Once upon a time . . .

In this picture, I'm drawing the cover page for our group's Cinderella project.

The story of Cinderella has to be one of my favorites, so when I walked into my College intro to education class and we were telling the story of Cinderella, I was very excited. In my particular group, we were given big paper with words, and we had to draw the pictures that go with the story. As a group, we decided that Cinderella should have blond hair and a big blue dress. We came up with the basic ideas we wanted each page to look like together, and then we split and drew each page as individuals, but everything had to come back together to make a complete story.

This activity made absolutely no sense at first. The class was divided into multiple groups, and each group had a different assignment, but they all involved Cinderella. It wasn't until we all came back together as a group that we saw the purpose. Each group had something different to do, and the level of involvement decreased with each group. The first group had individual projects, coloring pages and what not, and as you went down the line, there was less and less structure, until the last group that had nothing to work with and did a puppet show. It was fun to see what every group came up with. Once we had all finished our presentations, we talked about the purpose behind the assignment, and discovered that it was all for learning.

When teachers hand out cookie cutter worksheets and expect the students to do the same work, the students don't get the opportunity to explore and create what they want to. They're forced to do the same thing as everyone else and there's no self expression involved. In our group, our paper had words, but we were free to make the choices about what Cinderella wore, what her hair looked like, what her dress looked like, and everything else that went into the drawings. We also found out more about each other when we were more involved with each other. Bringing students together as a group gives them an opportunity to meet new people and talk to each other, which they may not do on a daily basis.

As a teacher, it's important to set up environments that children feel comfortable in, so they can be themselves and make friends. Teachers need to leave room open for self-expression, and not hand out the expect the same thing from every student, because every student is different. Some are better speakers, other drawers, listeners, and some are more active than others. A teacher has to decide how to address all the needs in the classroom while keeping the learning moving and going. Learning should be a fun and never ending experience that the children will carry with them, because learning is an essential part of everyday life.