The Many Titles of Educators

It’s been a great week at SXSW 2023! I had a great session presenting, met Hank Green, had knowing what an “ekphrasis” is come in handy in conversation, saw a magic show and discovered parallels between magic and education, reconnected with someone who taught me over half a decade ago, solve puzzles with deaf participants in Japan over Zoom, and just generally speaking had an amazing time connecting and learning from and with other passionate educators.

Now this is going to sound a bit like my last post, but what’s really been sticking with me is how I’ve gotten to learn from so many educators that don’t just come from a teaching background. I’ve learned from coaches, magicians, game makers, neuroscientists, YouTubers, parents turned school founder, social entrepreneurs, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I have also loved learning from and with teachers while at this conference — a science teacher from Atlanta, an ESL teacher from Chicago, a social studies teacher from Arizona, etc. — but that was to be expected.

I would love to see a learning community where these two groups weren’t so siloed (the “teachers” vs everyone else). Both have different values to bring to the table, but I hypothesize the value would increase if they worked in tandem.

What if you had a learning community where everyone was always partnered when facilitating sessions? Just as a quick example:

• A math teacher and a magician
• A science teacher and a coach
• A language teacher and a restaurant owner
• A social studies teacher and a philanthropist
• An english teacher and an architect
• A music teacher and a neuroscientist

The possibilities are limitless.

Associative thinking is such a key part of how our brain learns. I can only imagine what would happen if we thought about our lead learning facilitators with an associative mindset; pairing different expertise to create unique experiences with easy applications to real world challenges. What I imagine though seems pretty great.

The Value Add of Coaches as Educators

I love going to conferences. It’s easy to feel bogged down in work or stuck on what to write / how to write, but then I go to a conference and it’s simply rejuvenating. 

As I head into day 2, what’s really sticking with me from yesterday is the morning keynote. It might have not been as interactive or imaginative as say the workshop on designing the future of education while role playing as a civilization on Mars in 2096, but the message really resonated with me because the speaker wasn’t originally in the education space at all, she started as a soccer coach. 

Luma Mufleh is the founder of Fugees Family, a non profit advancing educational justice for refugee and immigrant youth. Her journey in this space started when she joined a group of refugee kids playing soccer in the community. After a few weeks playing with the kids she helped them start an official team. Then that team continued to grow and as she learned about their stories and challenges in an education system that was failing them, she decided to open up a school. 

This is just a summarized snippet of Luma’s story, but my take away was how she talked about her journey from coach to educator. She talked about how people didn’t always trust or respect her because she didn’t have a teaching background. Yet as a coach she had an incredible understanding of the importance of teamwork, belonging, overcoming challenges, and pushing past limits.

I’ve been coaching gymnastics since I was 10 years old and still am now almost 15 years later. Yet when I talk about my experience in the education space, my work as a gymnastics coach usually only comes up as an after thought or a fun fact. Hearing Luma talk about her work as a coach was a reminder to me that my experience as a coach is so much more than just a fun fact. 

I practice curriculum building when I create my warm ups and assignment charts and personalize them to meet the different needs of each athlete. I am a mentor and guidance councilor when I notice a kid is having an off day and take them aside to discover they’ve been getting bullied at school and don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I assess and give feedback daily when seeing gymnasts perform routines at practice and prepare them for their competitions. I practice learner-centered pedagogy when I organize moments for gymnasts to practice goal setting and opportunities for providing input on things like their summer training schedule and brainstorming floor music. I even help kids with their basic reading and math skills when we have kids who haven’t learned to read that are trying to sound out the words on the assignment board for the day or kids who haven’t learned about decimals trying to add up their all around score at a competition. 

Coaches might not be traditional teachers, but they are educators. And coaches have more autonomy than the average teacher, so they have been able to prototype and pilot ideas for creating competency based, personalized, open walled learning for decades; this could be a game changing added value perspective to any team working to transform education. 

I’m excited for a world where we think more in the mindset of ecosystems of learning and coaches can be brought into the educator space as equally valued partners in the process of developing youth. 

Leading with Vulnerability

First work trip as a full time staff member of Education Reimagined has taken me to Minneapolis for the first annual Bridgemakers National Conference. This conference has been specifically created to organize youth leaders 18-25 in order to amplify the voices and mentor the leadership of under-served youth to bridge America’s toughest gaps. In short, “Nothing about us, without us.”

Today was the first full day of programing and what I’ve found myself really taking away was the emphasis on leading with vulnerability. Part of why the idea of leading with vulnerability struck me is because this is now the second time this concept has come up so explicitly in an education context for me, and the other time was only earlier this year. While attending a session at SXSW Edu back in March 2022, I hear Dr. Brooke Stafford-Brizar propose the notion, “When we’re most vulnerable is when learning takes place.”

If I’ve learned anything from my years of schooling it’s that when a concept comes up twice, you better highlight it and put a gold star next to the title because it’s sure to be important and come up again.

I found it particularly cool that we didn’t just talk about the importance of leading with vulnerability, but we actually got a chance to start practicing this action as we began crafting our “public narrative.”

Your public narrative lets everyone know where you come from and how your personal values shape the issue you are talking about. Specifically, the youth facilitator broke down a public narrative into 3 steps:

1. Story of Self
2. Story of Us
3. Story of Now

You start by sharing who you are and how your past challenges and opportunities shaped what you value. Then you connect those values to the values of the community as you consider what brought the group together. Finally you connect the community’s challenges and opportunities to the world as you consider the global context that your community is responding to.

As we worked in partners and small groups throughout the day, it was humbling to see everyone sharing so authentically and unapologetically with a room essentially full of strangers. To give an idea of the scope of what was shared: there were stories of youth serving as family breadwinners, surviving childhood abuse, being homeless, and almost going to jail. These same youth are now winning law suits against the state for youth unemployment rights, running non-profits to fight social injustice, influencing millions on social media, and organizing national movements.

No one likes to be defined by their past, but it also shouldn’t be hidden. Our past experiences are unique and valid and influential in shaping who we are today, and that is worth sharing because your context can totally re-frame a situation.

There is often a perception that leaders have to be closed off and can’t afford to be vulnerable, but in reality, vulnerability fosters connection which can be key to mobilizing change.

Student Presence

Day 3 SXSW! I went back to the hotel a bit early today because officially got to that point where I was starting to have a cognitive load overdrive and needed a break. So much great content happening in such a short amount of time it really is fantastic!

Something that I found striking today, which I often find myself thinking about at every conference I attend, is the extreme lack of young learners present. Edu conferences tend to have extreme discounts for students to attend these events, but hardly any organizations / schools seem to take advantage of these policies by trying to get these stakeholders To attend. I know these conferences may be designed for teachers, admin, etc. but everyone here will spend all day talking about how, ”we must include student voice,” yet where is the action where it matters? Where are the students?!?!

There are a few other young learners present other than me and my sister, however, even these learners seem to just be around for their one session they’re presenting at and then disappear. To be fair, perhaps they could have just been at sessions I wasn’t at, or my sister, but I haven’t seen anyone yet in any session or the hall which makes this feel unlikely.

Furthermore, within the 2 sessions where I have seen students involved, the students were primarily asked to talk about their past experiences. Then, as is consistent with other conferences I’ve been to, the last question is something to the extent of, ”If you had a magic wand” or ”If you could trade places with x” then ”what would you change about school?”

Even in the keynote presentation for today, students were involved, which is a great first step that I don’t want to undermine, and some great things were said during the conversation from learners of all ages. I quoted many in my Tweets today. However, that said, these students were primarily brought in to talk about their experience learning during COVID… The reason this bothered me is because COVID shut school down 2 years ago; if we are only just now asking students about their experience on something that was such a huge radical issue, then we are too late.

Additionally, beyond wishing that more young learners were involved in education conferences, I wish the students that were involved were asked more questions about their current observations and more about their thoughts on the future. Students have way more thoughts and ideas than just those relevant to their past experiences in education. I know educators know this because it gets talked about in every single session in almost every single conversation.

Now the question is who will start taking the next steps to not just include students in conversations within the safety of their own learning environments but on a larger scale, bringing young learners beyond their own learning environments into the conversations of the nation’s education system?

Research & Play

Day 2 of SXSW! Themes of the day for my thinking and learning were around the need for more research and play in education at all levels.

These aren’t particularly surprising or new concepts. I mean any time you go to a conference you expect to some extent to hear about current research being conducted and analyzed in the field. And the belief that learning and schooling should be fun is something I’ve always been a big promoter of. [Quick clarification – to me ”fun” is most closely synonymous with the ideas of being enjoyable and meaningful, being fun does not mean ”not challenging” or ”easy” or ”without failure.” I’ve written about this before but sadly cannot find the old blog post to link, but if anyone does find it let me know… #strugglewithwrittinglots]

Due to the fact that these are not new concepts, I’m not going to dwell long on them. But I did think it was worth emphasizing the importance of research and play in education.

My morning today started, after the keynote speaker, with hearing about new edTech tools. The three tools discussed in the session included a tool focused on teacher professional development, one that focused on child literacy, and another that focused on making research more available to teachers. The discussion that followed from this presentation further elaborated on the ever challenging issue that despite the amount of research we already have on best practices in learning and teaching, we still have so little of this research actually being utilized in our schools.

This conversation continued throughout my day as I went into other sessions. I further heard presentations about interesting new research on community-centered design and student engagement survey’s. Then I learned about a group of educators collaborating across the world through the development of student curated comics. Furthermore, I saw Stanford d.School’s vision of the future exhibition. Finally, I finished the day off by hearing stories about communities that came together to reinvent public spaces with the intent of making fun, interactive, community installations such as interactive learning playgrounds.

At all of these sessions, during some point or another we had a discussion yet again about the importance for empowering and training teachers so that they can make intentional design choices and informed iterates to ultimately provide better learning for students. And this better learning for students was also always qualified with the idea of the knowledge and activities actually bringing value, meaning, and/or enjoyment to students, ie ”fun.”

It’s truly not rocket science, but the quote that stuck with me all day came from that very first session, ”If you’re not taking teacher learning seriously, then you’re not taking student learning seriously.”

Teaching Social Media

Day one of SXSW was great! Loved meeting new people and re-connecting with those I haven’t seen in several years, and had so many great conversations already about the future of edu. One conversation that really resonated with me was the session lead by Emily Glankler called ”Going Beyond the Textbook to Create Life-Long Learners.”

The session focused on the idea that if we want to create life-long learners, then we need to teach kids ways to learn beyond textbooks, because when does any adult actually choose a textbook as their first source of information? Close to never. Let’s be real, we Google it. Then we look at Wikipedia then maybe we research a bit more, maybe find a news site, maybe text a friend, watch a YouTube video, look at Twitter updates for a live event, etc. The point is, we have a lot of sources of information available to us now a days, and why not integrate these methods that we as adults actually use, into our classrooms?

This topic particularly stuck with me because just last week I wrote a journal entry for my Ethics of Business class that also focused on the ethics of social media. First I want to share what I wrote last week after class, then I will share how the conference session today further made me think of this topic:

It is pretty much impossible for any social media (SM) company to fact check all posts. There are millions a day and the time it would take to properly categorize, sort, find an appropriate number of resources, etc. would make for a process not efficient enough to function. Not to mention, posts are often biased to a point where it is hard to determine fake news because sometimes it might just be facts presented from a skewed perspective. Thus, we can’t possibly expect SM companies to be entirely responsible for stopping the spreading of false information / fake news. 

However, I do think SM companies and society as a whole benefit from SM companies caring about trying to stop the spreading of false info and fake news despite their inability to entirely solve the problem. In class we brainstormed a few ideas that might at least help the problem, and I do think SM companies have a responsibility to at least consider options such as these and make their best attempt to minimize this issue. 

At a minimum, SM companies could be more transparent about their opinions on fake news and what they are doing if anything to mitigate the issue and perhaps publishing some extent about how their algorithms work so there could be a level of accountability about trying to at least be accountable for news that gets heavier traffic (vs being responsible for everything). One way to help this could be by adding a way for users to request a fact check, like if there was a “question mark” option in addition to a like, so if a post got enough question marks then it would alert the company to help provide a fact check. Perhaps even other users could even help by providing resources to help the fact checking process if they see question marks. 

Some might also argue that current SM shouldn’t have anything to do with news anyway. In that case, what if there was an entirely different platform that was specifically for news and that way fact checking and providing multiple resources could be just a part of the platform vs feeling in the way of the more traditional SM posts like memes and life updates. What if in addition to Twitter, there was a spin off platform called “Twitter News” or something, so you could separate those very different types of content and perhaps better manage the fake news since you wouldn’t have to first sort through what even needs to be fact checked. 

In regard to the other issues with SM, I think SM companies definitely have a social responsibility to concerns around mental health especially with younger users. SM was designed to connect people, and it is great at that; keeping in touch with old friends, networking with potential business partners, exploring different cultural norms, these are all great benefits of social media. However, most of these benefits aren’t really achieved until you’re 18; younger than that, there are far more cons then pros. For most minors, your friends probably go to school with you or you see on a regular basis at an activity and there aren’t likely too many outside of one of those categories and if there are, there is nothing stopping you from texting or calling them. When teens go on SM they often just compare themselves to others which can lead to social anxiety, eating disorders, self-loathing, etc. and/or at a minimum they likely get sucked into hours of screen time which is bad for physical health. There is ample data showing that SM can be harmful, and I truly think these risks make it something that should not be used by minors the same way we don’t want minors drinking alcohol. Truthfully, I imagine for minors there are almost as many if not more cases of serious harm caused by SM than alcohol. 

I know for some people SM can be great for feeling like you are a part of a community, but I think for the mass majority it does the opposite and more often makes you feel discluded vs included. Thus I propose that there are other alternatives for solving for the issue of making minors feel included despite their differences other than SM. 

This also somewhat could depend on your definition of SM; perhaps there are virtual support groups that could be more well known or maybe a “Facebook for kids” kind of thing that somehow is more structured around groups vs just being individual’s posting whatever. I’m sure there are scientists that could come up with something more developmentally appropriate because right now everything is designed based on the business of making clicks vs the business of connecting people.

After today’s session, I was also reminded of another part to our class conversation that I didn’t discuss in my journal. Yes there is a part of me that wonders if SM should be restricted to 18+, but the other option is that educators / schools could just take a greater responsibility over effectively teaching kids about how to use SM in a beneficial way. The conference session today helped further suggest that this truly is necessary. Social media isn’t really going anywhere, and there is no way companies would actually add an age restriction and no way teens will stop using these platforms even if they had to lie about their age. So if we know students are using these platforms, we might as well teach them how to use them properly to actually gain information and increase learning.

Emily offered a great list of some starting places for informational SM accounts that educators could look into and potentially use clicks in their class. She also suggested incorporating project based learning that utilized less traditional media sources, such as making an instagram story or a podcast episode.

Next Steps- From Young Learner to Young Professional

Landed in Austin, Texas this week for the annual South by South West (SXSW) EDU conference. I always make sure to blog everyday after a conference, but I realized, it would be a bit strange for me to post about the conference without first giving some other life updates since I haven’t posted since September 2021 apparently…

First up, Trailblazers Issue 9 was published!!! This student-driven magazine about transformative education has been such a big part of my career life over the past 6 years, so it’s crazy to believe that we are now working on our 10th issue, officially reaching double digits! It’s also crazy to think I am finally at the point in my life where it is time to start handing Trailblazers over to the next generation of young learners… We have officially named our new Executive Director who I have been mentoring through the Issue 10 publication process so she can then officially take over for issue 11 as I move into more of a senior advisor role. I will continue to provide advice and feedback as needed, but I will no longer be a driving force in creating each magazine issue.

Part of the reason for this transition is because I will be graduating college in May with a degree in Business Administration concentrating in Leadership and Organizational Management and a certificate in Social Psychology from Georgia Tech.

After graduation, I’m excited to officially announce that I will be working full time with Education Reimagined starting in June! I’ve been a member of the Education Reimagined community since high school and this community is what initially inspired Trailblazers and a big part of what has kept me involved in the k12 conversation throughout college. Timing worked out nicely where they were looking to expand their team right as I was looking to find a full time opportunity, and it just seemed like a perfect fit for my next steps.

If you know me well or follow my blog somewhat consistently, you might recall I was originally looking to go to graduate school in the fall. Specifically, I was planning to go to Finland for a two year masters program and had been working all last summer on applying for a Fulbright Fellowship to make this happen. Obviously I have pivoted from this plan, so here is the short story there:

Timing wasn’t right. Over the past few months since I last blogged, I have had several family members end up in the hospital (they are okay), COVID was yet again increasing rates, international situations became more questionable, I was not selected as a Fulbright finalist, and some of my ptsd from being abroad during the start of pandemic and feeling particularly isolated continued to increase along with anxiety around never having been to Finland before and committing to two years there. All these factors together made me decide it was best to wait on Finland right now. University of Helsinki will still be there if I later get a chance to visit and then decide it really is something I want to do. Furthermore, even if not Finland, I do still plan to go to graduate school at some point in time. Not because I think I need a higher degree, but because I really do enjoy learning and elements of schooling and, assuming I find the right program, I would like the opportunity to further research, discuss, and design education with others similarly passionate about transforming our current paradigm. I also decided, that going into a full time job first would make my eventual graduate school experience better, because right now, I’m still not fully sure what my role is going to be in these conversations on education and I think some time working may help me narrow my interests and talents to make my graduate school experience more focused and productive.

This transition from young learner into young professional has been a very odd transition since so much of my experience in education thus far has been from the perspective of, ”hey I’m providing student voice in this conversation!” My young learner status was always one of my primary self-selling points, and now it’s shifting into something else that I’m still discovering…

With this in mind, I’m excited to see some of this evolution with participating in SXSW this year as I start to age out of my ”young learner” status. So stay tuned for my insights from the conference!

Learning to Walk Again

It’s been two weeks since school started live and in person again. It’s been a crazy two weeks…

And it wasn’t crazy in the way most people have asked. Adults keep asking me, “Oh is it weird returning to a new normal? Are things crazy different then how you remembered? Is it strange to see people again?”

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding no. One of the crazy things is in fact that things feel so normal / familiar. I’m shocked by how many people are not wearing masks – students and professors. I’m shocked that there aren’t any procedures in place to maintain social distancing. I’m shocked that so many classes went right back to mandatory attendance policies.

The crazy thing about school has not been that everything is different or that we’re experiencing a new normal – the crazy thing is that some people are still trying to revert back to a normal that simply can’t keep existing.

Another reason this week has been crazy is because I’m having to re-learn the concept / pattern / habit (whatever you want to call it) of walking to different classes in a short amount of time.

It seems so silly, but I’ve talked to so many other students since school started who have all said the same thing: the hardest adjustment was learning how to walk again.

The process of school is so much more involved then I had ever thought about before: Remembering how to manage your time to account for different distances. Weighing the pros and cons of walking or waiting for a bus. The discomfort of getting to class out of breath, because even when you have plenty of time, you’re so much more paranoid about being late.

Which brings me to the third reason school has been crazy so far: anxiety.

I have no specific research to back up this claim — I could probably find one if I looked — but from my experience and observational data, I would argue general levels of anxiety have gone up exponentially since the pandemic.

I know in my own experience, I’ve definitely found myself incredibly more anxious in the past year.

I had a minor panic attack after going tubbing from being overwhelmed by not really knowing my surroundings and getting confused with directions to get food but then meet in a different location and how that whole process was working while the other adults went to park the cars. (Important to note though that I hate tubbing, but decided to do anyway with family, but had an even more awful time then expected because on top of not liking tubbing normally, my tube was slowly deflating as we went down the river, so I was getting stuck and beat up by rocks on the bottom far more than you should — all that to say, I was already not in a great mental state).

I also found myself having a hard time getting to sleep the first few nights in my apartment because I was having ptsd to being alone in New Zealand, despite knowing my family lives 20 minutes away from my apartment now.

Even little things like making it to class on time, making sure I’m understanding when all of my assignments are due, and feeling behind on making decisions for the year like what gymnastics meets we should attend have all been stressing me out more than normal. And this stress and anxiety also inhibits creativity and brain processing which has been super evident as I’ve struggled more than any prior year to develop gymnastics routines for this season.

And I’ve noticed this increase in anxiety not just from me, but from students of all ages. As a gymnastics coach I work with kids 3-16 for at least 12 hours a week and I’ve noticed we’ve had a lot more concerns about “having time to do homework,” questions upon questions clarifying event assignments, nerves about coming into practice, asking to leave practice because of “not feeling well” which after discussion is found to be anxiety driven. These amongst other observable traits all lead me to believe there has been a wide spread increase in anxiety. And our gym practices haven’t changed, so I don’t think it’s because of anything we’re doing differently.

At this point I feel like I need a disclaimer that I am currently doing fine and am very good at knowing myself and managing my anxiety. I write these examples not as some cry for help, but to give tangible evidence to support my hypothesis.

So what do we do with this? We observe increased rates of anxiety, which is honestly somewhat expected after living through one of the most uncertain and volatile years of our life, but what are we going to do about it?

As I said at the beginning of this post, from a students perspective, school feels to me like it’s trying to “go back to normal” and this simply won’t cut it.

For example, some of my professors have made it abundantly clear about how, “This is an in person class, so attendance is mandatory and will be tracked and contribute to your grade.” I truly think it’s ridiculous that after the year we just had we are going right back to required attendance. If you want students to show up in person don’t require attendance, make being present the more desirable option.

This past year we have proven that online lectures are very doable and in some ways more desirable; if you are just going to listen to a lecture, it’s a lot less stressful to just roll out of bed a bit later, stay in PJs, and listen in from the comfort of your bedroom rather than everything involved with going to an in person lecture. If I’m going to a class that is just going to involve being lectured at, there is 0 benefit to being in person vs online. I can send questions in the chat.

Now I understand from a teacher perspective that it’s really awkward to present to a ghost audience (when you can’t see anyone or hear little laughs). But rather than require attendance to make sure people show up, why not just design your class in a way that students actually want to show up…?

The classes that I don’t mind putting up with the extra stress of going in person are the ones that I know with have in class group work; games, challenges, projects, whatever it might be, actual human interaction is worth coming to class for, but just listening to someone talk for an hour really isn’t. I’d rather watch a video lecture at 2x speed then use that time for more meetings, completing work, or just doing something fun and creative.

After these first two weeks of crazy, I think I’m starting to get back into a flow with my schedule, but I’m deeply curious about what other realizations will come about this semester as we transition into this new future of education brought about by the pandemic. We are at a pivotal point where we must choose if we are going to move back to the familiar or more forward to the unknown. COVID times have been hard to say the least, but perhaps not all of the changes to education were so bad. While initially schools changed out of necessity, I hope schools now chose to take time to reflect on what changes could be worth keeping around.

Trailblazers 2021 – New Partners & New Application

2020 has been a whirlwind of disruption and new norms, and the same goes for Trailblazers, the student driven magazine about transformative education that I co-founded four and a half years ago.

While disruption can be messy and frustrating at times, it also comes new opportunities for growth and development. With this in mind I am excited to announce that Trailblazers has officially partnered with the Vermont based education non-profit UP for Learning to enhance the sustainability and continued advancement of our organization.

Over the years we have been very successful with Trailblazers, having published 7 issues now and gaining global attention for our work. However, with Abigail and I now close to graduating college, we believe we are getting to a point wherein the next year or so it would no longer make sense for us to be running the magazine. Despite this, we also recognize that Trailblazers has proven to be a valuable resource for amplifying student voices in education and we don’t want to see it die. Thus, we decided to seek out a non-profit interested in partnering with Trailblazers to help ensure the sustainability of the magazine after we move into more of a “senior consultant” role rather than our current managerial roles.

UP for Learning’s mission is to empower youth and adults to reimagine and transform education together. They believe educational equity is a basic human right and every youth and adult partner should be known, valued, and respected as co-creators of change and impact. These concepts resonated deeply with the Trailblazers team and based on my personal interactions with UP for Learning members, recommendations from the education community, and additional research we decided this would be a mutually beneficial partnership that we are excited to explore and develop.

With this new strategic direction, we are now looking nationally for young learners interested in joining our production team as an UP for Learning intern to bring this world renown magazine to life twice a year. 

We are looking for responsible, creative learners who are strong communicators and have an interest in forwarding the Education Transformation Movement. As a team member you would be expected to attend monthly Zoom meetings, communicate progress bi-weekly via text or email,  and fulfill your specific responsibilities required to publish each issue of the magazine.   

The roles we seek to fill are: Managing Editor, Outreach Associate, Communications Associate, Lead Graphic Designer, and Director of Media. Attached is the official job description and application form, please share with any young learners that you think would be a good fit!

Feel free to also contact trailblazersedmagazine@gmail.com with any questions.

Looking forward to this next chapter of our Trailblazers story!

Striving for “Life Long Learners” is Not Enough

I have officially submitted my last assignment of the term which means I have also officially completed my NZ exchange!!! Kind of crazy to think 8 months have gone by already and I only have two weeks left in the country before I head back to the US.

One of my classes this term was a philosophy course called “The Big Questions” – basically it was like a philosophy sampler course. The final topic we covered was “epistemology,” ie the study of knowledge. Talking about knowledge so much, and just thinking about why I even bothered to study philosophy, made me think about the term “life long learner,” and how often times schools will make statements about how they want to create/nurture life long learners.

Taken at face value, a life long learner is someone who continues to learn new things throughout their life span; it’s the notion that learning can and should happen beyond formal education. I think this is a super valid goal for schools to have; I mean why would we ever want for people to stop learning? I wonder though, what if this isn’t a lofty enough goal?

The way I see it there are 3 general outlooks one could have on the idea of learning beyond formal education:

1. Someone could be really stubborn and not willing to learn new things in adulthood. Either they think they already know best, or are too lazy to care about learning anything new.
2. Someone could accept that the world is constantly changing and new things must be learned in order to stay relevant in the work force.
3. Someone could just really enjoy learning, so they learn even things that maybe aren’t particularly “relevant” or “useful.”

I would argue that outlook 2 is a “life long learner” – someone who continues to learn beyond education in order to better themselves. This is great, especially considering I have met various people in my life with outlook 1 and they are very challenging to work with… But wouldn’t it be awesome if more people had outlook 3?

The difference is about motivation. Are people learning because they are motivated by the need to learn in order to achieve specific work goals or are they motivated to learn simply because they enjoy learning?

I’m sure some educators would argue that when they use the term “life long learner” they are implying the ideals of outlook 3, and truthfully they desire for their students to become adults that genuinely enjoy learning. But I think it could be important to make this distinction more clear, because they truly are two different outlooks.

I’ve found this applicable to my past semester because every week I would find myself thinking about why I bothered to take philosophy. I mean half the times our discussions would end with someone saying something to the extent of, “Yeah maybe we will never know, but for practical application we can just ignore that.” Sure philosophy probably has enhanced my ability to craft an argument and think outside of the box, but on the whole studying philosophy to me is kind of the epitome of learning just for learning sake because often times conversations just go in circles and there is no true conclusion or any outcome that will necessarily be applicable to work or life. It’s all just thoughts and wonders and learning about other peoples thoughts and wonders. This isn’t to trash on philosophy – I really enjoyed the course most of the time – it’s just to say that studying philosophy feels like the sort of thing that one would only study because they truly enjoy learning not just because they are trying to learn some skill or concept in order to stay work relevant in a changing world. Studying philosophy therefore seems to require something more than just being a life long learner.

And obviously there are more things that fit into this scenario besides just studying philosophy; I’m not trying to say we should aim to have every student want to take a philosophy course. Think about this scenario: an engineer who decides to learn more about excel to potentially move into a managerial role I would consider a life long learner. An engineer that decides to learn the bagpipes just because I would also consider a life long learner. But these two things don’t quite feel comparable.

I’ll admit I don’t know the best term to use to describe the bagpiping engineer / anyone who poses an outlook 3 view of learning. Right now though I’ve been going with the term “life long explorer,” but I could easily be convinced a different word is more appropriate. I just really think it would be neat if schools made this distinction and decided to strive for more than just fostering people who continue to learn in adulthood, because honestly being a life long learner is starting to feel pretty status quo and not really much of a goal for education. As our world continues to change at ever increasing rates, it seems almost impossible to not be a life long learner anymore. And just like in gymnastics, once it gets to a point where everyone is doing a double back tuck and that just becomes the norm, then that’s no longer a very impressive goal, so standards have to change and the bar needs to be set higher.

Perhaps the reason schools don’t specify this distinction is because outlook 3 requires a value that from my experience isn’t emphasized at school: fun. If students are to continue learning throughout their life due to intrinsic motivation – “just because” – then they need to believe that learning is fun. This kind of thinking always make me wonder, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if students wanted to come to school? Like if you walked into a classroom and asked every student why they were here today and the response was, ‘Because I want to be. School is fun.'” I feel like that’s the dream, but the idea of striving for school to be fun never really seems to be expressed in school mission statements or community announcements, at least not in my experience.

If we made it a goal though to not just create life long learners, but to develop life long explorers in the world then I wonder if we would start to talk more about fun and if we would start hearing more students excited and wanting to come to school. Those students already exist, and I’d bet that there are even some school that make these goals explicit that already exist, but I would like to see this on a larger scale. I would like us to strive for more than life long learners because this no longer feels challenging enough to be stated as an end goal for formal education.