Professor Reni Zaharieva
“I love my school”, 139-th Secondary “Zahari Krusha”
The project “I love my school” was officially completed by the joint efforts of the school authorities led by the Principal Mrs. Rumyana Doncheva, Albena and Arthur Spurling from the British Charity LightSource. The ceremony was attended by officials from the Lozenets municipality, Sofia Municipality, Regional Directorate of Education, professors from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, parents and students.
The project aims to improve the learning environment in the school, through colours, shapes, words that have an impact on mental, emotional and physical condition of the students. The new highlight includes two parameters: colour and symbol. These expressions “lead” one towards the inner essence.
In the corridors and classrooms are placed the following:
- Spatial images with 3D depth
- Pictures with positive affirmations: Tenderness, Love, Joy, Beauty, Happiness, Hope, Light, Harmony.
- Thoughts containing deep spiritual messages, for example: “The true wealth of man is the good that one has done for the world.”
- Educational boards of the educational material – Art, English, as the school is focused on learning Art and English.
- Photos of beautiful scenery with inspirational thoughts about ecology and nature conservation.
The combination of all the elements send visual signals to the student that she and he absorbs consciously or unconsciously and without doubt they enrich the mind and the knowledge of the students.
What makes the project unique are several scientific argument that I’m about to note:
- The first argument is the understanding of the overall nature of man – that man is not a walking head. In this context teachers and students are spiritual beings who need experiences of a different nature. It is these experiences that are most often provoked by colours and shapes.
- The second argument is the new theory by Howard Gardner about the varieties of intelligence in each person: 1) linguistic, 2) logical-mathematical, 3) spacial, 4) musical, 5) bodily-kinesthetic, and personality in two aspects – 6) intrapersonal and 7 ) interpersonal. Later added are the types: 8) natural (naturalistic) and 9) existential (spiritual). When the teacher and the student touch different materials they respond to them, because they have a need for communication with this specific material.
- The third argument is about the impact of the environment on man as a spiritual being. Whatever conditions we provide to an animal, it will not appreciate them, but with man it is different. Outer beauty is speaking to the inner spiritual world that each of us has within us. The beauty outside influences us because it remind us about our inner “undiscovered sometimes rough wealth.” The Italian Loris Malaguzzi – an educator who founded a very progressive modern system of education in Reggio nell’Emilia says that the first educator of the child is his mother, second is the environment and the third is the teacher.
A Russian classic writer – Fyodor Dostoyevsky left us a magnificent thought: “Beauty will save the world.” I believe we are all convinced of the effects of beauty on the emotional and hence – mental state.
Man is a spiritual being. His need for art is connected with his spiritual development with the needs of our heart. The mind needs knowledge and our spiritual essence of experiences that only art can provide.
Spiritual beings know that besides the five senses there are others that we can perceive the world of shapes. Non-spiritual beings live exclusively within the five senses and believe that if they cannot see, touch, smell, hear or taste something, then it just does not exist. - The fourth argument is associated with scientific approaches to learning methods of students that give great importance to visual, auditory, tactile or kinesthetic analysis and its influence in the learning process. Subsequently, it became important that students not only learn through these sensory channels and through their personal qualities, intuition, active reflection.
Recently, scientists have focused on the impact of cross-lateral activities in the learning process, ie stimulating of left and right brain activity.
For the student learning process is not just remembering and reproducing but also experience that should be “good”. This experience involves: emotional, social, cognitive, motor and reflexive spheres. In the reflexive sphere includes the impact of: sound, light temperature; position in the interior.
The completed project supports the goal of the school – to develop the potential of the students, achieving this very effectively through the Project “I love my school”- a rich, beautiful and aesthetic external environment to stimulate student creativity and artistic expressions.
I think the depth of the implemented project – “I love my school,” in which the student and the teacher meet the wealth of the outside world to transform the message into “I love myself” because I have this wealth and I am here to share it with others – coevals and adults.
