I usually leave the blog posting to the education experts at Firat Education, but I felt compelled to write one about remote learning. Ibrahim and I have a rising 3rd grader. Our seven year old, like all other students across the world, was thrown into remote learning in March. During the quarantine, we didn’t teach him math, english, or reading. While those subjects mattered, other things mattered more: how he could manage his time, use his laptop, log on to Zoom, send proper emails to his teachers when he had questions, and much more… All. By. Himself.
We’ve been asked as parents what we plan do with our, now eight year old. Because we own an education company, maybe we have some sort of perspective? Well, we do. It has nothing to do with virtual learning, masks, pods, or COVID-19. It has to do with our kids. Since March, we have seen that families need support in a variety of ways, and we’ve noticed a gap. There are many students who have the ability to learn independently but don’t know how.
Again, I’m not talking about math, english, or reading. I’m talking about independent learning. Independent learning doesn’t just help with the now during the Covid-Era, but with academic goals, college goals, and future goals. Firat Education has consulted over 1,000 students in 12 years. Our goal for those 1,000+ students has always been to prepare them for college and for the future.
A little fun fact is that our original logo back in 2008 has a slogan: “Educating our future with solutions for life.” (The evolution of our logo is a whole other blog post.)
Our strengths lie in preparing kids – of all ages – for college and for life. We believe that starts with teaching “entrepreneurial-thinking” skills to foster independent learning in students, even as young as seven years old.
What are “entrepreneurial-thinking” skills? In short, it is the ability to recognize problems and provide solutions. Those skills include communication, time management, tenacity, organization, innovation, problem solving, flexibility, vision, ownership, curiosity, self-motivation, and self-care.
With those skills, our students, at ANY age, can be successful independent learners. And these skills are vital, now more than ever, because when our kids are not learning independently, we, as parents, are adversely affected too: no mom wishes her 16 year old still need her approval to schedule a meeting with his counselor. We want that 16 year old to know his schedule, move things around as needed, and have the confidence to schedule/cancel/reschedule and “own” the outcomes, not at 16 years old, but at six, seven, eight…
We, at Firat Education, have put together a program for families. Learn more about Independent Learning Support and contact us to get started. While we did drop the slogan from our logo, we have not wavered from our original mission – to educate our future with solutions for life.
Yours,
Josephine Firat
CEO, Firat Education