From August 2011 to June 2018 here were eight areas Marketplace Mission Learning Center (MMLC) Day School helped students improve learning. You, the caregiver, can create these eight areas for your homeschool student. Start today.
Marco Island, Florida
1. MMLC unifies the areas of learning. Students learn that they “own” their courses. Students learn that the art, crafts, projects belong to them and begin to integrate these “arts” into one learning experience with their course work. The classroom with only five to seven students belongs to them so they take ownership and integrate everyday experience into their coursework and their “arts.” Students begin to participate in the discussions relating their courses, arts and environment. Learning comes together. Students work on human relations, mental hygiene and even ethical and moral values. The students gather around and begin to come to grips with the everyday life questions and problems.
2. MMLC reaches each student at his own level of experience. With courses, the student sets a pace, decides time and course to study, and plans the day and week to complete so many lessons With “arts,” students choose a project, develops a plan, executes the plan at their pace and integrates the project into their course work. With our classroom of five to seven students and one teacher, students daily collaborate with other students and interact with the teacher. Activities and applications within the capacity of all, daily offer each student the satisfaction of numerous successful experiences in communication. Enthusiastic participation becomes a criterion of the success of our lessons.
3. MMLC leds to better a student-teacher relationship. At MMLC the teacher acts as a learning coach. “How can I help you learn?” begins every encounter whether spoken or unspoken. Through a sharing of common experiences in teacher-student discussions, a better understanding and a spirit of cooperation develops. In a democratic atmosphere teacher and student shared experiences increase learning and build student confidence based on performance with measured competences. Teacher and student tackle lessons as a new adventure thinking together, laughing together, learning together.
4. MMLC improves the emotional climate of the classroom through coursework, the arts, the safe classroom, teacher-student and student-student interaction and the use of multisensory devices: activities, trips, firsthand experiences, and audio-visual aids. Students learn to avoid snap judgments, cynicism, arrogance, and easy generalizations by developing an awareness of differences, change, and multiple-causations. Removing tension from the classroom opens the door to a new freedom where students come to feel the joy of learning,
5. MMLC changes student behavior. Students learn to ask more questions, listen more attentively, evaluate sources of information more carefully, and read more widely and with greater interest. Students learn to examine their motives and act with a self-scrutiny that leads to changes in behavior in the classroom, at home and in the outside world.
6. MMLC stimulates wide, critical reading. Since the student learns to act as their own teacher, finding and evaluating sources becomes important. Every unit in every course has projects. With teacher approval, students can design their own projects. “Arts” projects often require research.
7. MMLC motivates written expression. Projects require written reports. Art and craft projects require descriptions. Our blogs and our podcasts need written material.
8. MMLC emphasizes maturity rather than competition. Students begin to feel their own individual growth and develop insight into their own problems as they discover they can understand problems that block progress. With the pressure of competition removed, students learn to enjoy and to encourage the progress of other students even when other students surpass their achievements. Interest in self-improvement and the harmonious inter-student relationship fosters a happier classroom for both student and teacher.