EMILY I. FERNANDEZ, PhD
Principal IV
Dealing with the 21st century learners maximizes the educator’s knowledge and skills in fulfilling functional and meaningful teaching and learning process for the learners to adapt and apply.
In this world where progress and development are the root cause of everything, learners engage themselves in gadgets like cellphones, ipads and many others, thus integrating these with the use of internet. They spend more time with online activities that make them live ideally and dramatically that directs them to acquire unnecessary and most of the time negative values. In this situation, every school should strengthen the process of value formation, and should be intensified by the teachers inside the classrooms. As the teachers, communicate and bond with the learners 6-8 hours a day during teaching and learning process, recreation and affective process should also be integrated.
Effective classroom management is a major factor for learners’ value formation and application. Teachers should inculcate in their learners Good Manners and Right Conduct (GMRC) in Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao. Indeed, it will become meaningful and functional if this will be integrated to other subject areas. Simple story or localized moral situations that they will watch from the internet will be a potential source of learning as these relate to their interest. The computer and internet may be a channel for new learnings that they can relate in real-life situations.
Effective classroom management practices are manifested when the teachers are out of the classroom because the application of the learners’ acquired values will be shown through their thoughts and actions in rightful manner.
Modelling is an effective way for the learner’s adaptation. Teachers must serve as models of good and encouraging words, prime and concrete example of love, care, sympathy and empathy. Group collaboration and cooperation with the teachers will be appreciated and adapted by the learners. By showing these, there is a great tendency for the learners to be inspired to build sound relationship with their fellow learners. At this early age, school can produce learners who are socially and emotionally stable that will give them the potentialities to perform better and achieve higher.
Values should not only be in words but in actions.