Please Help! B A Honours Degree In Childhood Studies

[Guest]

Hi Everyone,

 

We are in desperate need of you help. We are doing a group presentation on school experiences from 1944 to date. We would like to collect oral testimonies on experiences in your school education that have positively, or negatively affected decisions made by you, or others regarding your educational journey and ultimately your life choices. For example how did you feel in play group/pre-school, primary school, secondary school or college/university? How did your schools support (or not) your learning needs? Was how the curriculum delivered helpful (or not), and why?

 

It would be brilliant if you could please label your memories with a date as it will make more sense in relation to the edcuation acts and legislation that were happening at that moment in time. It would also perhaps be helpful if you stated whether or not you were male or female and where abouts (county or town) you were when you were 'experiencing' your education.

 

Your names will not be supplied during the presentation, all your comments will be completely anonymous. The module leader will have a copy of the presentation and this might be seen by other moderators during grade assessments. I am not sure if the presentaions are circulated to other students but no one would be able to relate a comment back to the source. I can't even begin to tell you how gratefully received this information will be !

 

Many, many thanks in anticpation for a response (please .............), which is most urgently needed as the presentation is only a blink of an eye away

 

Cheers - Jarcyd

[SueFinanceManager]

Hi Jarcyd

 

I have moved this thread from the LA forum to the national area where it will get more views and hopefully more responses

 

Good luck with the presentation and I hope you get lots of feedback from the forum members.

 

Best wishes

 

Sue

Admin Team

[Guest]

Hi!

 

I remember being in Primary school in 1971 (!) in Solihull, West Midlands and being given extra help with my reading at lunchtimes by my class teacher. She encouraged me to read anything and everything and I credit her with developing my love of books and reading - when I left her class I was reading well above the class average and by the end of year 2 in Infants was reading Junior books.

 

Mrs Roberts was an inspiration and I am passionate about introducing books and reading to babies and young children as a result - I read every day to my daughter from the day she was born (even if it was whatever I happened to be reading at the time ) and she, too, has grown up to love books and reading.

 

Nona

[louby loo]

I remember my first year in secondary and they introduced 'topics' instead of seperate lessons (history, georaphy etc) all I can say is I hated it with a vengence and found it the most boring form of learning!!! 1970ish - it had some fancy name which escapes me now - something like IPD Studies. (Individual Personal Development??)

 

The impact this has had on me is NO TOPICS EVER in pre-school !! I am all for following interests which often includes mini themes - but a blanket topics are complete no no's. I feel personally unless you have an interest in the subject they are a complete turn off.

 

(although I did quite enjoy doing the 'fashion' topic at school , mind you I went on to work in that area )

[sunnyday]

Hi - sooooo giving my age away here (not that it's a secret! )

 

Started Primary aged 5 (1959) - this was my very first experience of any sort of 'school' - no pre-schools in those 'olden days'!

I remember it so clearly - I loved it - but then I was a very confident 5 year old.....I do wonder how comfortable it was for some of my peers My whole time at Primary I remember with great fondness - some super teachers - it was a fairly small village C of E school.......anyway I thrived there and managed to pass my 11+.........so my next school was a 'Technical High School for Girls' (grammar equivalent)........hmmmm....not such a happy experience there....a huge school - a big 'shock' really following on from such a small village school.......sadly, I couldn't wait to leave and did so at the earliest opportunity ..........funnily enough I actually returned to studying much, much later in life.....lots of childcare stuff, but also History, Psychology, Media Studies at 'O' level - just because I wanted to!

 

Hope that helps!

 

Good luck with it all!

 

Sorry - just had to come back and add a bit more! The secondary school was full of very 'streetwise' girls.......although I was confident I certainly was not streetwise.......I found them all quite 'intimidating'.......and as a consequence soon lost my confidence, developed a 'stammer' at age 13 - horrible (glad to say that righted itself after I left the school)!

 

On a brighter note - we had a lovely history teacher - who, I'm sure gave me my love of history........when I told him that I was leaving he said "oh that's so sad, I have always felt that you would make a great Primary School teacher" - clever man!!! (Not that I am a primary teacher - but he was on the right lines!)

Edited October 18, 2010 by sunnyday

[Guest]

Hi Everybody,

 

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has responded so far, the comments have all been brilliant and extremely interesting and are exactly what we are looking for. Also thank you Sue for moving my original posting to this area! You can tell I am a novice at this.

 

Just so that it is fair, I feel I should say a few words about my own educational experience. I was born a fair few years ago with my schooling late 60s and 70s and I really enjoyed school up until the last year in primary school. I think that I had a little bit of a wobbly as we had moved counties and I joined the school in year 5. I enjoyed secondary school for the first few years, and was doing fine, but somewhere along the line it all got too much for me. I started to compare myself with others and felt not 'good enough'. I think I found the pressure of it all too much and I ended up distancing myself from education However, like, sunnyday, I have gone back to further my education. My school days were before the national curriculum came in. We were streamed in secondary school I think from the 2nd year, which is year 8 now. I started to feel stressed about school somewhere in year 3 (now year 9). I always remember suddenly not feeling good about maths which had once been my favourite subject. We had a new teacher whose teaching method was completely different to the one I was use to and I felt lost. I think the pace changed but I can't be sure. I seemed to loose momentum in all subjects.

 

Anyway here I am thirty (plus a few!) years on and reflecting on why I lost my will in school, was it because I felt pressurised to do well, or was it because the teaching methods just didn't work for me, or was it my nature? Either way it did have a dramatic effect on my education.

 

If anyone else has had other experiences or similar ones please could you share them. I know some of you out there have had brilliant educational experiences. We are interested in the good ones as well as the not so good. It is making really interesting reading, and will be an enormous help for our seminar (presentation) work when we relate the experiences of the 'pupils' to the policies of the times. So please, please don't forget to date your memories.

 

Many thanks - jarcyd

[Fredbear]

Hi started school aged 5 in 1965 in Leyton London, and was not very confident at all. My mum used to collect me at lunchtime as we lived just across a busy main road to the school. My lasting memory was staying for lunch for the first time and being absolutely pertrified by the whole experience.

I enjoyed singing though and was in the school choir, and also attempted to play the violin with the Headteacher.

[how strange as i had no confidence].

I continued to be quite shy throughout my early years, not sticking at anything, Brownies, dancing, etc. I found Junior school fantastic and then well the least said about Senior school the better, just felt swallowed up by the whole experience.

I went on as an adult to appear on stage, run a Brownie Pack, go to college and work in Early Years for the past 32 years, not bad i suppose for a timid little mouse.

Good luck

[Andreamay]

Hi

I started school in 1964 i think and I remember being left at the gate parents were not allowed in!! It is a memory stayed with me forever having to wave my mum off and walk down a very long path into school!!

I remember learning the new decimal currency in 1969?? we played shop and learnt it that way I loved it!

I rememeber reciting our times table every morning!! We had the Janet and John reading scheme I remember being bored by it and used to read all the time at home.

I remember having to go outside to the toilets!! scary when you are 5 years old!!

Andrea

[Guest]

Hi All,

 

Just wanted to say a big thank you for sharing your experiences. Not sure what mark we got but your help was very much appreciated.

 

Cheers - Jarcyd

[redjayne]

My school life started in 1967 - I was 5 and it was the first time I had been away from Mum and Dad( no playgroups round my way in those days) I lived ( and still do) in a town in Hampshire and the school was the one my Mum had been to as a child as we lived in what was her parents house. I loved school , settled in and made friends quickly, and was always quite confident if a little 'off the wall' I was the child who befriended the children who didn't quite fit i.e the little indian girl, who popped up half way through a term as her Dad was in the Navy, and the less 'attractive' slightly smelly and unkempt children. My Mum used to call them my waifs and strays! Used to go home for lunch as we just lived down the road , but did stay for school lunch occasionally and that was a treat I got chosen to stand out front of assembly and sing the new songs as I had a big mouth and my main claim to fame was being chosen to be Hanky Girl at the school fete although was pretty hacked off as couldn't go on the rides because I had this daft dress on with hankies sewn all over it! I enjoyed school and knew from the age of 8 that I wanted to work with children - and the rest as they say is history.

[redjayne]

Dohh just realised that you didn't need this any more as topic done. serves me right for not reading right through before typing !

[Guest]

Well thanks anyway redjayne, the thought was appreciated, and it was very interesting to me as we are both as young as each other, give or take a month or so

 

 

Cheers - Jarcyd