The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say:
—Maria Montessori
“The children are now working as if I did not exist.”
Our schools didn’t teach us how to learn. Our parents didn’t do a good job of teaching us how to learn either. Yes, they sent us to school to learn, they taught us many things and we learned many more things. But we’ve never really learned how to learn. It is difficult to teach our children something we ourselves do not know how to do.
What is learning and how do we do it?
The idea of learning, when we look at the specifics of how to learn, is more than teaching mnemonic devices, memorizing multiplication tables, or the scientific method; learning is complex and involves many aspects of our experience, both internal and external.
How to learn is complicated. Yes we can teach our children their ABC’s, but are they capable of learning it, or are we merely teaching them? Take a moment and reflect on something you know. How did you learn it? Did someone teach you? Is it something you personally experienced, something you observed? Did you discover it for yourself through reflection, research, or investigation?
You are given the task of teaching your five-year-old child how to learn. How will you teach them how to learn? Will you need to go and read about how best to teach five-year-olds how to learn? Will you use trial and error? Will there be an assessment to determine if you have really taught your child how to learn for herself? Multiple choice, short answers, true/false: How will you know if your child knows how to learn on their own? Can she teach someone else how to learn?
I’m investigating how we learn. I’m not interested in only the academic literature and theory, but how to actually learn how to learn. I scour peer-reviewed journals, books, and I experiment with my own children and try my ideas out in my high school English classroom. I tutor learners of all ages, I coach parents and other teachers, I hold workshops and seminars for school and district administrators, I work with homeschoolers, unschoolers, deschoolers, private-schoolers, public-schoolers, corporate training-schoolers, policy-schoolers, and political schoolers, helping everyone better understand how to learn. When I come across something interesting I share it here. I put it in an accessible language, say it in many different ways, and use storytelling as a teaching strategy.
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