Yesterday my kabarkada (one of my BFFs) celebrated a joint birthday with 2 of her other friends from her group “Life’s Directions” by organizing a volunteer tutorial “Cool School” day with incoming college freshman scholars from Montalban and Payatas.
The day started out by explaining to the “kids” that everybody has a different kind of “Smart.” Some people are genius at numbers, others are amazing artists, others have people or public speaking skills, some people learn by getting up to dance or tapping their heels to a beat, while others can capture the essence of a situation through a few choice words… Everybody is different. Everybody learns differently — and everybody is smart.
They based the activities of the day on the theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI). In a nutshell, different people display a different dominance in these 8 (formerly 7) categories:
Logic Smart
Image Smart
Body Smart
Sound Smart
Nature Smart
People Smart
Self Smart
WordSmart
The kids took an assessment test in the morning so we could find out where they fit into each category. After that they were divided into groups and we lead them through different activities that highlighted their strengths so they would learn to recognize where they excel and how they could use it to succeed at school and life.
I was one of the teachers assigned to the Body and People Smart kids.
First, I lead the class through a “Flying Stick” activity that I had learned from Teacher Training. It’s hard to explain, but basically, using only the index fingers of both hands pointed up and outwards, the kids have to stand side by side and work together to lay a simple stick or pole on the ground. It’s harder than it sounds!
The first thing I gotta say is, WOW! Those kids were definitely put in the Body/People group for a reason! =D Their teamwork was amazing and I have never seen a group be able to lay the stick on the ground that fast with such trust, communication and UNITY. I’ve seen other groups take upto 10 minutes with the exercise (I’ve heard of groups who are unable to do the task at all!) and the stick can do CRAZZZZZYY things sometimes (due to the fact that “it wants to fly”). But these kids were able to keep calm and mellow and get the job done.
The processing of the activity was lead by Teacher Kell and it was my first glimpse of how insightful the kids really were. The kids, more than anything else we had planned (or not! hehe) set the tone of our group for the rest of the afternoon. They were great thinkers. They knew there was a point to the crazy (yet fun) activities we had them do.
The second activity for my group was an X-O game. I stayed out of it since it involved a bit of math and Math Smart is definitely not me. :S At the beginning of the game, no one was winning because they didn’t want to give way to each other… But towards the end, they realized that the object of the game was to show that their competitiveness would not necessarily get them ahead — it was in fact taking everyone down. So by giving a little, they are able to take a little bit back, and that way everybody wins.
The final activity was a simple game of “Paint Me a Picture” where they had to use their body parts to create an image of what being a team meant to them. This is also what they presented at the end of the day to the rest of the “Cool School.” They made a human pyramid/victory trophy and summarized everything they learned through the exercises they did that afternoon.
Other groups of the day were the Art and Word group who created short stories and collages out of new English vocabulary words they learned that day, and the Math and Music group who ended the show with a song they wrote (to the music of Narda) about how math can be easy if you just “follow the laws.”
I wish i remembered to take pictures and videos with my camera but I shall try to swipe some from the other volunteers to post here.)
All in all, it was a great day. It proved something that I have believed for a long time. That traditional schools do not necessarily benefit all kids. Different kids learn through different ways and if we can just find what the kid’s niche is, we can use it to develop their other talents, smarts, and skills for them to succeed.
(Image from: http://a2.vox.com/6a00cd973967944cd500e398b6dd2a0003-320pi)
