Learning Begins.....When?

Noticed on the noticeboard outside a school the following sign: "Learning begins 7th October." What a strange sign. I found myself asking the question: "When does learning stop?"

Now, before all the teachers jump up and down, I do realise what the person who put the sign up was trying to say. They were referring to when school would recommence after the holidays. I know that. What I began wondering about was the implication that learning only occurs in formal schooling, that young people are not learning when they are not in school.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk wrote, "The least of learning occurs in the classroom." He was a teacher having taught both at Columbia and St. Bonaventure Universities and been responsible for the academic education of the novices at Gethsemane. He knew the importance of formal education.

He understood learning is not restricted to the classroom and what is taught in the classroom is perfected in experience outside of that specific learning space. Henri Nouwen, Catholic writer and priest, adds that we only learn what we have been taught when the teacher is no longer present. A quick glimpse at the Christian Gospels and the Book of Acts will affirm his thesis. The disciples began to learn the truths taught to them by Jesus when they had to engage with the world without him. No longer could they defer to him to tell them what to do, they had to connect with the wisdom they had heard and seen and translate that into their own knowledge base. Major scientific discoveries often find their way into reality by exactly the same journey. Ideas taught are tested, refined and completely rediscovered long after the scientist has left the classroom.

Over my many years of working with people, young and old, I have noticed most learn by experience intertwined with the formal and informal learning they have been exposed to over their lives. They need both, and learning through a collaboration of both can be seamless and unobtrusive, often going unrecognised by those involved. It just happens. They learn how to cope with grief and loss through experiencing death and tragedy personally. I am constantly amazed how young people are able to confront, process and make meaning from extreme experiences, discovering insights and learnings that can never be taught or confirmed any other way. Only then do they reach into and connect with the learning they may have received in formal classes.

Taking young boys sailing and asking them to sail the yacht to a specific destination gives a purpose to those often strange and unfamiliar formulas they learnt about in maths and could imagine no reason for remembering. In context they learn what they have been taught but can not repeat in classrooms or exams. Building community gardens, designing murals, working in retail and hospitality and more, build on and contextualise the learning which only begins in the classroom.

Watching an artist on a reality TV show, I discovered a method for creating portraits I had not seen before.  Right at the beginning she simply scribbled over the canvas in black pastel. There was no sketching the subject, no setting a background, no formalising the shape as is taught in formal art classes. She simply scribbled on the canvas. When asked by one of the judges why she did that she replied she used the shapes that appeared in her scribble to get the shape of the portrait she was about to paint. The portrait would appear on the canvas in the lines she had just drawn.

Now, my own portrait skills have been limited up until now. Her method is one that I use as a general guide in all my other paintings but I had not thought of using it for portraits. So I did, and it works for me. This not something I learnt formally, but by observation and experience.

What does this have to say about how we do education? May I suggest the following:

• Good education is collaborative. What I mean here is, it is a collaborative effort between formal classroom instruction and experience. It is needs the opportunity to engage with life in a way that allows classroom learning to be discovered, interpreted and contextualised without the tendency to over scaffold that process. It has to be natural and intuitive, not forced and manufactured. Education is defined by its fit with the individual, the context in which that individual finds themselves and the journey they are engaged in. It is collaboration in the full sense of the word. It is risky, challenging and scary as it shifts all involved from their familiar roles to that of a learner. this is especially so for the formal teacher.

• Good education requires quality down time. If, as it has been suggested by Daniel Arielly, that the majority of us are at our best in the two - four hours after we wake up, that is when formal education occurs. (bakadesuyo.com) Why not use  the afternoons for learners downtime reflection, journalling, exploration and to have experiences which may engage the formal learning they had been doing before break. This is probably a step to far for most education administrators and principals but is vital if we are to provide quality learning. A quick look at monastic pedagogy proves valuable here. The rhythm of monastic life is built around early morning education (reading and classes), reflection (prayer), downtime (rest and contemplation) and physical work. It is in tune with the normal rhythms of nature and the human body, and it provides an opportunity for experiential learning that has proven effective for many hundreds of years.

• Good education is not imposed but discovered. Modern education has been taken over by the need to produce outcomes, achieve test scores, embed work ready skills and to turn young people into widget producing, widget consuming contributors to the infernal drive for profits. We impose upon them the outcomes we wish for them to achieve instead of democratising education and allowing them to discover, explore and unpack the mystery that is life. While some of this is an natural outcome of education we need to find ways to do this without prescribing the path and the destination. Young people are naturally inquisitive, creative and intuitive. Good education reinforces those qualities.

• Good education requires respect. Respect for the process of learning, the mystery of life and the individuals and institutions engaged in the process. Young people and adults come to have respect for these elements in different ways and at different times. They are not identical. They do not arrive at the same place at the same time. Education systems group young people by age and this may not be the best way to educate them. If respect is necessary and people get there at different times, despite being the same age, why do we not teach accordingly, allowing young people to travel through their formal education at a speed suitable for them? Why not allow them to package together the various elements of learning, classroom and experiential, in a way that works? Why do we impose a structure that works for some but not others, that allows young people to fall behind, become demotivated or simply give up? Once again I point to monastic pedagogy which allows for the needs of the individual to be met in different ways at different times. How each use their times of reading and reflection is up to them. Even the work structure has a sense of ownership built into the process. The experience of Thomas Merton and his journey through his monastic life exemplifies the flexibility and accommodation taken to ensure he made the most of who he was, even if the institution did so begrudgingly at times. 

It may be true that experiential learning only stops when we stop breathing and we have long since left the classroom. I fear many of the students in our classrooms have perfected the art of breathing for survival reasons only. Learning has long since passed them by.

Tell me what you think - glennloughrey@gmail.com

Educating Teenage Boys

Recently I put my class of 13 and 14  year olds through a growth mindset quiz with interesting results using the research of Carol Dweck. What I found asks hard questions of how we do education, particularly with teenage boys.

It was anticipated that the good students in the class, primarily the girls, would score higher than the troublesome students, mostly boys. That makes sense. The good students, concentrate, work hard and get better results. Therefore it is logical that they have more of a growth mindset than the 'naughty' boys.

Wrong.

The 'naughty' boys outscored the the good students at every level. They were the ones with a high growth mindset, even though their academic scores failed to show it. Why?

My thesis is that teenage boys are risk takers, possibility thinkers and curious. They want to know what is possible and what they can do. They take risks in the social and emotional aspects of their lives. They push the boundaries, try new and sometimes dangerous 'things' and, generally, are resilient. They bounce back. They are impulsive and find themselves trying stuff they didn't think possible. They are growth mindset thinkers.

The good students have a more fixed mindset because they are committed to getting right, making sure they give the right answer, do the right thing and behave appropriately. They engage their logical thinking system 2 (Taleb) before acting.

But it is interesting to see what happens as boys progress into years 10-12. In my class these are the students who yell out, argue, comment, offer answers and get involved. Sometimes they are chaotic and create chaos but they are there, taking risks and being heard. When they get further along they have learnt that this is not appropriate for 'good' students and close down. They know they are not good academic students and therefore simply withdraw. The very tools that helped them to learn, their risk taking chaotic spontaneity, is shut down. Their growth mindset becomes a fixe mindset - 'I can't do this.' And I would add, 'I can't do this like this'.

So what do we do?

We stream classes so that we allow the boys to have the freedom to engage their teenage risk taking in a learning environment. Now, I know that goes against the prevailing attitude, but after some 30 years working with teenage boys, I believe it is an appropriate strategy. It allows the 'good' students to develop their own specific approach to learning with out them being impinged upon by the chaos of a shared class room.

I will continue to explore this and would like to know what others think.

Peter the Reluctant Learner Comes Alive!

Acts 2:1-21

Today is Pentecost Sunday, often referred to as the church's birthday, the day when God poured out the Spirit on the early church gathered in Jerusalem. It was an amazing spectacle and it is this spectacle we often get caught up in. And it would have been so easy to have been swayed by tongues of fire, roaring winds and otherwise mono-linguistic people speaking in foreign languages. This story of God breaking in on, not just the disciples though they were there, but devout Jews and people from every part of the known world is a story too good to ignore, yet we often drain it of it's power and relevance for us today.

This story is an example of experiential learning, the type of learning we search for in our teaching, parenting and living. We are called to become involved in this event which is being experienced by us and by people all throughout the world at this very moment. Jesus promised to send the Spirit to teach, to breakdown, to unify and to celebrate the creative and redeeming wonder of God, and Pentecost is that day.

The wonder of teaching is surprise, and as teachers, if we lose the capacity to be surprised by our material, our students and our selves, our teaching becomes static, lifeless and dead.  Each day we are surprised by students, students who respond with amazing insights, attention and participation  we were not expecting, not at least from 'that' particular student.  Marking Religious Education assignments I have been surprised by the students who have surprised me with the quality of their work and their insights into the world around them.  These haven't been the brightest and the best, just ordinary students who have given of themselves in a way that says, 'I am listening and I am capable of catching you off guard.'  When we are not looking something amazing happens. That is Pentecost in action, that is the Spirit of God continuing to create wonder and blessing in places we consider dead, not alive, barren and unproductive.

Peter gets up to speak, Peter the petulant, the impulsive, the one who speaks before thinking, the one who cut off the soldiers ear with his sword, the one who denied Jesus three times, gets up to speak in the midst of this amazing moment. Peter speaks without hesitation, plainly and powerfully, no impulsive sayings, no over the top rhetoric - just good plain speaking knowledge - he speaks what he learnt when Jesus was with them. Peter becomes the archetypal student, the student we hope we teach. He gives us hope that those in our classes who mimic the 'old' Peter - Peter the student -  will become Peter, the learner who now acts on what he was taught:

• He is aware - of what is happening, of who is there, and of the importance of the occasion;
  
• He applies reason - 'These men are not drunk' - and asks those listening to take this situation seriously,
• He is contextual - he remember's the prophets words and quotes them as the reference for this moment in history.

Peters speech in it's entirety reflects the power of experiential learning.  While Peter had spent 3 years with Jesus, he had also spent a lifetime with the Torah and the Jewish traditions as well as in the world as a business, fishermen, son, husband and parent. Peter gathers together all the learning which had come his way and uses it here to teach those who were gathered from all over the known world and who had, many of them, a similar understanding of the Jewish scriptures as he.

Peter would have recognised in the diversity of languages and peoples the image of the Tower of Babel where God brought into being individual languages so that people could not communicate as before.  Now they, despite their diversity through the primacy of language, are brought together to experience the unity that comes from Spirit.  Note that no language is discarded, no difference is erased, they still have their languages and their ethnic and cultural differences, but they are united through the power of the Spirit. They are one, but different. Diversity becomes a strength not a weakness, and they are challenged to engage and learn from each other in the glow of Pentecost.

Luke has Peter dismantling the arguments of those watching, the devout Jews, who accuse the crowd of being drunk.  When the Spirit surprises, our natural reaction is to find an excuse, a way of rationalising what we have seen so that we can avoid embracing what is there.  The challenge to the conformity of the devout Jews to an ethnic Jewish religion, to the idea that they and they alone are Gods' people, and that that God only speaks to and through them, was powerfully experienced by them at this moment.  All of a sudden centuries of accepted teaching, learning and expectations have been challenged to the brink of collapse, how do we respond? Let's find reasons and excuses to trivialise and dismiss it out of hand.  That way we can go on doing what we have always done and not have to learn something new.

Students and children (even ours) do that to us each day.  We have preconceived ideas what teaching and learning looks like, what particular students or children are like and what we can expect from them and, even when they surprise us, we often simply dismiss that as a one off and fail to embrace the learning in that moment for ourselves.

Students and children (and people in general) learn and process their learning in ways that are particular to them.  They often only learn when those who teach them are no longer in the room. Peter is forced to recall his teaching, to process what he has learnt and to get up and present it without notes, powerpoint slides or a rehearsal.  He speaks off the cuff and has to rely on what is with in him, much of which he was still processing, yet here he is giving the speech which set the church up for the future and him as the leader of that church.

In my RE classes I have a number of Peter's and at least one by that name. I have been driven to distraction by these young boys and girls wondering when their disruptive, some times disrespectful, sometimes oppositional behaviour will stop and they will begin to learn. I said to a fellow teacher on Thursday after a particular difficult year class, 'Tell me again, why do we do this?"

One student hadn't submitted his assignment, and when challenged said he would do it sometime, I said 'sometime isn't good enough, tonight is'. I marked some of the others work and was surprised at both the quality and the insights into contemporary issues and the thinking of the Apostle Paul.  I met 2 boys on the stairs and told them they had done good and asked permission to publish their work for others to see. One said yes straight away, the other said no, until I told him it was for other schools and not students at our school, then he was very happy.  I learnt something about that young man right there, how he sees himself and how he wants to be seen. He was proud of his work but he didn't want to stand out amongst his peers.  Later on that night, at 6.30, an excellent assignment came through from the boy who said he would do it sometime!

As teachers we, just as Jesus did and God before him, become frustrated at the lack of obvious and visible response from the students in front of us.  The Peter, James and John's in our classrooms disrupt, interrupt and are abrupt, but they are learning and will activate and implement that learning as and when they and the moment is right. Our disappointment is just that, our disappointment, not theirs. Jesus knew Peter had it in him, that's why he told him he would be the Rock on which he would build the church. Even Peter didn't believe him!

Here at Pentecost, Peter comes of age and his learning matures and bubble forth like a new wine, empowered by the surprising breaking in of God's moment and Spirit. Pentecost is the promise of the hidden, the unseen, the previously unknown to break forth in diversity and surprise.

Our task? To stay awake and not resort to our preconceptions, ancient practices and accepted wisdom. The Spirit will surprise us, but we have to be awake to be surprised!

Merton and Teachers.

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.” 
― Thomas Merton

Merton said little about education and teaching, and this is not one of the things he said.  He was speaking to those involved in the peace movement in the '60's and he was warning against disappointment because our goals and targets for change never seem to be reached. Yet I suggest it could apply to teachers.

Teachers strive to be transformational and often the transformation they seek is delayed, to put it mildly.  How do you remain motivated, involved and focussed when the class in front of you is slipping into inertia, on the road to amnesia and a journey around some distant planet no scientist has yet discovered?

Merton suggests letting go of the destination and remembering why you are a teacher, why it is right to be teacher and why teachers are necessary.To let go of the idea of making a difference and to develop a relationship with the individuals, not the class and not the curriculum outcome.

He affirms what all good teachers know but need to be reminded of every now and then, that 'it is the reality of the personal relationship that saves everything', and in the case of teachers, everyone including the teacher herself.

It is interesting to note that he says we are to have that relationship with specific persons, not everyone. How does that work?  I suggest that in every class there are leaders, significant influencers whose 'buy-in' is required to move the whole class. Students who wield influence, are early adopters, who lead by achievement, it is these students we are to identify and to develop the particular relationship aimed at helping them achieve their goals, whether that be learning, prestige, success and/or the need for a relationship with teacher, students or parents.

Is this easy? No but perhaps it is the difference between burning out and remaining what you already are, a great teacher.