Student’s Chance to voice out over their School’s design
Go on! Get creative!
Are you free on 5th and 6th of August? Or what about the 18th and 19th of August? Trashed will once again be hosting workshops at the Ealing City Learning Centre. It’s free and you’ll be working with top designers, journalists and award- winnning bloggers.
You’ve read all about here and on the Page of Fame (pp14 + 15); this is a brilliant experience for which you will get a certificate and your work published on the website:
www.oldschoolnewschool.co.uk
Numbers are limited, so you must contact Alan at
alan@trashedmag.com with your name, school and which dates you want to come on. And, you can come on both if you want! The CLC telephone num- ber is: 020 8752 3249
Wall-less Learning There are people who oppose and others who agree with this method of learning. We often hear from people with no intention of making changes. As a student learning in and using the school facilities, here are my thoughts. As far as I can see, teachers alone cannot help everyone in the class. I’ve seen people who do worse than they should because they don’t get enough attention; this is a result of classes that are structured around tables set in rows, some people pay less attention because of this layout.
My experience of sitting at the back of the class when there are no spaces in the front, it is very hard to get any attention from the teacher.
One of the school’s building regulations states that they cannot generate too much noise. There are ways in which we can get around this, for example putting sound dampers, acoustic holes and other state of the art technology to make this ‘wall-less’ approach to school’s design less noisy and more pleasant to learn in.
6 Villiers Election May 2010
Villiers held their own election in May 2010. At the same time as the rest of the country went to the polls. There was election fever in the run up to the May Election, so we held our own mock election. During the few weeks prior pupils learned about the electoral system, the work- ings of Parliament and how to conduct polls in lessons. Ten pupils acted as candidates for the main political par- ties. They conducted hustings, put up posters and pre- sented policies. Each house was designated a ‘constitu- ency’. Voting took place during the day with selected Year 8 pupils acting as polling clerks and counters. Labour turned out victors in three of the constituencies (Aquila, Phoenix and Cygnus) with the Liberal Democrats taking the Pegasus seat. Congratulations to all who took part,. In the future this experience will help pupils become good citizens, be well informed and be more likely to take part in local and national democratic elections in the future.
It feels like there are too many rules in Britain stalling schools in change dramatically. For example, the Scandinavians have a more relaxed way of teaching; some schools in America do too. Many who of those who do study in these relaxed places tend to carry on to further education, and even end up in higher positions in their workplace than many British people. School becomes a tiring environment to learn in after a few years. How can it be acceptable to allow kids to learn with enthusiasm when they’re sick and tired of the design of their learning environment? If you think about it, a school is a tool! Its pure purpose is to educate us; and by us I mean the kids who generally use these places. Sometimes even the teachers get weary of their working environment. Thinking about it, you can teach kids without a teacher, but what matters is that the place where they’re learning needs to be stimulating. An ordinary place makes the process of learning even more ordinary.
Argeen Retnasingam
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