Radical Learners

We are each experiencing the rapid change of the world in our personal and professional lives. This change is a part of the conversation everywhere we turn - on the radio, television, online bloggers, twitter, newspapers... This conversation, and the change we are experiencing, leads to numerous questions we each wrestle with. The list of these questions could go on and on...

How do we as a society balance the challenges of today while preparing our students for a world that we largely cannot predict? Many of the future jobs our students of today will fill, do not yet exist.

How do we position ourselves for the future while in the midst of the longest and deepest recession of over fifty years? A recession that the members of our community are living with each and every day.

One thing that is constant as we wrestle with questions such as these is the importance of education and learning. I think Jim Knight, a research associate at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, wrote an interesting blog on this topic. Here is an excerpt.

Radical Learners:

Radical learners... are people who are driven by learning, who get up in the morning fired up to try something new, to make a difference, to teach and learn.

Radical learners are everywhere. They are creating PLNs, grabbing good ideas off of Twitter, writing, reading and sharing good blogs, reading new thinkers like Godin, Gladwell, and Pink, and old thinkers like Friere, Dewey, and Mason. Radical Learners are loving people who will not let schools let kids down. They work the system to make it better, and kinder, more loving, more equitable, more challenging and supportive. They work really hard because they know how much learning matters.

Who are the radical learners?
Radical Learners:

■believe we are here on earth to learn, so they are turned on by every chance they get to discover something new
■use technology to learn, to teach, or lead (and because it’s cool)
■have hope because they know that to teach without hope is to damage, but to teach with hope can save the world
■love the members of their Personal Learning Network
■have mentors and coaches
■mentor and coach others
■are witnesses to the good
■are brutally honest about what is really happening in their classroom and would welcome any visitor who could help them improve
■don’t blame others but accept personal responsibility
■infect everybody with their love of learning, most importantly the children they teach
■make a difference

Are you a radical learner?

It is with full confidence that I can say our district is full of "radical learners". Each day I have the opportunity to learn with teachers, administrators, support staff, community members, etc. who are making a difference for kids.

Just the other day I spent an hour or so walking around Woodcrest Elementary School. As I left the school and went to my next meeting I could not stop thinking about, and talking about, what I had just observed in classrooms. The student engagement, as a result of the instruction, was at the highest level - that of a model school. Students were engaged in dialogue, were setting goals and monitoring their own learning, ...

How did it get that way? It got that way because the staff at Woodcrest are "radical learners" who have made learning a part of their work together, and they put their learning into practice. This kind of learning is happening among the adults in each of our schools. The students benefit as a result of this. Thanks staff - your efforts are appreciated!

Radical learning will be required of all of us as we collectively tackle the challenges we face in the short-term, as well as we position ourselves - our students, families, communities, and school district - for the future. I look forward to our learning through these challenges.

You can find Jim Knight's blog at http://www.radicallearners.com/