Alright guys, sorry for the long delay for the reflection from my trip to Sheffield. Personally, I don't like writing reflections immediately after a trip as I'm just going to write about teamwork and stuff that I have improved on, pretty much all the generic reflections. Rather I write the reflection after a period of time so that I am able to think, to compare and to evaluate.
So, after coming back from Sheffield and doing my projects here and all, I have come down with 2 points that I would like to talk about in this whole reflection.
Firstly, it would be the focus of the project.
In Sheffield, the focus of the project is not to just complete it, but to learn from it and experience it. The key thing is to learn how to handle a project, learn about idea generation, making dreams a reality, to learn how to evaluate our possible options. Should we have any questions, we would be guided on how to find our answers, what are the possible steps we could take to find the solution to the problem.
Back here (I am not adding the name of my school), although they too say it verbally the purpose of project is for students to learn, process is key rather than final product. But I am being constantly reminded that my project accounts for large amount of my results. As quoted from what I am being told constantly: " I want the thing out, if not I would do something with your grades." Even though we are here to learn, we were given minimal guidance and constantly (in my opinion) threatening us that should we not finish the project in time, he would fail us. Entering a field that we had never touched on before with minimal prior basic knowledge, we are slower than what they expected of us. I understand that the project completion is important and that we must finish it, but what really makes me upset would be the constant threatening of my grades. The focus of the project is no longer an environment for me to learn, but rather to do as they say to get grades, which leads me to my second point.
The second point is about independent thinking.
In Sheffield, we are encouraged of independent thinking. We handle the projects ourselves, we take the steps we think possible to tackle the problem. We do what we can and improve on it. I still remember when we first started off the project, we asked the student leader whether we could proceed with our project from this point. And he told us that this is our project, we call the shots on how we want to do it. He's purpose is to guide and help us whenever we needed it.
Back here, we were scolded for no independent thinking. To be rejected of all the ideas that we gave; to be shut out whenever we ask for help; to be given specific solutions to our project even though it is beyond our current knowledge and abilities (we had a much better idea that is less complex but was rejected). And to be blamed for no independent thinking? We tried to propose solutions on what we think is the best way to tackle the problem. to give solutions which are within our abilities and knowledge, only to be shut out every single time. With different project objectives thrown at us over a period of 2 months (almost every week has a new project objective). We tried once to confirm with him the project heading only to be scolded for not wanting to do the project.
I know this reflection feels like I'm ranting about my current project. But the truth is, Sheffield definitely does it better than what I am experiencing here now. Sheffield takes action on what they believe would be the best for students to learn and experience, to guide us through proper learning environment that is provided.
Here, they wanted to be like Sheffield, they set all sorts of criteria that they think would benefit us the most (which most of it are kind of good). But sadly, they only write it down, show it to the students, but do the opposite of what they wanted for us.
So in conclusion, I believe my local school still has much to learn from Sheffield. And the mindset of the school here, should change. It should stop being results orientated, but rather to be towards student's learning experience. We should not be studying for fantastic results, but rather to gain more knowledge, to learn.
That's all for my reflection. My vocab is quite limited so I hope the message got through. See you all in the next post.
Winters
