We’re in the Learning Business, Yet...

If you’re reading this right now, chances are you are in the choir, and I’m the preacher. As this blog gets posted and shared across social media, it will be read by those who value and are seeking learning opportunities to stay inspired and better their craft. Unfortunately, that is the only audience it will likely reach, and that in itself is a catastrophe of epidemic proportions. Some of you may immediately jump to a conclusion of ‘who is this arrogant guy who thinks his writing should be shared so widely?’ The point is not about my writing needing to be shared. The problem I’m speaking about is that learning, all too often, only takes place in small circles relative to the masses in education.

Learning Opportunities
With such diverse and plentiful learning opportunities at our fingertips, why do so few educators take advantage of ongoing and consistent efforts to improve our daily practices? There are many incredible educators on Twitter actively engaged with their PLN, but compared to the nearly 4 million in the US alone, that barely scratches the surface. Education conferences, workshops, in-services, articles, blogs, chats, podcasts, and books are some ways in which we can grow professionally. Yet there are so many educators, teachers and administrators alike, who progress year after in their career with minimal to no professional growth because the only learning that takes place is the learning done to them during Superintendent Conference days not for them in a self-directed, self-motivated way. This is a detrimental system we have, which I’m sure is more prevalent in some districts than others. Can we truly rely on all learning coming from school districts who are becoming more starved for resources? Even more vital, this setup relies on the expertise, motivation, and educational values of the few in charge - our organizational (central office) leaders.

The cost of this problem in education is sadly paid by our students who sit in classroom learning the same way that you and I did 25+ years ago. Granted, most classrooms across the country are now equipped with more state of the art technology, but the value gained from that alone is not enough to truly prepare our students for an ever changing, problem-based world. There is a deeply rooted paradigm strangling our students with a knotted mess of siloed learning, knowledge acquisition, and regurgitation of facts and memorization in a process we call testing. Education in the year 2018 should be so much more than that, and the great news is that so many of us get it. We truly understand what, how, and why we need classrooms with progressive and flexible approaches. The bad news is that I think we are outnumbered. Not by those who don’t agree, but by those who are not taking the steps necessary to make those big leaps of change for students.

Balance Your Learning
I am a firm believer that our professional learning should be like a food guide pyramid. Our bodies need a variety of foods from various food groups in order to stay healthy and perform at its optimal level. In the education world, we cannot reach our fullest potential from reading countless books or just going to conferences. Each learning venue has its own ‘nutritional’ value. Attending conferences not only gives me strategies to take back to my school; they fill me with inspiration and motivation to continue doing the right work even through difficult times. Workshops and in-service learning give practicality that can be implemented the next day in the classroom. Twitter chats give us little tastes of strategy, inspiration, and strength that pushes us, but again, that alone is not enough. We must balance our learning with a steady and consistent diet containing variation. Remember that when we are in our best health professionally, it’s our students who reap the fruits of our labor. I’m not concerned with the educator who is constantly eating from one or two food groups, but rather the ones who are not eating at all. Starved educators have no means to feed our students, who ultimately pay the price of our lack of motivation to be better.

Learning Leads to Innovation
There is a very successful fortune 500 company just a few miles up the highway from where I live. Actually, if you are reading this from your mobile device, chances are they made the glass in your phone. This company invests and allots more money in research and development in their annual budget than most other fortune 500 companies. They obviously value the learning behind what makes their products better and more marketable to the world. For if they didn’t innovate, they wouldn’t survive. Sadly, that is not the same truth in the public education system. If we don’t innovate, we don’t go out of business. We just push our products (students) down the assembly line in hopes that at different points along their journey they are lucky enough to have an innovative and impactful teacher who will focus on life-long skills, performance, and relationships. Don’t take me wrong, I don’t believe in a business model for education, but I do think we could learn a thing or two from the private sector about the urgency for innovation.

There is no room for complacency in education or at least there shouldn’t be. An influential professor I had during my administrative coursework once told a story of her journey through three schools with varying levels of student performance. Out of the three she shared, she most enjoyed working in the lowest performing school because the staff there was hungry to learn, improve, and make change for students. The other two, average and high performing, had no sense of urgency because what they were doing was good enough. As we all know, said so well by Jim Collins, good is the enemy of great.

Walk the Talk
We are in the learning business, and we expect our students to come to school every day ready to perform at their best. We expect them to not only pay attention, but participate meaningfully with questions, answers, and everything in between. Yet so many educators across the country are not doing the very thing they ask of their students. Why don’t we walk the talk? I don’t know where you are in your journey of education, but as I implied earlier, if you’re reading this, you probably don’t really need to. You are not the audience that needs the nutrition, but since I have your attention I challenge you in several ways.

1. Take some time to reflect on how balanced your learning is because even though we are thirsty educators, we can very easily get caught in a rut of complacency at times.
2. Lead up and share a worthwhile piece of learning with your team, school/district staff, or a group of people who you know would benefit from being pushed.
3. Let's continue the conversation about how we can move education forward by reaching the masses of educators who are willing to dine with us, but choose not to pick up the menu.
4. Reach out and share your thoughts within your PLN about how we can shift the scope of professional learning in education.

We need to lead this student-centered discussion with inspiration so learning is desired not a chore.