In education, there are certain words we all know, and somewhere, in the back of the room, a teacher is rolling their eyes about them. We’ve heard them so many times now that there are memes all over the internet about them. This one from Teacher Misery is my favorite by far:
Despite a common language around student-centered practices, we are still heavily focused on the teacher and teaching. Let’s not let this important way of teaching become just another buzz word in education. Friends don’t let friends become memes.
Learning vs. Teaching
Let’s start with a quick experiment. Can you name ten teaching strategies off the top of your head? Now, how about ten learning strategies? Or even five? Notice the difference?
Every school I visit, it’s the same story. The talk is always about teaching – what’s working, what’s not, what we teachers need to do differently. And when those test scores don’t budge or grades start slipping? You bet we’re quick to look at the teachers. It’s like we’ve got blinders on, focusing only on how we teach instead of how kids actually learn. We can’t expect different results, if we keep doing the same things. Or having the same conversations.
Buzzword Alert!
In a previous post, I describe a shift that occurred in my thinking about what it actually means to run a student-centered classroom. Teachers want to do better, often trying new things and taking risks within their comfort zones. When we talk about becoming more student-centered, we begin with the data, in an effort to be more objective and set goals. Where things get fuzzy is in the goals setting. By setting goals around instruction, we are still fundamentally teacher-centered – just with a new label.
Consider this: When we analyze student data, set goals based on that data, and select teaching strategies to target growth, where is the student in all of this? We’re still primarily focused on what the teacher does, not on how students learn.
Don’t get me wrong – data has its place. But when we reduce students to numbers and colors on a chart, we lose sight of the individual learners behind those figures. We must remember an undeniable truth: teaching does not cause learning to happen. Learners cause learning to happen. It’s a choice the learner makes.
“Just because you taught it…”
James Anderson’s book “Learnership” offers a paradigm shift in how we approach education. Anderson says, “We don’t have a teaching problem in our schools, we have a learning problem.” This subtle but crucial distinction changes everything.
We invest considerable time and resources ensuring teachers know how to teach and providing them with the best tools and curriculum. But what skills are our learners developing? We are living in a time where AI can perform basic computations and language tasks, so we must equip our students with skills that make them uniquely human.
A Touch of Madness
Remember when your parents freaked out if you said you wanted to be an artist or a musician? “There’s no money in that!” they’d say. Well, guess what? The game has totally changed. With AI taking on the repetitive and monotonous tasks, our individuality is our greatest asset. Coming up with wild new ideas and connecting unrelated things will be the the most valuable skill sets. Having “A touch of the Madness,” Legendary movie producer Lawrence Kasanoff says.
Anderson also asks us to consider what learning actually is. Essentially, it’s about creation. It’s about forging new neural pathways, generating novel ideas, and making unexpected connections. He also redefines what it means to have a growth mindset in these ways. In this new era of education, we must nurture these distinctly human capabilities.
Find a way or make a way
True learning is about finding a way when there isn’t an obvious path. It’s about problem-solving and critical thinking. When faced with a challenge, learners must either find a way or create a new path.
In a more practical sense, learning in action involves making choices. Remember Robert Frost’s famous lines, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by”? Learning requires making choices. It’s an active process where the learner decides to engage, to change, to grow.
Focus on Learning Strategies
As educators, parents, and lifelong learners ourselves, we must shift our focus from teaching strategies to learning strategies. Here are some actionable steps we can take:
- Encourage metacognition: Teach students how to think and talk about their own learning processes.
- Foster creativity: Be open to creative ideas from others and try to connect them to content.
- Develop agency: This isn’t simply voice and choice, to coin another overused and abused buzz phrase, its about supporting students through challenges and allowing them to make their own choices to overcome them.
- Practice failure: Reframe mistakes as learning opportunities rather than setbacks.
- Debrief Experiences: Pay attention to the learning as it is happening and facilitate discourse that names the learning strategies students were using.
The future of education isn’t about perfecting our teaching; it’s about empowering our learners. We have to shift the investment of time and effort into how students are learning, rather than what they are learning.
The amazing thing is that we are creating the future every day. Let’s start creating a future where students understand that getting better is more valuable than doing your best. Getting better is about process over product, growth over outcomes, taking risks, etc. You know, living your best buzzwords.