A Colourful Welcome!
[symple_spacing size=”10″]
Welcome to the very first post on our brand new Rainbow English School Blog, and indeed web site! I’m full of excitement and optimism that our association and educational project will make a real contribution to the learners we reach – and we need your help!
Like any non-profit organisation, without our members, we are nothing! By becoming a member, by contributing ideas or by simply encouraging our efforts you will be helping us improve the level of education locally, nationally and maybe even worldwide!
We are proudly starting our first teaching activities in Saint-Germain-lès-Arpajon, a small, quiet town to the south of Paris in France, where we are based. If you like what we are doing and would like to contribute your energy and enthusiasm to accelerate learning where you live and work, we’d love to hear from you.
We can work with you now and share teaching and training techniques and resources, in your local community, in your current teaching or learning situation. We are about creating positive educational change through practical ideas and realistic approaches today and tomorrow. Join us!
Why We’re Here
[symple_spacing size=”10″]Our aim is broadly to improve the level of English – teaching, learning and practice – in communities where this will be a genuine help in people’s lives. We are based to the south of Paris in France and would like to work with anyone who wants to discover exciting new methods for teaching and learning English in their school, organisation or community.
Having said that, we also have a secondary mission – to contribute to the effectiveness of the learning process whatever subject is being taught or learned.
We believe strongly in a personalised and adaptive teaching approach. This could be called teaching the person and not the subject, but of course both are important.
The problem is that in many education systems, for a variety of understandable reasons, only the subject is taught, and this in a very standardised way.
A Great Idea… In Theory!
[symple_spacing size=”10″]
There are lots of people producing tons of ideas on how we memorise and learn stuff, how we recall the bits we need at the right time, and how we combine our stored knowledge and experiences when faced with new challenges to come up with useful solutions.
The world of education is awash with often confusing and conflicting theories about multiple intelligences and different learning styles and personality type indicators and goodness knows what else and it’s difficult to know what to believe and have confidence in these days.
Modern research does give us some fairly sound guidelines though, which also make good sense without being too wacky or simply unproven by proper studies.
Every Learner Is Unique
[symple_spacing size=”10″]We can, for example, be reasonably confident in saying that each person has learning ‘preferences’. So a given student will have a preference for one subject over another, for certain ways of learning about the subject over others, and they will also progress at a speed which is entirely their own.
So a student may prefer maths to literature; they may prefer to watch YouTube videos rather than attend a live lecture; they may prefer studying late in the evening than first thing in the morning; they may need to move around when thinking about problems rather than sit stock still (my son’s a case in point!); their breakthroughs of understanding may come during a walk in the woods as opposed to a noisy, stressful classroom situation.
Not only that, but for people to learn best, they need the teaching input to be tailored and adapted to the personal progress they are making or the actual difficulties they are having on an on-going basis. Much as most teachers today would like to be able to personalise their teaching to each student, the fact is that in most cases this is simply not realistic without some imaginative ideas and the willingness by those in charge to actually try them out.
Realistically Hopeful
[symple_spacing size=”10″]Having working in education for many years, we understand that teaching situations aren’t going to change overnight. One of our main aims, therefore, is to develop innovative learning activities based on sound principles which can be used immediately, in any classroom or existing learning environment, with a minimum investment of time, energy… and money!
I’ll be delving deeper into many of these topics over the coming months, as we develop our ideas, forge partnerships and hopefully help as many learners as possible to… help themselves! Student autonomy is one of our watchwords. That’s why we stress the importance of helping students (and teachers!) to understand how they learn, and giving them powerful tools for this, before actually expecting them to retain large amounts of information.
And on that I shall close this introductory message and look forward to sharing many more with as many of you as feel excited and motivated to be part of the adventure.
See you somewhere… over the rainbow!
~ Sab Will
Notes on ‘Somewhere, Over The… Rainbow English School!’
[symple_spacing size=”10″]
Rainbow English School is a non-profit educational organisation based in France. We aim to improve the level of English and the effectiveness of teaching in general. We work with teachers and educational organisations to help them adapt and personalise their teaching methods.
Our method and approach is based on the latest scientific research into how we best memorise, recall and usefully apply knowledge. We provide innovative tools and techniques which people can immediately use in their current learning or teaching situation. And we have fun doing it!
© 2016 Rainbow English School