Learning at the Heart

100 Posts in 100 Days

My school’s strategic academic focus is to ensure deep learning for all students.  We believe that deep learning occurs at the intersection of mastery, identity, and creativity, the definition from Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine in their book In Search of Deeper Learning:  The Quest to Remake the American High School.  For now, I’ll refrain from elaborating on what those virtues mean in our school.  (After all this is post #5 of 100.  But if you are craving more information,  Mehta and Fine published 446 pages on the topic. 😆)  This context is important, because they also offer the idea that I do want to begin writing about today: seminal learning experiences for teachers.  

In their chapter titled Deeper Teaching:  Rigor, Joy, and Apprenticeship, Mehta and Fine profile several teachers whose classrooms are characterized by consistently high levels of cognitive challenge, engagement, and participation.  In naming the characteristics and experiences that contributed to these teachers’ development, they note, “While it may have taken time for them to find a teaching equilibrium, they generally credited a seminal learning experience for shaping how they viewed their field or purpose.” (p 355)  

The stories of the profiled teachers coupled with the narrative of Mehta and Fine lead me to reflect:

What are my seminal learning experiences?  What have I been involved in that has fundamentally shaped who I am as an educator and school leader?

I can think of a small number of seminal learning experiences.  Without a doubt, one of them is the Thinking Strategies Institute run by the PEBC in Denver, CO.  I think the year I attended would have been 2001 or 2002. My recollections are vivid and sensorial.  It is 2 decades later and I can see the spaces, hear the sounds, smell the scents, and feel the emotional impact of those few days.  Those few days met the criteria of fundamentally changing me as a teacher.

I suppose by definition, a seminal learning experience implies that there is a LOT to reflect upon and write about.  It might only be day 5, but a pattern is already emerging:  this will be the first in a “mini-series” of posts about seminal learning experiences. 

For this post, I will share some of the design elements of the institute that made this a seminal experience:

Immersive Experience:  Everything about attending this institute was immersion.  Traveling to a different state meant that I was taken out of my day-to-day routine and fully engrossed in the study at hand.  The topic of study was workshop-style teaching, organized around thinking strategies as introduced in books such as Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Oliver Keene and Strategies That Work by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis.  We learned the workshop model of instruction by experiencing the workshop model of instruction.  That meant whole group sessions about key ideas and concepts followed by time to practice and apply.  We were all members of book groups, reading adult texts selected to challenge us as readers. My book group read Interpreter of the Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.  We were also provided notebooks covered by hand in appealing fabrics, inviting us to fill the pages with our newly forming ideas and thoughts.  The work we were asked to do exactly mirrored the kind of work we were learning to design and deliver for students of all ages. 

Vicarious Experiences:  Not only did we experience the workshop model in our adult learning sessions, we observed the model first-hand in classrooms throughout the Denver area.  Our host teachers would welcome us to their classrooms early in the morning and preview our observations.  We would spend the bulk of the morning side-by-side with them and their students, taking in the skilled craftsmanship of the teacher and noting the impact on the students.  Finally, we would debrief what we say, naming the work, asking questions, comparing notes with other observers, and walking away with a host of new ideas filling the pages of our beautiful notebooks.   

Collaborative Learning:  I didn’t go solo to this institute, and I am forever grateful for that.  I went alongside one of my teaching partners at my school and our district’s Literacy Specialist.  At every turn, we were able to compare impressions, test out our ideas, and dream big for our school district.  Our professional conversations were invigorating and inspiring.  In the moment, we didn’t know how significant the sessions would become and how much change our little triad would come to make in our school district.  Having each other to shape a vision, draft proposals, garner support, and implement change over time was empowering.  It started at the PEBC.      

Shopping Experiences:  Have you been to the greater Denver area?  My colleagues and I did some damage in and around the mall and shops in Cherry Creek.  And while those shops were more of the seminal bonding experience with my colleagues than the seminal learning experience of the institute, I can confidently say that The Bookies Bookstore and The Tattered Cover Bookstore bolstered my support of local, independent bookstores everywhere. ♥📚

Come back tomorrow for part 2 where I will write about the impact of the institute
and a number of the ways that it changed me as an educator forever.