As a practitioner of an educational institution, it is certainly a good thing to make the institution bigger and better. However, under the influence of the epidemic situation that lasted for nearly two years and the requirements issued by the state in 20021,large and small training institutions began to lay off employees, transform, shut down or even run away. It is estimated that in the last few days, my own organization may also face bankruptcy or closure, but during this time, I also found that I have been paying attention to not only the organization, but also the answer to what education is, an answer that can convince me with great probability.
17, I'm thinking about a problem. Since it was said at that time that the school curriculum was insufficient or there were problems in school teaching, can external institutions really achieve our expected educational goals? In the same year, I have established a small-scale trusteeship+counseling institution with another partner in the university. Because there were secondary schools, primary schools and kindergartens attached to the university, there were many similar institutions at that time, but we were the institution with the largest number of people nearby. Pick up the children for lunch and take a nap at noon every day; In the evening, I watch children's homework with some teachers. Some students need one-on-one tutoring, from 5: 00 to 7: 00 for primary school students and from 7: 00 to 9: 00 for middle school students. Although it was a supplement outside the school, what we did at that time did not make me feel that I had found the answer I wanted. In Guangzhou, I have also been to many similar institutions and purely academic institutions in various capacities. What they do seems to be similar to the goal of doing these things, and the ultimate goal is to let the children score. They usually don't pay special attention to other needs of their children. At the end of 17, I decided to leave my small organization and return to Beijing.
In the choice of many institutions, I first screened out many academic institutions. Although the pressure on parents and children in Beijing is not as great as that in Guangzhou, their expectations for further studies are generally not low. Among various non-disciplinary institutions, I finally chose an institution called Kabbah Robot. Kabbah used the most popular Lego education at that time, which was almost an avant-garde course type in quality education institutions. If most subjects inside and outside the school can't meet the future needs of students, can this Lego institution?
/kloc-at the end of 0/7, I started from scratch in the new campus of Kabbah. By the middle of 19, I should have done all the jobs in it, from campus promotion to using these data to call parents. 18 went out to inspect the educational work of some academic institutions and Lego institutions in July and August, and returned to the campus to do educational management in September. Every job is actually to get in touch with parents as much as possible and talk to them about their children's education and growth.
At first, marketing and consulting sometimes gave me a false sense of accomplishment. Although I told my parents a lot about the benefits of letting their children learn Lego, so far, some parents do say that it is really helpful to let their children learn Lego. But in fact, no matter in the promotion, invitation, consultation or the experience of teasing children after class, some children's problems or the benefits of learning this course are more or less exaggerated. Although this job is called a course consultant, it is not essentially different from selling houses and cars. It is all paid by parents, which also makes me feel that this job has alienated the goal I am looking for, so after doing the promotion and sales work for about half a year,
The work of educational administration is mainly to adjust the curriculum arrangement and communicate with parents about the class hours of some students. The communication between consultants and the market is the first time, while the educational administration is a relatively continuous communication. However, after several months of educational work, I found that in most cases, the topics I communicated with my parents were almost stuck in topics such as asking for leave, transferring, renewing fees, and notifying activities, including dealing with the dissatisfaction that parents sometimes have. Especially for the renewal of employment, in most institutions, the teacher's job is only to attend classes, and the maintenance and secondary sales of students are done by the class teacher or the educational administration teacher. During this time, I found that I seldom had a relatively complete time to have in-depth communication with my parents. Many times, when parents want to discuss things with them, it is mainly a state of attachment. In addition, many trivial matters need educational communication, and this position cannot effectively help children achieve their learning goals or parents.
/kloc-at the end of 0/8, I transferred from my teaching post and took over the post of a retired teacher, taking over the courses of about 80 children. The organization basically teaches in small classes, with no more than eight children at most and at least two or three children. However, for me at that time, I was very nervous. From the time I decided to take over to the formal continuation of the class, there was only one week to prepare. I basically shut myself in my room every day to prepare lessons and study how to do better in each class. What difficulties are easy for children to ignore in each class?
After each class, we have a parent communication meeting to tell each child's parents about their classroom performance, knowledge, improvement and so on. During my six months as a teacher, I found a strange but normal phenomenon. Consultants (sales), education administrators and teachers say the same thing to parents. For the first two roles, parents will selectively ignore their words, while for the same problems pointed out by teachers, parents will agree with them and pay more attention to the same suggestions given by teachers. I can understand the reason behind this. After all, teachers serve children every day, and the purpose of counseling and educational affairs is basically to make parents pay the bill. Parents' trust in teachers is naturally much higher, which also makes me feel that I have found a position to achieve my goal. I can not only bring my children up, but also contact my parents frequently. At the same time, it is easier for parents to listen when giving them some advice.
In this way, I have been attending classes until 19. In fact, during this time, I gradually got some wrong feelings. For example, due to the limitation of course length, each parent's communication time in each class is less than two minutes; If the construction of the class needs more time, the communication with parents will become a single communication on WeChat. At this time, although I also contacted my parents directly, the reply I got was often just "OK, thank you"; After the experience class, the teacher must also cooperate with the consultant to communicate with the parents, and sometimes have a hard chat with the parents without problems; Some children are really not interested in Lego, but they can be brainwashed in various ways in the experience class, so that children can say the word "like" at the first time when their parents ask if they like it or not. These things gradually piled up, which made me feel that the positions that could have helped children and parents point out the direction were gradually alienated by the needs and requirements of the organization itself. So in June of 19, I left this Lego organization after changing several positions.
In the process of working in this institution, I also visited and learned about many institutions of the same type, industry, new and traditional. These organizations are all without exception. They adopt the same model as the Lego organization where I work: marketers get parents' information through various activities and information exchange, and then there is the invitation experience of consultants. The teacher gives classes to the students, and the consultant tells the parents about the system outside the classroom. Finally, the teacher presents the children's works to the parents and urges them to sign up together with the consultant.
Of course, as a place to impart knowledge, institutions charge parents tuition fees. The teacher pointed out some problems of students, and the consultant hoped that the longer the parents registered, the better. In a normal operating organization, there is nothing wrong with it. A responsible teacher will try his best to ensure that children can gain something in every class, can tell parents how to continue to cooperate and strengthen their children's learning after class, and can make children feel interesting to learn with him outside of knowledge. A consultant who wants to benefit children will try his best to find out the progress of children with teachers and carefully plan a learning path for children within the curriculum system.
Studying in various institutions is not without help to children. Some hobbies that require high professional skills definitely need some extra tutoring. It just can't be the only help for children to grow up. A child's life is not just "studying at school". Perhaps this is why my previous job never made me feel that I could answer the question of what education is.
All kinds of behaviors of institutions are basically carried out around "teaching", and after the teaching activities, a "result" is needed as feedback. The accumulation of good grades is the best means for organizations to promote themselves. Having a good reputation is the motivation for parents to renew their fees and submit new newspapers. Only when more parents renew their fees and submit new newspapers can institutions survive or expand. For the purpose of survival or expansion, institutions will definitely take the number of parents who renew their fees (or new newspapers) as an important indicator. In order to achieve this target, we must provide as good a result as possible. It is true that a good closed loop can be formed, but this closed loop emphasizes teaching rather than teaching.
What is education? We need to keep thinking about this problem. Only this time, maybe it's time to look outside the organization.