To help encourage conversations and dialogue about the messy nature of learning, our topic/question for the dinner table is: How is learning a messy process? Messy Learning (Week of 5/14/17) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
I hope that the weekend was a good one for all - with all of the hype of the big storm for Sunday, we did our best to get outside and enjoy any sun we could find. Starting the weekend with a run after our professional afternoon on Friday reminded me how important it is to make sure that time is dedicated to get outside and 'just be'! We had a nice Saturday with the kids, cheering Grayden on in his first baseball game of the spring (it has been tough with the rain), and Katie and I then attended a 50th birthday party for one of our friends. With baseball and softball games canceled we were able to have a low-key Sunday, having lunch as a family and celebrating Mother's Day as a family.
As I often share one of my continued goals is to work on my practice of 'balance' - home/work, in particular. As a nod to Katie, each year during Mother's Day weekend I do my best to keep the Natworthy brief as a somewhat symbolic gesture of appreciation for all that she does - she is an awesome mom, my best friend, biggest supporter, and not to mention my personal proofreader! So...I am keeping it brief (hard for me) and sharing one post that Brian Gavaghan had sent to me a couple of weeks ago written by the recently named teacher of the year, Sydney Chaffee. It is a great post about the messiness of teaching, education, and learning. It resonated with me on many levels and I also find it timely this weekend, as Chaffee's message about learning and mistakes is one that my own mother, a teacher, impressed upon us as well (and Katie and I hope we are doing the same for our own children) - to recognize mistakes, own them, and learn from them. We can not hide our mistakes in education, and nor should we.
Rejecting The Myth Of The 'Super Teacher'
by Sydney Chaffee
Teaching is an art. I became a teacher because I was inspired by my own great teachers. They helped me experience learning as a process of discovery and transformation. They also showed me that the art of teaching derives from teachers’ ability to work through messiness and see beauty in what many others perceive as imperfection.
There is no such thing as the perfect student, classroom or teacher. Instead, we must embrace the messiness inherent in teaching and learning...If we do not recognize that learning is happening even as children make mistakes and act out, we don’t recognize the growth of the whole child. Providing a holistic education means fostering a child’s development through examining mistakes, not forbidding them. In order to create a culture where the value of failure is celebrated, educators must be able to openly share our own failures.
Imagine the progress we can make on the journey to educational equity if teachers feel safe opening the doors of all of our classrooms — even the messy ones — to visitors. We must reject the “super teacher” myth and be brave enough to advocate for what we know to be true about learning: Real learning takes time. It is not always linear. And sometimes, the best learning happens when things don’t go perfectly.
I look forward to the work that lies ahead for all of us.
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Take care.
Nat