Holistic development is the all-around development in children aiming for physical, emotional, intellectual, and social development instead of only one of these aspects. When educational institutions focus only on the academic performance of students, they tend to overlook the physical, emotional, and social aspects of the development of students.
Nowadays, the focus of educational curricula has shifted towards holistic development and how it can be ensured in a classroom. In this article, we will discuss the role of a teacher in creating a conducive environment for the holistic development of a student.
7 Ways to Ensure Holistic Development of Students
Here are the 7 effective ways to ensure the holistic development of students.
1. Creating a Conducive Environment
The art is shifting from a streamlined classroom focusing only on studies to a learning space where actual student growth takes place is subtle. The first step is to remove any associations of stress or fear from the mind of a student about a classroom. A relaxed space automatically makes for fertile ground for student development. The second step is to nurture curiosity.
The only way to understand a student's natural talents and interests is to allow them to be curious about their learning. They must have the freedom to ask questions, make mistakes, explore concepts with their unique lens and discuss with peers.
2. Freedom to Explore
Every student has diverse interests and preferences. They should be given equal exposure to physical activity, extra-curricular activities, and opportunities for leadership. You must observe their natural behavior in these simulations and infer their natural talents. Forcing students to align with one interest is limiting and unproductive. It curbs the natural flow and growth of students.
You must identify their individual inclinations before honing their skills for the future. Holistic development ensures adequate development of all aspects of growth but the choices and preferences of the subject or field will make them unique.
3. Lower Stress Higher Motivation
Stress is a barrier to development. Studies show that stress beyond a healthy level can cause an adverse impact on the healthy growth of a student. Traditional classrooms used fear as a tool to discipline students and engage them in classroom activities. This method has become redundant in modern classrooms because it takes the mind of a child away from inquisitiveness, critical thinking, and curiosity while only making them focused on how to enhance performance.
In modern classrooms, the instrument of engagement should be an encouragement, motivation, and gamification of studies. If students enjoy classrooms, holistic development is bound to happen.
4. The Balance Between Physical Activity and Academic Growth
Many academicians have debated about how much attention and time is to be dedicated to physical activity, academics, and extra-curricular activities such as music, art, craft, and dance. The most popular answer is to keep the time for each of these flexible but the engagement must be consistent. This means that one hour of physical activity and four hours of studies is justified if the one hour of games is regular.
Physical activity energizes the mind and prepares it to function throughout the day. Similarly, music, art, and dance have a positive impact on the emotional and social development of a child. They strengthen the expression of self in various ways which leads to positive self-esteem and healthy social interaction.
5. Individualized Training-at Own Pace, Interests, Preferences, Differential Needs
Holistic development happens for each student at a different pace. Factors like parental involvement, socioeconomic background, and culture at home place every student on a distinct trajectory of growth. These growth curves can be standardized up to one level but cannot be made completely the same.
The modern-day curriculum allows each student to learn at his/her pace through audio-visual lessons and self-assessments that addressed the differential needs of students and allows them an extra margin to make mistakes and learn from them. Many curriculums have become target based instead of hour-based models. This flexibility has been observed to positively impact learning curves.
6. Extra-Curricular Activities
Extra-curricular activities such as music, dance, art, craft, carpentry, martial arts, etc. can be integrated into the weekly schedule of students to maintain a harmonious balance between studies, physical education, and artistic subjects. Competitions and debates play their part in boosting oratory skills in students and making them acquainted with the stage.
This goes a long way in preparing them to interact with audiences in presentations and interviews in the future. Another impact this has is to enhance their patience and concentration spans in classrooms. Studies prove that music, art, etc have the ability to calm the mind of a student and lead to increased growth and performance.
7. Gamification of Studies
An innovative form of teaching emerged through the pandemic that has shown brilliant results in engaging students in virtual classrooms. Gamification of studies is the process of explaining fundamental academic concepts to students through games and fun activities that boost their interest in a classroom.
Gamified studying is an interactive process and relaxes students instead of stressing them. Through this technique, the goals of emotional and social development can be easily met resulting in a broad direction of holistic development.
Conclusion
The only way to inculcate all these methods in a classroom and see how they impact students is always trial and error. When you start making the classroom free, there might be many students who do not understand how to navigate without the traditional form of learning. Parents can also doubt the processes and methods of holistic development but as a teacher, you must reassure them about the results of this initiative.
You must explain their role in the process to ensure holistic development through little changes in their home environments. The aim is to make actualized individuals who function at their full potential and can adapt to situations and challenges with strong resilience.
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