphanage or a hospital, participation in a play where the child leaves his role and becomes the position of another. “When there is an atmosphere of friendship, a school is the happiest place, because it brings together people who need each other and even, if you like, love each other,” concludes Rustam Kurbatov.