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EDUCATION IN STELLE By
Staff of the Department of Education The unique and innovative educational programs
in Dr. Benjamin Bloom has said,” . . .
exceptional levels of learning require certain types of environmental
support, special experiences, excellent teaching, and motivational encouragement
at each stage of development.” We support this premise. The Stelle Group’s
educational system is based upon these five primary goals: ● Encourage love of
learning ● Individualize learning ● Promote experiential
education ● Use success and master
teaching techniques ● Use a balanced,
holistic approach ENCOURAGE
LOVE OF LEARNING This first goal is the keynote to fostering
joyful, self-educating persons. When this innate desire to learn is nurtured in children, their natural pursuit of knowledge
can persist for an entire lifetime. INDIVIDUALIZE
LEARNING This kind of learning enhances joyful
education, for each child receives as much personalized attention as
possible. Our aim is to individualize our teaching to their cognitive, skill,
and developmental levels. PROMOTE
EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION The third goal is to deepen the learning
process by making education experiential. Dr. J. McVicker Hunt has said,
“Development doesn’t come just from exposure to environment. It comes from
the child’s attempt to cope with his environment — from his experience in
acting on the things and people around him and getting a response from them.” USE
SUCCESS AND MASTERY
TEACHING TECHNIQUES This goal encourages the fulfilling process of
completing each objective before going on to the next step. Enjoyment of
learning occurs when children satisfy their natural desire to successfully
complete or master an objective. USE A
BALANCED, HOLISTIC APPROACH This final goal is to approach the children
holistically. We encourage balance: academically, emotionally, and philosophically. The Stelle educational system has two
sections: the ● MOTHERSCHOOL ● Motherschool is specifically
designed to assist mothers in teaching their very young children.
Educators and psychologists have observed that children’s experiences from
birth to six determine, to a great extent, their
intelligence and behavior patterns for the rest of their lives. Dr. J.
McVicker Hunt has said, “It’s much easier to foster development early, than
to make up for lost opportunities later.., the highest
rate of development is from birth to age two. That’s
the period of greatest plasticity. The longer you wait after that, the harder
it is to make gains… by four, it isn’t easy.” Further research indicates the
importance of mothers and children maintaining close contact during this
six-year period to provide a secure emotional base for the children. Dr.
Margaret Mahler agrees that because of the emotional dependence of the child
on the mother, her availability facilitates the optimal unfolding of innate
potentialities. Therefore, set in the supportive atmosphere of home and
family, our mothers teach their young children all they can during those
vital years from birth to six. To support and educate Stelle mothers in
teaching their children, we created Motherschool. There are
five early learning programs that come under the auspices of Motherschool:
the Birth Program, the MISPAH Program, Mothers’ Classes, the Montessori
Classrooms, and the Parents’ These five goals, Which constitute the essence
of the Stelle educational philosophy, facilitate our parents and teachers’
success in working optimally with each child. ● BIRTH
PROGRAM ● Mothershool’s support to the parents in our
community begins with the Birth Program. The Stelle Birth Program was created to educate expectant parents as to the
importance of children’s birth experiences. We believe babies are greatly influenced by their mother’s mental and
physical condition during pregnancy, labor and delivery. Babies are affected
by the way they are handled during delivery and by the degree of respect they receive as newborns. Classes on nutrition,
exercise and fetal development are available to couples during the latter
months of their pregnancy. We support the parents in creating their safest
and most fulfilling birth experience. ● MISPAH
PROGRAM ● Soon after the birth of their children,
mothers become involved in the MISPAR Program. The purpose of this program is
to provide individualized support to mothers in Stelle as they teach their
young children. Mothers have their own personal MISPAH, an acronym for
Mother’s Individual Staff Person at Home. Mothers receive regular home visits
from their MISPAB; together they form a working team to create optimal
educational activities. The way mothers teach their children varies
widely, depending on the child’s age and developmental level. MISPAH’s and
mothers discuss specific teaching techniques and activities that are designed to meet the individual needs of their
children. They use such assessment aids as skills and sequence checklists,
developmental profiles, and observation summaries. The MISPAH’s also provide
emotional support in sharing mothers’ joy, excitement, frustration and
challenge in the teaching and mothering of their children. MISPAH ‘s and
mothers are encouraged to have the children reading at three, writing at four,
and working on at least a third-grade level by age six. Another goal of the MISPAH Program is to
assist mothers to joyously teach skills while
encouraging the children’s love of learning. We want to give our children the
skills which will free them to tap the vast potential human
beings are heir to. The MISPAH Program has consultants in the
following areas: Home Environment, Physical Development, and Music. These
consultants are available for individual work with mothers. HOME
ENVIRONMENT CONSULTANT The Home Environment Consultant provides
mothers with information on helping their young children become capable of
taking care of themselves. Children feel like valuable members of their
families and develop coordination and precision as they practice daily living
skills. As they do these activities, children develop their brains, which makes it easier to learn academic subjects. Our goal is that the children enjoy robust
health, fine-looking physiques, and proficiency in the basic skills of
movement. PHYSICAL
DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT The Physical Development Consultant assists
mothers to develop stimulating physical programs for their children. The
mothers and a physical specialist brainstorm ways to create opportunities for
the children to further develop their bodies, which also assists in
developing their brains. With younger children, the focus is on beginning to
gain control of the body. They do physical activities such as crawling,
walking, rolling, climbing, and swimming. More advanced skills are introduced for older children to give them grace,
finer control, and precision in movement. MUSIC
CONSULTANT Our Music Consultants provide instruction for
mothers on giving a musical education to their children. This can begin soon
after birth. Children learn about pitch from small xylophones and listen to
the music of great composers. If this program is followed
conscientiously, children can develop the ability to sing, read music, play
an instrument, and have perfect pitch at an early age. ● MOTHERS
CLASSES ● Mothers are also
assisted by two support groups. Mothers’ Classes are
designed for mothers to share teaching ideas; and Mothers’ Study Group
is a meeting of mothers for discussing, studying, and sharing their
experiences as mothers, wives, and women. ● MONTESSORI
CLASSROOMS ● As an enriching supplement to the primary
teaching children receive from their mothers, Motherschool provides two
Montessori Classrooms, one for children one-and-a-half to three years old and
one for children three to six years. Dr. Marie Montessori believed that education
should aid children’s total development as human beings. In a Montessori
Classroom, children are able to develop all aspects of themselves:
to gain proficiency in academic work, to demonstrate physical skills, to
enhance artistic and creative abilities, and to learn the practical skills
needed for daily living. But the main purpose of the
Montessori Classroom is to encourage character development in children. The
classroom is designed to promote the abilities to experience life and
learning as a joyous adventure, to choose interesting work and concentrate on
it, to exercise self-discipline, and to interact serenely and harmoniously
with others. The educational materials
can be used independently by the children after an initial
demonstration by a teacher. As much as possible, the materials provide for
self-correction. The children become self-reliant in correcting their own
mistakes rather than waiting for a teacher to point out their errors. Each
day the children choose their work from the materials they know how to use.
Since the children themselves choose what they do, they enjoy their work and
they love school and the process of learning. ● PARENTS’
Families teaching their children need access
to many resources. Our parents created a Parents’ The Parents’ The aim of all this adult support during
childhood dependency is to develop the security necessary for true
educational and personal independence. With growing security, children become
increasingly self-directed and pursue their choices with a natural joy in
learning. At six years of age a
child graduates from our early learning programs and theft mother graduates
from Motherschool. It’s a major actualizing step
toward independence and self-education when a mother starts her child in our
elementary school. For our classroom teachers’ goal
is to give our children the skills which will free them to create their own
life and to do their own thinking and reasoning, so that they may become
independent, self-educating persons. ● The The academic curriculum includes the
traditional school subject areas of math and language arts. Since we believe
children are ultimately capable of learning virtually anything, it becomes
the teachers’ responsibility to find the optimum learning methods for each
student. To facilitate this, the student/teacher ratio is
kept as low as possible. We use mastery teaching, in which the student
completely masters one concept before being introduced
to the next. Since students work individually in the academic areas, they are
able to progress at their own rate. We feel that grading systems are based on
the belief that some students can’t or won’t learn.
Since our students only move on to a new objective when they have
successfully completed or mastered the previous one, we have no need to give
grades. Whenever possible, classes are
structured to promote experiential learning in which the students
interact with the learning objective, exploring and discovering for
themselves by putting new information into practice rather than just reading
or hearing about it. For example, weekly field trips create opportunities for
the children to experience the world outside the classroom. In the classroom we have a variety of manipulative materials
available for the children’s use, including an Atari computer. When the children are nine, ten and eleven
years old and particularly sensitive to dealing with practical aspects of
their physical surroundings, they are involved with our “Erdkinder” program.
This includes boating, camping trips, skiing, hiking, and practical life
skills as well as survival experiences. We strive for balance in the schedule
by including art and aesthetic appreciation, a music program in which each
student learns to play a musical instrument, and a physical education program which teaches, along with traditional sports and
activities, personal self-sufficiency skills. Mature social relating is
encouraged throughout the program—behavior being a common challenge with
children. We strive to create a quiet classroom atmosphere and encourage
courtesy, cooperation and self-responsibility. Competition is down-played. * * * Our educational system assists children to
develop skills needed to achieve excellence and self-mastery. This is consistent with The Stelle Group’s belief that
individuals can eventually perfect themselves and create a better
society through acceptance of personal responsibility for their
self-development. |
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