0 Learning: My Head Hurts!

Posted by Atsumori. Category:

Inspired by a colleague's suggested theme of scholars and Tony Wagner's speech, A New Paradigm in Education, our grade level team decided to use the theme, "Be the Architect of Your Own Learning," as the initial learning community focus for school year 2013-2014.

That theme further inspired the idea by another colleague to create a wonderful bulletin board that combines architecture as we know it with students' architecture plans related to their own learning (image will be shared later). Then, a third colleague challenged us all to find ways to inspire and convey this theme to our fourth graders.

While I hunted for fourth grade friendly films and information related to the theme, I was unsuccessful. Hence, I decided to try out the PowerPoint film process I learned this summer at the MTA Summer Conference.  I was inspired by the artistic film making by the MTA staff and delighted to learn the many tools and strategies used in the process.  But when I sat down and tried to create the film, I had that same old film making feeling--my head hurt! Why?

Film making on any level is very challenging because there are endless possibilities as you match music, images, and words into one coherent statement or story.  This short film I created to lead our learning architect discussion is far from complete, but it's a start as I try out a new process of film making.

The process reminded me once again that learning is not always pleasurable.  In fact, learning can be very frustrating as you build new brain paths, skills, and knowledge.  You'll notice in my film I apply same patterns as I learn the medium, and there's lots of room for edit which illustrates the messiness of learning, the fact that it takes many tries to get it right, to perfect the strategy or result.

A lot of the crankiness and frustration with learning comes from the fact that you can "see it," but you can't do it yet.  And we wonder why struggling learners sometimes act out, get angry, and even, cry.  Learning not only makes your head hurt, but it can be defeating too.  If we don't challenge ourselves as teacher-learners, we won't experience these feelings and we won't be able to empathize with students as they struggle to make meaning and apply knowledge.

The best we can do for ourselves, and for our students, is to lay out manageable and challenging paths with just right supports to encourage and work with one another as we learn. The best learning does challenge us, and if we're challenged without care, we won't learn and we will give up. But, if we're challenged with the right supports, encouragement, and care, we'll thrive.

I'll bring these thoughts to class today as students architect their learning for the start of the year.  If you're embarking on a similar journey, please share your resources and experiences.  Similarly if your "head hurts" too when you're learning, let's share some successful strategies for encouraging each other and our students as well.  Once again, it's the bumpy road of learning.

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