Importance Of Freedom In Education

Teachers tend to have a different outlook on the word “freedom” than the parents may. Given that we have an educated background on developmentally appropriate practices, it sometimes may look like the educational needs of the children are not being addressed if a parent were to walk through to door and see their child playing. However, that is not the case! Freedom and choices are important for children in a classroom. Children are not successful when a teacher gives them instructions on how to do every little thing and then gives them work sheets and abstract materials. Children need the sense of initiative. (Page 167) That is not an effective way of teaching. We as college students do not like to sit down and fill out paperwork straight

Learning occurs through hands on play. When a child is engaged with an activity that they had the option of picking, they are likely to learn more from it than an option that the teacher picks for them. Before choices can be made available, teachers must first understand the importance of choices and provide appropriate activities to choose from. Allowing children to make their own choices not only promotes them to be eager to learn, but it also helps their cognitive development, moral development, and their “self” development. On top of that it allows them to feel like their opinions and choices are valued (which they are) and like they are in control! When they feel in control, this helps to build self-esteem, self-image, and self-help skills! By choosing what they want to do, they have to take on the role of responsibility of fulfilling the tasks and learning at the same time. There is a lot of development and learning occurring when a child is free to make choices in the classroom. Teachers are promoting children to be independent and successful. Some examples of choices in the classroom could be say after calendar time, the students must go get their name tag and go to any activity center in the room with a classmate of their

Their play is not being directed in one direction, they are encouraged to play with who they want and however they want. The activities will be based on the theme of the week so they will still be learning! Another way to do this is with Popsicle sticks. The teacher could be finding a new group of students to give classroom responsibilities to. As she pulls out the names of the students, she can give them the choice of what they want to be responsible of for the week. When the children are making their choices, the teacher needs to still be in charge a majority of the time for the transition time. One way to do this is by clapping a beat. Once finished all of the students mimic the beat back and then stand quietly until told what to do next. The most important thing to remember is to just be FLEXIBLE! While choices are important in the classroom, it is still important that teachers follow and create a curriculum. This is what we base the activities and choices that the students have off of. Teaching and control are still present in the environment, but choices and involvement of the children are also