Ideal High School: Reflection 4

In class we created our versions of what we believe to be the “perfect high school”. This was a fun activity that also helped do demonstrate some forms of critical pedagogy. This activity helped us think and reflect upon our own high school experiences and what we thought could possibly make it better for high schools today. The lessons helped us use our own critical thinking to make ways for high school students to think critically easier.

Critical Pedagogy is a form of education that is meant to lesson oppression among students. It is supposed to help discussion and critical thinking take place. Critical pedagogy is wonderful at helping students realize how their education is important and can be applied to their every day life and surroundings. The activity we did to create out ideal high school was a form of critical pedagogy because we had to reflect upon our own lives and what we likes and did not like about our times in high school, as well as what we thought could have made our learning experience better in high school. Because high school was something everyone in the class experienced it was easy for us to apply the activity to our daily lives, however everyone experienced high school differently so it was interesting to find out what others in the class had to say.

For the class activity we first had to reflect by ourselves about our own education in high school. We were to think of as many different things about school that we liked or didn’t like, as well as what we believed would improve on it. After we had reflected alone we were put into small groups to share what we thought of. It was interesting to see that some people had very similar ideas, while others had thought of things that I never would have thought of. As a group we had to think of the things that we thought would be the most meaningful in creating a better high school experience. After the small group discussion every group was given a category. My group was given electronics. We then had to take the idea that we had come up with to represent an electronic way that would make high school more “ideal”. At the end we made a giant RSA(here is an example of an RSA animate about the internet) board as a class. It was really neat to see the entire project come together at the end of the activity. While some of the ideas were far fetched (like eliminating teachers and turning them into robotic computer type objects) other had some very realistic ideas like the way the school runs and the infrastructure of the school itself.

I really enjoyed this activity because it helped me understand how critical pedagogy works. Before this activity I had an understanding if critical pedagogy but now it makes more sense to me. It’s all about reflecting yourself, and then coming together and reflecting again. It’s about learning from each other and not just from one instructor. There are things that other classmates brought up that I thought were very good points that I myself would probably never have thought of in a million years. This kind of reflection was very helpful for me, and has helped me learn to like group discussion more than I did before. I especially liked how easy it was to apply yourself to the situation when it came to working as a group. Sometimes applying my own experience is hard for me to do because I like learning to be very concert, but this has swayed my opinion and has helped me understand just how important discussion can be.

This class activity was by far one of my favourites. Not only because it was fun but because I definitely got a lot out of it. I know understand critical pedagogy much better and have even been able to learn ways to fix my own learning styles and education, not just the education of a fictional high school.