Skip to main content

Learning is Messy

Learning is Messy

Long gone are the days of the idyllic classroom of straight rows, students sitting in alphabetic order and quietly working with pen and paper, with teacher firmly planted in the front of the room.  The assumption that we are blank slates to be written upon is naive at best and insulting at worst.
Learning is messy, all the great educators from Socrates to Dewey to you have known this.  It is impossible for a human to have an exclusively original thought devoid of any past experiences.  Our design does not permit it. We are wired to have an experience, make mistakes or unintended advances and learn from those and other experiences we have had in our past that enable us to apply those lessons.  Meaning the only path to education is fraught with a ton of detours. So why is this controlled chaos such a problem so so many? In short, it is fear.

Education and the academic institutions are and should be, our most dangerous centers of disruption and creativity, not centers of conformity and stagnation.  If you accept John Dewey's vision that our education system is the incubation source to an ever improving and evolved society, then it must be taken that boundaries and problem-solving approaches must be at the forefront of all of our student engagement.
-From The Superintendent's Rulebook (Routledge, 2018)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Deep Dive Podcast: Superintendent's Rulebook

 Podcast: Deep Dive of "Superintendent's Rulebook" I had such a great time with the deep dive podcast for "Engaging Parents" I decided to do one for my first book, "Superintendent's Rulebook" Podcast:  Podcast: Superintendent's Rulebook

Lessons learned in reviewing college/university programs: "Change is Hard to Do..."

As I am writing, we are in the Covid-19 pandemic forcing school districts across the nation to close and in New York State create a political tension on who has the authority to close schools and for how long. Whatever the ultimate outcome is for the school closers, I hope (this is ONLY if it is safe to do so) in New York State, at least we could somehow come back by June 1st. It would be ideal to have both teachers and students again but absent that bring back in at least the teachers. This would provide an opportunity for teachers and students to put some sort of annual closer to the school year. Absent doing this, I fear that it would prevent a "clean reset" for the start of the next school year. We have witnessed schools scramble to convert to online/video lessons. My wife, Laurie, who is a Cosmetology Teacher, has transformed our living room into her laboratory. She is conducting video classes with her students in a digital environment that allows her to demons...

Proud to be Presenting at the 2022 ACTEA Annual Leadership Conference

  Association of Career & Technical Education Administrators Proud to be Presenting on Mentoring & leadership: CTE Leader: The Face of the Component Schools Wednesday, April 6, 2022, from 10:15- 11:15 AM Registration Information:  https://web.acteonline.org/ACTE/Events/SpecificEvents/Event_Display_ACTEA2022.aspx?EventKey=ACTEA2022