Steiner College

Enhancing abilities by identifying the individual skills of each child

Only a well-rounded intellect, a spirit nourished in the eternal sources of intelligence and culture, of justice and wisdom, is a safeguard against both indifference and skepticism.

Ameen Rihani - Writer and Intellectual

IDENTIFYING SKILL RELATED GAPS AND NEEDS AND GRADUALLY INCREMENTING COMPETENCE LEVELS

Education is all about preparation as we all know. The problem is “what are we preparing our children for?” As Steiner sees it, the world is moving too fast in too many directions for anyone to get a firm hold on it. If someone say’s they can, well, we must respectfully disagree. They are either chest-thumping or seriously overestimating themselves or fibbing or all three.

It doesn’t need rocket science to figure this one out. A simple look at how dramatically the world has changed over the last decade will indicate how ill prepared we were with our various qualifications and skills sets to face it well. For example the bottom fell out of the legal industry and in places like the USA, there has been an astonishing 38% drop in enrollment at top law schools. Engineers are in trouble and the world is throwing money at finance, business promotion and human resource persons desperately trying to generate cash where cash is at a premium with global public debt being USD 57 trillion against total usable cash of 65 trillion. Obviously this state of affairs cannot last and something will explode quite soon. The key question then reduces to this: “how on earth can we, the educators, the teachers, the facilitators prepare our kids for a world that is in fact, looking more and more like everyone’s worst nightmare?“

Steiner doesn’t believe in showing parents a world for their kids seen through pink spectacles. Instead, we round out their early education, factoring in all possible skills they may require in a decade from now. Once early childhood education is complete, we evaluate our students in terms of their skills in math, English, science, aesthetics as well as temperament, adjustment, confidence and self-belief, compassion, empathy etc.

As a child progresses through grade school, Steiner educators know that the child is commencing to look at the world through independent eyes and a reflective mind and is subconsciously making choices. These are not always completely thought through, are very changeable but they constitute the essence of what the child will serve the world with. We provide the child with a rounding up or rounding out of their initial knowledge acquisition tasks so that those choices are made to optimize the future of the child.

How does the it work?

STEP 1 - EVALUATE OR RE-EVALUATE: The SCANLab conducts evaluation exercises. The aim here is to identify the level of a child in a discipline, skill or psycho-emotional state.

STEP 2 - IDENTIFY LEVELS: For each of the grade school disciplines and sub-disciplinary areas, Steiner educators have identified seven specific tiers or levels of competance and abilities. The evaluation program slots each child into what we call a level map that determines where a given child stands on a given skill.

STEP 2 - DETERMINE POTENCIES AND POSSIBILITIES: Next, educationists tailor a custom program that will cover existing gaps, boost competencies and complete the grounding required for serious future academic and life challenges. .

STEP 3 - TEACH AND MONITOR: Subsequently the teachers take over, incrementally developing a child's competancies in specific skills based on the program. The child is regularly monitored to see what sort of progress is being made, checks and balances initiated to ensure that the program is on target and that each child achieves equal or better in terms of the optimal levels that can be achieved. It should be noted here that Steiner differs from most other institutions in understanding that every child cannot ace every skill. Therefore Steiner doesn't attempt to flog children to death attempting to get them to be top performers in a given skill merely because it is generally popular or thought to be "important". Instead, we give each student a rounded out middle school learning experience that is uniquely colored by the nuances of each child's abilities and capabilities. Through this, we do two things - a) we boost a child's self-confidence and b) we made sure that each child is completely aware of what they can and cannot do and does not need to compete with others to prove themselves. The strategy has paid great dividends in preparing Steiner kids to know what they should be considering when it comes to real academic challenges.

STEP 4 - DIRECT AND CHANNEL: Steiner educators know that they cannot teach all students everything they need to know or have the ability to know.While steiner completes and rounds up most foundation skills, in some cases a child might show abilities in areas that are out of the ordinary. For example, they could be brilliant chess players. Or else, excellent at solving chess problems. Some might be able sing or dance or play instruments or paint in unique ways. For these, Steiner has a system whereby it identifies who can enhance those types of abilities in the kids and encourages and directs them and their parents to those people or institutions.

Program of level enhacement - habitat optimization

Phone:	094 718152579
Fax:	094 718152579
Email:	support@steiner.lk
Web:	http://www.steiner.lk