This morning I led an assembly at St Paul’s Primary School, Poynton on ‘Love of Learning’ – one of my favorite character strengths and the reason we are in school at all. And I told the story, also a personal favorite, of Anansi and the Pot of Wisdom.
We used our #creativity and our #love of #learning together to create a new prayer, in British Sign Language that incorporated the theme of the assembly. And I left them a VERY long piece of paper to fill up with what they learn this week! Oh, I also added in the strength of #gratitude – because I asked them to remember to THANK their teacher every time they learn something new.
Very excitingly, after the assembly, I had my first meeting with my new project team. Six pupils, years 3, 4 and 5, are going to be my project team and my research team at St Paul’s. Because, as I’ve developed and worked with Celebrating Strengths over the past 10 years it has dawned on me, slowly (yes, I am a SLOW learner!), that this project works best when children are included as collaborators and innovators. This year, for the first time, I am also including them as researchers. Their tasks are to find out how other schools use Celebrating Strengths and what they feel the benefits have been; to help to innovate and adapt it for St Paul’s AND to notice what, if anything changes – what is different because of this project? Together, we will be asking the key question of educational research – does this make learning better?
And, from my perspective, it makes sense to bring research and love of learning together because I think that learning just IS research – thoughtful, observant activity – and research IS learning – finding out something I didn’t know before or clarifying something I sort of half knew.
So, together, my team and I will try out new things, and learn new things – and do research and education together.
Jennifer Fox Eades: Alexander Technique Teacher 