My SHARE with Schools Experience: Volunteer Blog Post – Ahsan Rashid

My three placements with Share with Schools were incredible experiences that solidified my
desire to go into teaching. Creating clay Mesopotamian cylinder seals with Year 6 and Year 7
students during their primary school graduation events and Fitzalan’s return visit,
respectively, taught me the value of activity-based education.
The children and young teenagers respond incredibly well to creative and play-based
learning. Some Year 6 students inquired further about the cylinder seals as they made their
own, creating opportunities for brief history lessons. Many of them took direct inspiration
from the examples and replicas we had on hand; I believe many future archaeologists were
born that day. Similarly, when playing a home-brewed tabletop game focused on medieval
peasant life with the Year 7 students, they seemed far more immersed in the
experience—albeit satirised and made age-appropriate—than I remember being at their age,
sitting and listening to a presentation.
It was also humbling to witness the creativity and artistic ability of the Year 6 students, who
used the clay to create shapes that had not even occurred to me or my fellow volunteer,
while we struggled to carve simple patterns into a flat piece of clay.