Thankful to Learn

Recently, I have been posting about communities and learning based on my studies in my learning theory class. One thing I am continually surprised by is how we are constantly learning and often learning from others. 

In this thanksgiving season, it makes me feel grateful for all of those in my life that have helped me learn. There are many extra special people who always push me to learn, refine my learning, or try something new.

We often take for granted the ability to learn, grow, and adapt. Yet, it is amazing that our minds can learn at any age. I came across this Ted Talk and it is inspired me to be grateful for how amazing our minds really are. 

After watching this, your brain will not be the same | Lara Boyd | TEDxVancouver

Experiences that affect learning

Powerful experiences affect learning. I will never forget in 5th grade receiving an F on a math test for fractions. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and immediately convinced that I was "bad" at math.  I do not remember feeling that way before that moment. Math became a struggle in that moment, and it stayed with me even through college.  At 10 years old, I did fail, but not at math. It was not understanding that failure is an opportunity to grow and learn.

Negative experiences stick with us, but so do positive ones. Experience is learning. We learn what to do and what not to do. 

John Dewey, an American educational philosopher, describes the value of experience in education. He believed that education should not simply be a prescriptive set of information passed down that a student may or may not use in the future. Instead educators should develop and facilitate experiences that encourage a love of learning.  Yet, he argues against experience without guidance.

 In the book, John Dewey Experience& Education, he writes that the facilitator has "the responsibility for instituting the conditions for the kind of present experience which has a favorable effect upon the future. Education as growth or maturity should be an ever-present process."

This makes me wonder as an educator what kind of experiences I am creating for my students. Do I put content over positive experiences? I wrestle to answer this question, but I also believe it is critical that I ask it. 

I want my students to have positive experiences and grow to be excellent writers and readers. Even as a teacher, Dewey's words ring true, growth and maturity is an ever-present process. 

Communities that shape our identities

What do you do?

Where do you work?

What are you involved in?

Questions of identity are common place when you meet someone new. Why do we ask identity questions? It is something I have wrestled with in the past. Yet, they seem to be easy surface level questions that we all default too. There are many elements that shape our identities. Here are a few:

• Career or job
• Family
• Beliefs
• Education
• Culture
• Communities

Though our identities are complex, I am going to narrow this post to how communities of practice shape our identities. There are many different types of communities of practice from a book club to church. In a community of practice there is both the individual and the collective part of the group.  People interact with others in the community and learn and participate. These interactions and belonging to the community shapes both the group and the individual identity. 

Etienne Wenger, author of Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity and researcher from the Institute for Research on Learning discusses identity in a community of practice.  He states, 

"Who we are lies in the way we live day to day, not just in what we think or say about ourselves, though that is of course part (but only part) of the way we live."

What are the day to day experiences and communities you are apart of that shape you? 

I think about how my colleagues at my school have shaped my identity as a teacher. I am a more compassionate and passionate educator because of the interactions with other inspiring educators and administrators. 

Each community that we participate in has the power to influence our identity. This makes me think of the advice the high school counselors often give incoming freshman students. Get involved. Join a club, try a sport, and participate in school events. I think that advice may be something even as adults we could use because belonging to a community shapes our identity.      

Communities shape our learning

Community is all around us. Some communities we join intentionally. From book clubs to soccer teams, kids and adults regularly choose communities to participate in. 

Other communities are just part of the everyday life of work or school. Students do not get to choose their classmates, but they are each part of a connected community. Adults are part of their workplace communities.

Whether we choose the community or not, it drastically impacts what and how we learn.  In the book, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, (1998) Etienne Wenger states that "engagement in social practice is the fundamental process by which we learn and so become who we are." As people interact and participate in community they are shaped by the people and processes that are part of that social group. 

We may not often think about our day-to-day interactions as learning. However, learning is something we never stop doing. Our experiences and interactions with others shape our learning.