We
say that every snowflake is unique.
We also say that every person is unique. We need to start walking our talk.
Every
person is unique and comes with a personal set of developmental needs, and requests
to meet those needs.
Brain
researchers spent decades looking to find where certain information resides in
the brain. Their conclusion is
that the more they learn about the brain, the less they know. Twenty years ago language skills were
believed to be a function that took place in the brain’s left hemisphere. Functional MRI’s show that language “lights”
up areas all over the brain, and that it is different for every person. Similar in cases, but different overall. Brain development and learning are
unique to each person. Dreams and
desires are also individualistic.
How
do we design an educational system that honors the singularity of every
individual?
We have to start with
respect. Respect of each child’s
efforts to grow into a person like no other person.
We
need to always remember that parents are our children’s first and best
teachers, and that schools exist to be in partnership with families.
Our children are not
stupid or lazy. Human beings are natural born learners and experimenters. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, in
her book, A Stroke of Insight, talks
about the following twelve therapeutic techniques that she needed in order to
learn again after she suffered a stroke that affected her cognitive abilities. For wounded substitute “young and
inexperienced” and you’ll see our children need these same techniques. Perhaps we all might benefit from this
type of understanding and teaching.
1.
I am not
stupid. I am wounded. Please respect me.
2.
Repeat
yourself. Assume I know nothing
and start from the beginning, over and over.
3.
Be patient with
me the 20th time you teach me something as you were the first.
4.
Approach me
with an open heart and slow your energy down. Take your time.
5.
Do not access
my cognitive ability by how fast I can think.
6.
Cheer me
on. Expect me to recover
completely, even if it takes twenty years.
7.
Break all
actions down into smaller steps of action.
8.
Look for what
obstacles prevent me from succeeding on a task.
9.
Clarify for me
what the next level or step is so I know what I am working toward.
10. Remember that I have to be proficient at one level
of function before I can move onto the next level.
11. Focus on what I can do, rather than bemoan what I
cannot do.
12. Celebrate all of my little successes. They inspire me.
The
brain is the world’s most powerful biological machine. We are born with a wonderful gift. The problem is it doesn’t come with an
operation manual.
Our educational challenge becomes how to unlock human potential, develop this potential, and set this potential free to be of help to each person, which will in effect, help us all in making this world a better place.
Learning Requires Deep Time
Research
shows that to master a subject requires 10,000 hours of concentrated
practice. At 40 hours per week, 50
weeks a year, we’d need 5 years to become a master. Ratchet that time down to 20 hours per week and we are
looking at 10 years. Ten hours a
week of practice, we’ll need twenty years to reach master status.
Becoming
good at something requires time and practice, and the time to practice.
Most
of our children’s school days are interrupted by short whole class instruction
times, short practice times and no time to explore and research connections and
possibilities. A visit to a first
grade classroom a few years ago showed me a “pod” of four classrooms changing
teachers every 25 minutes. There
was no time in the day for children to be reflective and have deep learning
occur. Children shifted learning gears
every 20 minutes instead of having time to learn “how-to-learn.”
Research
indicates that there are desirable tasks that help optimize our ability to
learn new skills. Effective
learning or skill building occurs when we can maximize these factors:
·
We have the
ability to focus our attention on the task at hand.
·
We have control
over the choice of the task.
·
The task if
meaningful to us and we understand how to do it.
·
We have
adequate time to practice the task, which research shows to be 60 to 90 minutes
per day.
·
We control
feedback, which is accurate and timely.
·
We have the
opportunity to repeat the task daily or many times per week.
·
We have
overnight rest between practice sessions.
Learning
requires time. Deep time. Time to develop attention, focus and
concentration. Time to repeat––all day if necessary. Time to explore.
Time to research. Students
need time to freely choose learning activities.
Teachers
need time. Time to understand each
child’s personality, style, needs and dreams. Parents need time to forge bonds of trust with teachers to
meet their common goal of unlocking each child’s potential, developing that
potential, and setting it free to be of service to all.
What
if teachers had 24 students in a classroom, and had each student for three
years with only 8 new students entering and 8 older students leaving the
classroom each year? What if
parents and students only had one teacher to work with for three years?
Can
you imagine the benefits of deep time? After three years in one of these styles of classrooms
student, teacher and parent are halfway to the 10,000 hour mark of mastery in
their respective roles.
As
we take this second step of deep time in our move toward “exponential education”,
I hope you are beginning to see that we can get off the old broken down bus and
design a system that meets our learning needs—child and adult—in a powerful
way.
Students Need Learning Tools
As human beings, the problem solvers, we need learning tools that will help us organize our thinking and actions, tools that help us with self-expression, tools that will help us learn to problem solve while digging out facts, and tools to help us prepare for performance of our goals and objectives.
In our current
educational system, we have focused too long on testing for facts that are
learned, forgotten in a few weeks, and are not foundational for further
learning.
As parents and
teachers we need to help our children learn to learn and have a set of learning
tools that will serve them for all of their lives. These tools are elemental and lead to the true goals of learning—individual
independence and concentration.
Organizing thinking and actions. Knowing how to organize facts into understandable
bits of information is essential for success in any endeavor.
Basic ideas need to
be presented in a clear hands-on manner, as research shows that we
learn faster when we touch objects that give meaning to our learning. We might not be able to hold a
porcupine, but touching a boar bristle brush might convey meaning about that
spiny animal, without having to be pricked by a porcupine.
The concept that all
objects can be defined in two groups—living and nonliving—can be introduced in
a hands-on manner as early as three years old by having a basket of objects or
pictures and letting the child sort the objects into two groups. Offering information in a manner that
provides clear organization, along with deep time for the child to interact and
think about the objects is a vital learning tool.
Wise use of time is
another organizational tool, but time management is a misnomer. What we need to teach is
self-management. What tools do we
need to help our children acquire in order to successfully manage their
lives? Self-regulation, setting of
goals and objectives, as well as understanding the difference of urgent, not
urgent, important and not important tasks, are vital tools for learning how to
think and act.
Self-expression. Our
children need to learn to express themselves effectively through as many media
as possible. Talking, listening,
singing, dancing, drawing, painting, sculpture, building, growing, cooking,
questioning, and problem solving only begin to describe the multitude of
methods for human communication.
The expression of knowledge coupled with the need to be of service to
others is perhaps the best “test” of a person’s learning and abilities. We need to be watching our children’s
growth and prepare places for them to take the next steps in their individual
growth, not just academically, but socially, physically, and spiritually. Education is about the whole child and
the whole person.
Problem solving. Regurgitation of facts doesn’t help us figure out how to get the fox,
the hen and the grain across the river.
When we give our children problem solving “can-do” skills we are
offering them education for a lifetime of positive growth and change.
Performance. Being prepared for real life—right now––is the biggest tool our
children require in their toolbox.
We wouldn’t expect our children to know how to drive a car without
supervised practice. We too often
expect our children to go off to college or a first job without mastery of
essential life skills. Eighteen-year-olds
head off to college without knowing how to manage finances, do laundry, eat
healthy, create a personal schedule, and much more. Our children’s education needs to offer common sense tools
of learning to take care of yourself today, not sometime in the abstract
future, in order to take care of others.
Education is not a holding of a million facts in your mind and spitting them back out quickly and accurately. Education is preparation for life by offering our children tools to organize their thinking and actions, to problem solve, to direct and manage their minds, their bodies, their hearts and their spirits, and to express their unique gifts in order to be of service to others. Next
