School of rock is one of my favourite movies. I have watched it several times. The movie stars Jack Black, the most hilarious american actor. I just love this movie and I enjoy it. Everytime I watch it, I learn something new.
Although the movie seems to take music seriously, it presents some great insights into the nature of learning and education. So, in this post, I would like to share with you some lessons I enjoyably learned and some pointers to what real education should look like to help you enhance your practices as teachers and educators.
Never hesitate to impart your wisdom and experience with your students.
As individual teachers, we have accumulated a certain amount of experience and wisdom, and we need to share that. Our time and life is but a series of of trials and mistakes. We, undoubtedly learned from them. But, most importantly we have to pass on anything we have learned in the hopes of helping our students. At least, we earn respect and they acknowledge it for real.
“Do what you are passionate about”, tell your students
If we do what we love and we love what we do, we will ultimately succeed. In doing things we are obssessed with, we can exprience unmatched joy. We have to realise that passion plays an important part in success. So, as teachers we should help learners find what it is that they are passionate about and encourage them to pursue it.
Benefit from real-world experiences
In the movie, the students prepare and work hard for something called “Battle of the Bands”. Even though they didn’t win this competition, the experience of playing their music in front of a huge audience and showing their parents their talents and what they can do with the instruments is a valuable thing.
Similar to this, you, teachers, should help your learners work and share their skills to a large audience. Today, with the development of technology and internet, students can do this through websites, blog posts, youtube channel videos….etc.
Assign projects
Notwithstanding the effect of projects on students’ learning and achievement, some teachers haven’t yet recognized its importance and don’t use it due to many restrictions. The students in School of Rock have worked on mini projects and one big project at the end and all of them have shown a remarkable passion, team work and committment to learn and do more. If all teachers adopt project-based learning approaches, students can ultimately develop several skills rather than undertanding the content.
Discovering students’ talents
At the beginning of the movie, students are assigned roles randomly. After that, some of them changed their roles. The teacher trusted them. Later, these students showed amazing things. What happened is that students developed these roles and made them their own. For instance, the students who take charge of lighting showed amazing talents.
Developing learners’ confidence
One of the things I like about this movie is how Jack Black tries as hard as he can to build his learners’ self-confidence. In many schools, teachers adopt an external rewarding system (prizes, choclates, grades) to boost learners’ motivation and confidence. But, in school of rock, learners are given creative freedom and enough opportunities to overcome their weaknesses and work their strengths. This helps change their perceptions of their abilities and boost confidence unbelievably.
Teamwork
School of rock has displayed instances when team work seemed to have a powerful effect on students. Instead of working individually, team work helps individuals have a glimpse at different perspectives which they can make use of, to ultimately arrive at the best product. Not to mention developing their interpersonal and social skills. So, the more group work you do, the more team work skills your students develop, and that has a long-term effect.
I hope this post is beneficial. Please share this post with someone who might need it.
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And Who said that we do not get any benefit from watching movies ?
The film is fantastic, and your post is even more wonderful >_* !
My wishes .