Lessons in Learning and Winter Vacation Camp!
Student at our Upper West Side studio.
My Year at Harvard!
When I was in my 30's, I took a year off from teaching and went to The Harvard Graduate School of Education. I was eager to learn and grow as an educator.
At this point, I'd taught for over 10 years at The Buckley School in Manhattan as the computer program Director, in addition to my time directing The Little Red Schoolhouse's computer program.
Was I in for a great year and many learning surprises! Here are a couple of things that I learned. They still very much apply!
My deepest learning came from my work with fellow students and not my classes. We often don't realize the value of the social aspect of the classroom. Friendships and learning with others deeply affect us. Our children are learning as much (or more) from their interactions with other kids as they are from their teachers. We need to create meaningful opportunities for children to have positive and engaging times with kids that support their emotional and intellectual growth both in and out of formal school.
Having a difficult class (that I hated!) helped me understand what I needed as a learner and helped me understand my struggling students. It was quite a shock to not understand and to not do well in one of my classes at Harvard. I had taught for ten years and had some perspective on what was going wrong. I used this experience to develop more empathy and understanding for my struggling students and to work on scaffolding their learning to avoid frustration. Additionally, I learned how important it is to work with my students to break down where they got lost or frustrated. As a parent, this helped me when my son also had struggles. We needed to slow down, find the challenges and work through them. Good communication is key to this process.
Our classes, running over the winter vacation, address both the social aspect of learning as well as supporting all kinds of learners. Currently, we are registering students for the following dates: December 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, and 30th. These are great fun learning days, online or in-person. Head over to the Robofun website to take a look! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Noah Diamond at noah@robofun.org or by giving us a call at (212) 245-0444!