Creating a Healthy Learning Environment, for students and teachers

 “In times of change it is the learners who inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists”  Eric Hoffer

How do you create a healthy learning environment for teachers as well as students?  

Just doing what we’re taught may not provide us with the tools or insights to lead children in this ever-changing world. The best students have the best teachers and the best teachers are the best listeners and learners. If we want students to be excited about learning, those that lead and serve them have to be excited about learning too.

What is required for learning? There are different learning styles. But what is the final common pathway of learning? The juggling metaphor answers the question.

Many people have tried to juggle three objects in the air.  Few actually learn.  Why?  Everyone, barring a physical handicap, can learn.  Yet, few do.  

The reasons, when one asks, vary.  However, they share one thing in common.
The effort was made and the results demonstrate an inability to learn.  The reasons are rationalizations. For example, “I have poor hand eye coordination”.
I have never met anyone that couldn’t learn to juggle. 

Just having that expectation for those I teach helps create the right environment for learning.
When I ask an audience for someone to come up and demonstrate the skill, they do.  Yet, when I ask what’s the secret to learning how to juggle, they waffle.  Why aren’t they able to easily explain? 

The answer, the secret is you don’t earn the right to have the skill until you drop the balls enough to “get it”.  When you’ve dropped them enough you don’t drop them anymore and then you know how to juggle.

Juggling is a great metaphor for learning. Everyone can learn to juggle just as everyone can learn algebra.  Why?  Because we learn everything through feedback loops.  You try something new. You fail. You get feedback. You make adjustments. You fail again. You get encouragement and more feedback. You make more adjustments. You fail again. The difference between the best teachers and the rest has to do with the quality of energy that we put out while we give the feedback. That energy needs to demonstrate that we care.

If they feel our warmth coupled with our honest feedback and we hold the expectation that they can learn, they eventually do. 

And it isn’t just the specific subject matter that they learn.  

They learn that they can learn just about anything.  So can we.