Great Scot May 2020 Great Scot 159_MAY 2020_ONLINE_V3 | Page 9

PERSONALISED LEARNING IN THE JUNIOR SCHOOL:
BOYS RELATING TOGETHER ON THE HILL DURING TERM 1.
important. Delivery of content is tiring, but it is
relatively easy to quantify. We can mark our record
books and point to what we believe we actually taught.
However, we need to go beyond the delivery. I
marked the roll, but was I really aware of the boys
present? Did I teach with sensitivity and awareness or
was my delivery more in common with an impersonal
email campaign? How was I understood by the
individual boys sitting in my classroom?
For someone who has preached in congregations
for over three decades and across three continents, it is
always an eye-opener to discover after the service that
an individual hearer’s understanding of your sermon
may differ quite markedly from what you believe you
had shared. So too in the classroom; our lesson may
well have been taught as we intended, but the boys may
be taking away different conclusions about feudalism
in medieval society or the plot of the short story.
Personalisation thus challenges us to reconsider the
individual. Rather than a class, our curriculum and a
lesson plan, we should focus primarily on the boys who
sit in our classrooms. They are individual learners who
may well learn more efficiently in different ways and
styles. If marketers have rediscovered the importance
of the individual, personalisation challenges educators
to see each boy in our classes as unique, and worthy
of the time and effort to understand and to engage as
meaningfully as possible.
In the Gospels, we encounter Jesus teaching large
crowds of people throughout Galilee and Judea. The
stories he told to illustrate and flesh out his teaching
were memorable, and easily accessible to his original
audience as he employed images of everyday life. These
stories dealt with serious and eternal matters and
always challenged his listeners’ presuppositions and the
status quo. Yet Jesus’ original hearers were so engaged
that they would be able to recall Jesus’ stories and
reflect on his teaching months and years later. While
Jesus’ model of contextualisation is worth emulating,
what undergirded it all was that he understood people.
This understanding of people came about, in
part, by being around people. While Jesus regularly
taught multitudes, it is interesting that after these
times of extended teaching he regularly shared with
individuals and small groups. Men and women had
the opportunity to come alongside Jesus the teacher
and challenge what he had said, or ask for further
clarification. Jesus also spent time with his small group
of close disciples, and outlined to them a way whereby
they would one day carry on his work and share his
message of God’s kingdom on earth. He was always
accessible and was willing to spend time with the
socially awkward, the moral outcast, the self-righteous
and the desperate. He lived alongside people and
so understood them deeply. He loved people as
individuals.
The marketing gurus who have proposed
personalisation have helped companies to stop and
think once more of the individual customer. Some
companies have adopted this general approach for
the benefit of their company and, of course, their
bottom line.
In education the bottom line is not the final ATAR
mark, the school’s or even the teacher’s standing
and career advancement. The boy is central. True
personalisation, as beautifully manifested in Jesus
Christ, helps us to recover the worth of individuals
and reach out to share with them at a personal level;
to be interested in them. We teachers are called to
remember each boy and to seek to serve each one so
that he may learn and flourish.
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