As Exupéry said, children are flowers born
with their knobs down. Exactly form that
moment they need protection and care.
Only due to that they will have healthy and happy childhood. In addition to this, our children need proper
and measured upbringing.
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| Learning from failures. |
Our organization was trying to overcome poverty and illiteracy in 10
regions of Armenia offering 150 working children to take part in special
trainings and obtain basic education under working circumstances.
Basic education was designed for the child
that’s why very simple material was chosen.
However, there were also complicated themes, which were not mastered by
children immediately. That's why the in
addition to the material of basic education, interactive games were conducted,
through which easy and interesting representation of the basic educational
material became possible.
We admit that our first
failure was connected with non-proportion and large-volume of the educational
material.
There are some general requirements
distinguished by our organization while conducting the games for the basic
education. They contribute to the
development of thinking, enlarge their outlook.
There are some points in games that should be considered, however our
organization had some failures in those points.
Those points are the followings:
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| During the lesson. |
-the game should be conducted, leaded,
interfered in case of necessity, but they should not be oppressed
-each participant should have the opportunity
to express initiative
-the principles of freedom and voluntary
should be primary in the games; there should not be any imposing
-the content, rules and conditions of the game
should be clear and comprehensible for children.
During the group work with children we
distinguished some points that are some of our failures and will definitely
lead us during the future process of the project:
-to choose a comfortable room for the group
work implementation. It is not desirable
to have many things there, which can distract the children's attention.
In case of possibility, to choose comfortable
chairs. The children are not desired to
sit around tables, they are better to sit in round
-it is desired to prepare all the material
before the meeting
-to pick up «Do not disrupt» signboard before
the meeting, to warn children on secrecy, which means not to tell the speech of group participants to other
people out of the group
-to encourage children to speak about their
feelings and to present their experience
-to help children to take responsibility for
their behave
The child feels satisfaction when she/he
studies and works with pleasure. When
there is a comfortable environment in the group, the participants work with
confident and seek to learn and create. Games
are one of the most effective methods to create such environment.
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| Individual work with children. |
Our trainers conducting group activities have
to have appropriate preparedness, and it is important to remember while working
with children that they are more sensible and vulnerable, than adults. Group work is a very powerful influence
method, which can be effective, but also can make emotional pain and strong feelings. That's why trainer managing the children
group, should have group work experience and continuously increase his/her
professional abilities.
Non-engagement of games
and exercises having great refreshing influence in the project is also a
failure as children got tired of learning process fast and needed refreshing. We are planning also to add refreshing and
animating games in the curriculum, which will contribute to focusing attention
of the children.
The limit of the number of children
Many children wanted to participate, however
the number of project participants was limited and the money would not be
enough to engage more children. We do
not consider this fact as a failure as our organization is going to invest its
whole capacity to contribute to the continuousness of the project and
engagement of new children.
In many regions area was an issue, and
regional group managers have tried to solve that issue by conducting lessons in
the open air.
Our failure in this is
connected with non-engagement of psychologists in some stages of the project.
One more issue is to be distinguished. The teachers are only 5-7 years older than
the participants and they also need education and self-perfection. They lack experience and retraining and try
to fill that gap with the help of consult with the other members of the
organization. However, only advice would
not help as they should also be good pedagogues to understand the participants
well. For example, there was a boy
amongst the project participants in one of our regions, who was very aggressive
and maybe had psychological problems.
Psychological skills were necessary to work with him, and the trainer
could master them only in case of passing retraining. In order to solve this problem special course
with the engagement of psychologists were conducted.
In other region we had a failure again as the
trainers were boys and had chosen only boys as project participants. This brought to gender inequality and did not
ensure engagement of two sexes. This
problem was solved during the second stage by engaging representatives of both
sexes.
One of the most important moments of the relationship
between trainer and child is the ease communication and sharing between
them. Setting such relationships and
reaching open conversations require time, persistence and understanding. Trainers should provide time to have time
with each child individually, especially, when there is a necessity to speak
about the problems exciting children.
Definitely we may admit responsibility as the
obstacles aroused later could be considered.
However, nothing is ideal and, of course, seeking for perfection should
not stop.
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| Teamwork. |
One may continuously learn from false and failures
and our organization doesn't miss any opportunity to learn and become
perfect. Our failures taught us to be
more reasonable and attentive while implementing the projects and to contribute
to the retraining of the trainers in a great part.
Now, while implanting the other
stages of the project, we are using all that we have learned from our
failures. We are conducting special
trainings with the trainers, prepare them psychologically in order that they
implement easily and effectively the courses with children. We are adding many new games and exercises as
the project gives non-formal education.
The trainers also pass special courses - “Facilitation skills” in order
to be able to work skillfully with children.
At the end, we want to remember the popular
idea of Coco Chanel:
“Success is most often achieved by those who don’t
know that failure is inevitable.”
