Are We Teaching Kids What or How to Learn?
By: Caitlin Lynch
Tags: Education Technology, Relationships, Community Engagement, Education, Education Reform

It’s September, 2010. I’m sitting in a faculty meeting at the high school I graduated from just four years prior. I am preparing to be a teacher within these walls, and not a student.

We’re in the library, teachers and support staff listening, and half-listening, to the messages from our principal in anticipation of yet another school year. Some of us younger teachers try our best to hide our anxiousness. On one hand we are struggling to fit in with the more seasoned educators who sit carefree, thinking about the year ahead in a calm manner, not taking much note of what the principal is saying. On the other, we don’t want our new boss to think that we don’t care about our profession.

So, here I am: taking notes, listening intently, and cracking some small jokes with the teachers at my table. Trying my best to multi-task. Focused so much on everyone else’s perception of me.

Then I hear a phrase, a concept so familiar yet I had not heard articulated before, that helps me focus on my intention and passion for teaching.

The principal stops, looks at all of us, and says something along the lines of:

“It is not about the teaching, it is about the learning. I don’t care how good of a teacher you think you are, how knowledgable, intelligent, or passionate. If you are not connecting with these kids, if you are not focused on their learning, if you’re not teaching them how to learn, then you are doing them a disservice. We are not dispensers of information, we are facilitators of growth, fulfilling potential, and authentic learning.”

This statement brought me back to my center, brought me back to my purpose, has become a phrase I regularly think about as I prepare to work with my students.

School is so much more than numbers. It is so much more than competitive averages and failing grades, rote memorization and spelling bees, discipline and respect.

Our schools need to do a better job of focusing on the learning. It is our job to teach our students how to learn, to find the joy of learning, to find inspiration, to be coached, loved, and guided to discover their authentic and best selves.

This is my goal and my passion. The revolution is a massive task, one that calls for an overhaul of our education system, our priorities as a society, our choices in funding education. It also requires personal and communal healing and relationship building.

This kind of revolution takes investment, it takes time, it takes careful vision and goal-setting to fulfill an incredible vision. Let’s start the conversation, let us ask the difficult questions, let us challenge the outdated paradigms, and lean into what our kids actually need to thrive in today’s world.

In the pursuit of teaching our children how to learn, we must unlearn all that we know about education, ready to rebuild this system from the ground up.

I firmly believe that:

Schools are both directly and indirectly impacted by the socioeconomic environment in which they find themselves. Cultural norms, attitudes, access to funding/resources, the status of the economy, and the political climate will all impact the development of that school’s philosophy, ethics, and community values. Likewise, the creation and implementation of a school’s philosophical, ethical, and spiritual values can be an agent for changing the socioeconomic structure of the larger society it finds itself in, thereby creating a more equitable opportunities for members of that society. The potential of positive change will vary drastically based on: access to funding and resources, location, level of acceptance, or “buy in”, from school communities, and for what environment these initiatives have been created: individual schools, larger districts, states, or on a national level.

I’m on a mission to learn and to inform. I am on a mission to share and invite everyone into this conversation. I am on a mission to change our schools, so we may change the world.

Are you in?