Connecting With Students

Students, especially our youngest ones, enter the domain of school with open hearts (and imaginations). Too often, we meet them with fixed minds and ignore the gift of these open hearts and minds that they bring into school and into our classrooms. Ultimately, they learn that occupying the mind with things to remember is more important than either of these. Eventually they lose touch with their true nature, disconnect and fall into the 'game' of 'learning'.

If there is to be true Educational 'Reform' at all, it must begin with a paradigm shift of seismic proportions: one that reorients our compass from student's minds to their hearts-to WHO they are not what they THINK. This necessitates an internal shift within us as well. We need to open ourselves up  as well so we meet our students halfway.  Students will always remember how we made them feel, not necessarily what we made them think.

When students trust a teacher they are more apt to listen and learn from them.  Trust is not built by teaching facts.

“Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive.” ― Parker J. Palmer, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

Leadership and Teaching That Learns

In his speech to a stadium full of people who waited hours in temperatures hovering around 100 degrees, Mr. Obama said that the nation needs “a fundamental change of perspective and attitude,” one that values substance over appearance, character over celebrity and wise investments over “get rich quick schemes.”

Amen, Mr. Obama. In reflecting about yesterday's post, I keep coming back to the notion that we need to learn to capture learning itself, not just the outcome of learning. By the same token, we need to model our own learning. True or not, the old paradigm in Education is Teacher as "Know-er", student as empty vessel.

Having earned a Bachelor's degree means we now have the right to seek a job, perhaps as a teacher if we also achieved teaching certification. But we're not done learning. Are we? Even after we've achieved a Master's or Advanced degree, do we know all that there is to know?
As long as we plant notions in our student's minds that there will be a point at which they will "arrive", we will fail to teach them anything valuable.

So much better are our students (and us) if we can learn with them. Or have them teach us. Doing so, however, requires a good bit of introspection to "let go and let learn". If we model his we will be fulfilling Obama's challenge: We will be modeling substance, honesty and integrity. We will have that elusive of all traits: Character.