You might be learning authentically if...

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It sounds a little strange to say that learning would be anything other than authentic. To assert otherwise would imply that learning is somehow counterfeit or imitative... but wait a minute; we need to contextualize if we're going anywhere with this.

Learning in its purest, most natural form is as close to automatic as a human response can get. It's our human nature to learn. We live; we learn.  It's arguable that the act of living, growing and developing new skills is synchronous with learning. We learn despite ourselves.

So if we're accepting that learning is a natural human tendency, we should also accept that schools, our institutions of learning, should reflect this tendency. But this is where it gets a bit dicey, and where I think defining the authenticity of school-based learning becomes an issue. Learning is natural, automatic even, in some regards... so how do we make it so in the context of how we teach and learn in schools?

Much debate surrounds traditional pedagogical practise, and I won't get into that here, but I will say that teachers as learners shouldn't be terribly concerned with traditional pedagogical structures. Today's teachers should display an orientation of perpetual improvement toward their practice... a constant striving to find more effective ways to teach. To me, that's how we emulate the natural forces of learning in human nature... constant striving to be better, healthier, smarter. This striving to develop and grow is the essence of authenticity in learning... a genuine search for meaning and relevance. If we get hung up on a pedagogical stream of consciousness that we feel is adequate and righteous, we risk becoming blind to potentially better, more effective ways to teach and learn. There is always something to improve upon, and engaging colleagues in the Twitter Universe is a great conduit for dialog about what teachers do.

I've been engaged in allot of Twitter #edchat lately surrounding the principles of authentic learning. Like so many other elements of formal, organized teaching and learning, defining authenticity in schools can be difficult- everyone has their own opinion of what authentic learning looks, sounds and feels like. Again, I would assert that a genuine search for meaning and relevance in what we teach and learn in schools is the context within which we should define authentic learning.

I want to diagnose authentic learning. To that end, here's a Foxworthyesque list of symptoms that I have come up with so far:

• You might be learning authentically if school is exciting instead of stressful- a challenge, not a burden;
• You might be learning authentically if you talk about school experiences rather than lessons;
• You might be learning authentically if every answer leads to another question;  
• You might be learning authentically if you let your grades take care of themselves- you're too busy learning;
• You might be learning authentically if you feel an overwhelming urge to share what you know with others;  
• You might be learning authentically if learning isn't like your 9-5 job;
• You might be learning authentically if you're taking home homework that wasn't assigned.

Perhaps you'd like to add to my list... tweet me @graingered.

Power of silence...

flickr CC image via Polloek

Some people say too much.

Fact: many like to hear the sound of their own voice. If the tone of the statements being made are provocative in any way, an unfortunate side effect of this is often other's chiming in to refute... and we all know where that goes... this reactive tendency prolongs an exchange that the group likely already didn't appreciate.

Whether in a formal group discussion, staff meeting or even just a friendly conversation; I'm learning how to pick my spots in dialog. In the Art of War by Sun Tzu, it is stated...

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.

It's so easy to be drawn into an ignorant or uninformed perspective, the desire being to "enlighten" the source, but the adversarial context that usually results very rarely moves the dialog forward... at best, it stalls; at worst it completely breaks down.

In our professional conversations, sometimes saying and doing nothing really well is a good idea. Allowing the opponent a sufficient platform and time to express his opinions fully without making a response allows the group members to judge his point of view for themselves, and it allows you the time to formulate an articulate and clear response, if you choose to make one later on.

The trick is to pick your spot... don't get drawn into a verbal ambush.

Those blindly insulting things we say to others...

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One of the most insulting things we say to each other is "I know how you feel." Not one of us can ever truly know how any other of us feels about anything.

Even those of us who have shared a similar, or perhaps even the exact same experience... people's perspectives are as unique as their fingerprints. The variables at play in an individuals mind relative to the emotions surrounding their experiences are infinite... and different for all of us.

When we say " I know how you feel" to someone, the tacit message we're sending is your emotions aren't so deep and personal that I can't understand them... your emotions aren't complicated. To someone who is experiencing emotional jeopardy, someone who may not even understand their own feelings at the time, this is not a helpful message.

We can be empathic, or even sympathetic when necessary, without implying we know how others feel. It's a matter of how we say it... instead of saying "I know how you feel," why not simply say, "I hear what you're saying, just tell me how I can help." Doing so validates the emotions involved and acknowledges that although people can't truly know how others feel, they can still be completely available to those in distress.

In the complex arena of our human emotions, it is critical that we take responsibility only for our own feelings... we don't need to understand how others feel, we just need to be present and let them know we are completely willing to unconditionally share their feelings without judgement or comment.

Nobody can make us feel anything. Our feelings are only ours, and we alone are responsible for them. Don't take responsibility for the feelings of others... just be there when they're feeling them.

Education needs reform- not revolution

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I hear teacher-types speaking about education reform a lot, and this is good, however it seems to me that the more vocal so-called reformists among teachers aren't really reformists at all; they're revolutionists.

Reform means to put or change into an improved form or condition; to amend or improve by change of form or removal of faults or abuses. In education, this should be a perpetual process. Education reform should be contextualized as a process of continuous improvement that doesn't include an end to the means; it should be a wagon we jump on, but never jump off.

Revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time. Revolution connotes radical change; a shift in power. We don't need a shift in power within education. We need a perspective that understands reform as a more viable and achievable alternative. Reform would be better applied as a shift in paradigm without altering the fundamentals of the system. We don't need a wholesale overthrow of the education system... educators need simply to adopt an attitude that seeks to perpetually improve the system as it stands.

There is nothing so sacred that it should be considered invulnerable to change defined as improvement. It's all about context. If teachers were to perceive change as a positive process, (a constant that we embrace as opposed to fear,) one targeting perpetual, incremental improvements to everything we do, I fail to see how this could be bad for teaching and learning.

On the contrary, revolution generally leads to conflict. Fueling revolution is the desire for power, and power struggles are characterized inevitably by adversarial confrontation. There is no issue within education that can be more effectively addressed through the quest for power than it can through the quest for improvement.

Teachers- there are no emergencies in education. It's not about us; it's about teaching and learning, and we should always be aspiring to improvement in both contexts. I think we should understand change as an asymptote process... one that perpetually approaches the perfect state, but that will never achieve it. There is always some element that can be improved, however precisely. Otherwise, once we get to our preferred state, we've already begun to think of the next preferred state. There is always something to refine, no matter how small.

We don't need radical thoughts leading to revolutionary actions seeking power over the teaching and learning process. We do need rational and reflective thoughts leading to reformist actions seeking constant improvement of the teaching and learning process.

I can't wait to hear from the reformists on this one.

There are no borders in the mind of a child...

flickr photo via satguru

"What if" ... I love to say these words. Saying these words takes me back to the days of carefree childhood where everything was possible, limited only by the bounds of my creativity. These two words, and whatever they are followed with, make up every bit of future we create; good and bad. This is the most creativity inspiring phrase I know.

A child's mind is a world without borders where all is shared... kids are so mindful, so attuned to their limitless imagination... sharing their thoughts with each other seems an automatic response. Kids just blurt out whatever is on their mind when they play their 'make believe' games. Just watch a group of kids playing sometime so they don't notice you... every bit of good, and every bit of bad is ultimately shared with the group; it's brilliant. They all benefit from each other's wonderment, but also by sharing their pain, frustration, confusion or any other negative element of their thoughts. The bad stuff ultimately gets distributed to the point of dilution... each member of the group takes on a bit of the pain so nobody has to endure it all, and then, with their minds in overdrive, they begin to construct the next bit of fun.

Imagine this... what if there were no borders in the real world? Perceive a world where we all benefit from good, and where bad is diluted through shared distribution so nobody has to tackle it alone... a world without borders. Some may dismiss this as pie-in-the-sky ideology, but at the risk of altruism, just think about it for a bit.

I have thought about this so many times. We could share all the good, all the richness of each other's newly exposed wonders. At the same time we could dilute those debilitating elements of the real world like poverty, conflict, hunger etc, understanding that sharing the bad allows us to take collective responsibility for all of it... to spread it so thin that its effect is neutralized.... increase good, dilute bad. 

If the adult citizens of the world could tap into their childhood mentality (something we seem so sadly to lose as we get older and begin to believe we can control things by creating limits and borders) the entire human race would benefit from a consciousness that produces a mindful distribution of all that is good, and a willful watering down of all that is bad. It seems to me that when we draw lines in our mind, we are immediately stifled; possibilities are lost. When we draw lines on a map, the same thing happens... we become geographically stifled, less willing to learn from others; to experience their culture and everything good within it, and less confronted by the ills that plague others until we become comfortably ignorant inside our own teflon-wrapped section of our world.

The world is growing and shrinking at the same time. Through technology advances and our growing ability to access every corner of the divided-up world, we are presented with glorious opportunities to harvest consciousness and be more attuned to each other's purpose, which ultimately reduces the perceived distance between us. The cyber-world is much more child-like than I think we even realize... open-source technology is very much like the open-source thinking of children- it's natural; it's an automatic response to the world's desire to know and share information, challenges and ideas... and it's limited only by the bounds of our imagination.

The only thing holding us back from an open-source world are the borders we've created to close it... arguably an act of human nature that has precipitated a lion's share of our world's conflict and pain since the beginning of time. Like so many other lessons we become blind to with age, if we could reacquire the unfettered and border-less nature of children's thought, perhaps the borders of our adult world would become more open, and far less damaging.