Points of interest

I have spent the week really trying to whittle down my ideas into my inquiry title. I came across a couple of links this week that interested me. They just appeared on my Facebook newsfeed. One was a video link explaining the important of arts education and how creative people who think outside the box do better and give more, whatever their profession be it business or science. The skills they learn through art and drama are key to their success. I truly believe this also and really engaged with the man being interviewed in this link below:

https://www.facebook.com/natgeotvUS/videos/10153617771436005/

I also saw a Facebook post this week that had been shared across the county thousands and thousands of times. It was a post from a desperate mother of an Autistic man. The gentleman had been to university and studied computer science but since graduating 2 years ago is still to find work. He has sent 100s of applications and always has the door closed on him. He is obviously intelligent enough to do the tasks but socially he has not been accepted as part of the work force highlighting the absolute need for support and help, potentially through drama or arts therapy. Here is the newspaper article about the Facebook post: 

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/autistic-mum-plea-job-appeal-11198611

Another article I read this week told of a primary school head teacher who has resigned due to the changing being made to the curriculum, setting unachievable goals for children. This links to my interest in a previous blog about how the school curriculum is changing  and how the arts are being dropped. This isn't directly about drama but tells me how much the curriculum changes are effecting teachers and students and how all focus is now going on the core subjects of maths, English and Science. Here is the head masters letter to his schools parents:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/04/15/headmaster-writes-scathing-resignation-letter-attacking-governme/

Another interesting article this week was about staff happiness and how this can impact on practice. Here is the link: 

http://www.earlyyearscareers.com/eyc/latest-news/staff-happiness-impact-practice/

I have also been thinking this week about dramatherapy and how children learn in different ways. The school system sometimes doesn't cater for these needs. I decided to learn a bit more about the didn't ways to learn and found this fantastic image: 

http://edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/7-styles-of-learning.jpg

From this I think I am definitely a visual learner. When ever I have done exams I would always even visualise my revision texts books when answering a question and believe I have a bit of a photographic memory. I can't recall every word but I find it very easy to learn scripts and learn chunks of dialogue for a speech or show. And I always do it by visualising the page of text. However, I was unaware of some of these other ones mentioned and thinking about it I'm probably solitary too. I have to have silence when studying and even struggle to take things in if I can hear faint music or a television in the background. I admire people who can study like that! I also need to figure things out in my own head my own way so I tend to struggle with group study in subjects I'm not confident with. Group discussion however I love! I also lean towards kinaesthetic leaning too. I like to role play and use diagrams and to learn. So just looking at myself and analysing that, I can start to see why I struggled with certain subjects at school. I excelled at English, art, drama, pe, history....all the creative subjects basically! And I really struggled with science and maths. I just couldn't get the information into my head and now I think back to my teachers at 16 and how it was taught I see why. It's very interesting and also fascinating. I am passionate about children needing to learn in different ways to reach their true potential and am against the way children are tested in the UK. Many exam results don't reflect their knowledge. I always had on my school reports "Lucy's exam result does not reflect her class work" It got me thinking more about my inquiry and how important drama is to learn a variety of skills and how essential it is to incorporate aspects of it into all subjects.