My Learning Manifesto

My Learning Manifesto

Learning Manifesto from Rebecca Recco on Vimeo.

Full Text Below Cut:

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning.  But for children, play is serious learning.  Play is really the work of childhood.” — Fred Rogers

How do adults learn?  Not just average adults, genuises, who learn amazing things and have brilliant ideas that change the world.  Let’s look at inventors, artists, physicists, writers, engineers, or any scholar.   How do these people learn and discover things?  How do they innovate?  
They all start with a spark of interest: one little idea that grabs their attention, and they follow it, play with it. They need unstructured time to think, develop hypotheses, experiment, fail, until that beautiful moment of true understanding, and then they must replicate, document, and excitedly share their findings to high-fives, media attention, or maybe publication and grant money. Scientists play.


How do our children learn?  We tether them to desks, where they fill out scantrons and worksheets, then hand in their work which is filed away.  Progress is dictated by curriculum maps and marking periods.  If they understand a concept before the end of the lesson, they get to do busy work until class is over.  If they don’t understand, they move on anyway.  Ultimately, students receive feedback on their work in the form of unhelpful “grades.” There often isn’t a chance to revisit work after a student gets a grade, and often times the grades don’t adequately reflect a student’s understanding of a subject.  Sir Ken Robinson suggests that student grades are “light on description and heavy on comparison,” without much meaning. Even “teachers sometimes give grades without being completely sure why.” Grades though “cannot convey the complexities of the process.”

How are our children supposed to become brilliant, passionate, world-changing thinkers when they’re stuck on a hamster wheel of memorization and testing throughout their formative years?  It’s almost like school is designed to prevent people from learning.

Infants are born learning.  They quickly learn to cry for food or to be changed, or to be picked up.  They learn to roll, crawl, reach, manipulate objects, and soon to talk and walk. There is no concern whether learning is an activity they want to participate in, it’s just a natural response to the world around them.  As kids get older, they become natural scientists, artists, explorers, and athletes, as they learn to draw and build, discover, explore their neighborhoods, develop new skills, and start figuring out the world around them.  Many of the things children do for fun when allowed unstructured time to play are rigorous learning opportunities that would rival some of the best lesson plans ever written. Kids also learn things we don’t want them to, and can figure out some impressively complicated things, if motivated. Kids learn because they are hardwired to.  Why are we not harnessing this power for school?


I think that education has gotten the cart before the horse by focusing so much on standardized testing and purchased curricula that we forget that we are teaching students, who each have individual educational needs.  We teach students who come to us from different socioeconomic backgrounds, with different learning styles and unique strengths and weaknesses.  Yet we give kids the same curriculum, the same pacing guide, the same grading scale and the same assessments, and expect them all to “succeed,” which means they should all meet specific educational goals based on their age and years in school.  This is absurd, and it’s terrible for our students because many will never reach those benchmarks for “success” each year. Those students will be labeled as poor students, even if they made significant progress as learners in school that year.  Likewise, students who work on a higher level than their peers can give minimal effort, make good grades and do well on standardized tests, but never experience anything approaching learning.  We don’t allow students to learn things they want to learn about, and we don’t allow teachers to teach things they want to teach.  No passion allowed in school.  That’s not on the test.  

In my decade-and-a-half as a teacher in grades kindergarten through twelfth, I have seen quite a few educational trends, but I am very excited about the digital learning movement.  Digital learning provides students with platforms for creating, collaborating, and sharing work. This movement, has the potential for enormous change in the way we envision school.  This movement empowers students and teachers to rethink how we learn and re-evaluate how we assess learning.  It is giving us new ways to individualize learning and assessment, and it’s breaking down the walls of classrooms, so learning can take place almost anywhere.  In just the last three years since I started teaching at the Elementary level, I’ve seen a growing movement to apply digital tools towards Project-Based-Learning and student-led learning.

As an art teacher, I am both fortunate and unfortunate to teach a subject that is not encumbered by curriculum or standardized testing. I do have a few state educational standards that cover things students really need to learn each year, but are vague enough to allow me to teach them in my own way.  This also allows me to let students choose how they want to demonstrate their understanding. There is no pressure for my students to perform according to some standardized art test. I am often impressed with the brilliance of my students’ work.  They almost always exhibit understanding and find amazing applications of what they learn to make meaningful, beautiful art.  By adding technology to my art room, my students can now reinvent the art room workflow by moving between digital and traditional materials.  Technology also allows them to share and document their work, and also provides more opportunities for me and their peers to give extensive feedback.  It is easier for me to assess and document student work, and to have better communication with students throughout the creative process.

My goal as an educator and technology coach is to work within my organization to promote learner-centered education, and return learning to the exhilarating experimental experience that it really should be. Students should see learning as a rewarding experience that they want to partake in, not as something they must endure so they can escape and do enjoyable things.  I hope to encourage students to be positive digital citizens, using technology to create, collaborate, and share in ways that give them the most educational payoff.  I want to fight for them to be allowed to be curious and to turn their curiosity into learning adventures that result in exciting projects, beautiful art, poignant writing, or whatever form their ideas need to take.

Just as students need empowerment, teachers need the ability to facilitate learning for their students, not follow scripted curriculum.  I believe teachers must be learners, too, and must have fresh self-directed learning experiences, so they can relate to students as they struggle with the learning process.  This is why it is so important that both teachers and students keep a growth mindset.  As Carol Dweck explains, “People with the mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower.”  I want to provide, as a Vanguard Coach, an opportunity for teachers to experience learner-centered professional development so they can experience learning with freedom of choice.  This year we were able to launch our first Edcamp, which is a learner-centered “unconference” where teachers get to choose what they want to learn about.  

Most of all, I want to be an activist to bring life back to school. It is time to return life back to school by connecting students and teachers to the joy that comes from learning.  Digital resources provide learners the space, freedom, and support to pursue curiosity to its fullest and learn fearlessly.  

 

1.Rogers, Fred. (2003). The World According to Mr. Rogers. New York: Hachette Books.
2.
Robinson, Ken. (2015). Creative Schools:  The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education. New York: Penguin Books.
3.Dweck, Carol. (2003). Mindset:  The New Psychology of Success. New York:  Ballantine Books.

One thought on “My Learning Manifesto

Comments are closed.

Follow Me