What are you learning?

Seems a fair question. Seems maybe the only question.

But what’s the answer?  Is it as simple as a teacher-generated learning target that is posted in the front of the room? If a student is able to recite the target, is that evidence that she is learning in that room? If a student can hold up a number on her fingers at the end of the lesson, indicating where she is situated in the learning target, is that evidence that she is learning in that room? Or…

Or is it more complicated than the ritual routine that plays out in so many classrooms, where outsiders drop in and attempt to put a finger on what is and what is not learning?

But what is learning? Is it the score on the end-of-the-unit test? Is it the standardized-test score at the end of the year? Is it the percentage in the grade book? Maybe it’s grander. Maybe it’s an arrival,  a moment of clarity, an epiphany that screams, “I have learned.”

I think of my own learning as a teacher. And I try to put in targets.

I can meet the needs of all the students in my classroom.

I can motivate all the students in my classroom.

I can get all the students to grade-level achievement in my classroom ( with all 86 standards).

Or

By the end of (insert time marker), the Teacher Will Be Able To (TWBAT)…

…meet the needs of all the students in my classroom.

…motivate all the students in my classroom.

…get all the students to grade-level achievement in my classroom ( with all 86 standards).

First, I neither “can,” nor will I “be able to,” regardless the time marker: lesson, unit, day, year, decade, career.

Second, it seems absurd, artificial, contrived…well, silly.

Third, I am reminded every lesson, every unit, every day, every year, every decade, and–I imagine–in my one career that there will be no arrival. I will never stand atop the mount and declare, “I have arrived. I have learned.”

No, I won’t. But I will declare after every lesson, every unit, every day, every year, and I imagine at the end of my career, “I am learning.” I entered my career learning. I live my career learning. I will leave my career learning. I am learning. I am experiencing.

Experiencing.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe the question is “What are you experiencing?” Semantics? Maybe. But there may be more to it, too.

Ever wonder why we have to “reteach” things? Things that kids “learned” the year before. Things they learned earlier in the same year? Maybe they didn’t learn it as an end. Maybe they learned it as a step. Maybe all we’re doing is adding to kids’ experiences as they make their ways through our classrooms. They enter our rooms somewhere along their learning; they dwell with us in their learning; and they leave us in their learning. Their learning. 

In the end, I don’t know. My learning suggests that there is no simple answer to “what are you learning?” And I certainly have not found that it resides in the rote routine of a target. That is not to say that targets are bad, but it is to say that they are not enough. In my room they are not enough to drive me or my students deeper into the realm of our experience, making sense of ourselves, making sense of our worlds.

And so, one will not find a learning target in my room. But if one looks, if one stays, they may find learning in the daily experiences that I create for my kids as we make our ways to our own mounts on the horizon where we will some day declare, “I am learning.”

Today’s Trail

Along today’s trail we will…

…begin with Smiles and Frowns.

…say our Mindset Mantra.

…finish our viewing of the Holocaust documentary.

…discuss discovered themes and share six-word sentiments.

…reflect in our Journey Journals.

…end with a Sappy Sy Rhyme.

Happy Thursday, all.