Who Are the Learners?

I just fin­ished a ses­sion at ISTE 2010 by Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann on Twit­ter) on Thought­ful School Reform. Besides turn­ing a lot of my assump­tions upside down (which hap­pens every time I hear any­thing he says) and hav­ing far more to process than I could pos­si­ble fit into one blog post (so I won’t try), I walked away with an inter­est­ing ques­tion. It was not some­thing he addressed directly, but it was embed­ded in many of the points we dis­cussed in the session:

“Who are the learn­ers in your school?”

What answers would you get if you asked this ques­tion tomor­row? I sus­pect that in many cases, if the askee didn’t just look at you like you’d lost your mind, they’d say, “Uh, duh, the students?”

If that’s the only answer you get, though, there’s a lot of work to do. Every­one in a school needs to be a learner, needs to think like a learner, and needs to be treated like a learner. Teach­ers, vol­un­teers, par­ents, aides, facil­i­ties staff, bus dri­vers, and admin­is­tra­tors all need to under­stand that they are part of a learn­ing com­mu­nity. Every­one still has some­thing to learn, every­one has some­thing to teach.

We make an effort in our fam­ily to eat din­ner together as often as we can. Even if it’s only a brief time, we are delib­er­ate about mak­ing it hap­pen. Din­ner often inter­rupts stuff the kids are more inter­ested in, like play­ing out­side, surf­ing the Web, read­ing, and so on. Our youngest son typ­i­cally will pick at his food, eat a few bites, and say, “I’m full.” While, we’re not look­ing to get our kids in the habit of eat­ing when they’re not hun­gry, we’re also respon­si­ble for mak­ing sure he’s not mal­nour­ished. So we’d tell him, “You can’t pos­si­bly be full yet. You need to eat a lit­tle more before you can leave the table.”

What was funny, and now a fam­ily joke, is that it didn’t take long for him to catch on, and instead of telling us when he was done, he started ask­ing, “Can I be full yet?”

I don’t believe there is a sin­gle per­son involved in any school who has the right to ask “Can I be full yet?” The answer should always be no.

I’m think­ing that this would be a great inter­view ques­tion. The answer would tell you a lot not only about the per­spec­tive of the appli­cant, but also how they are likely to work with their col­leagues and parents.

I’m curi­ous too about your thoughts: What are the impli­ca­tions and con­se­quences of ask­ing (and answer­ing) this ques­tion? I’d also be inter­ested in find­ing out about peo­ple that actu­ally do ask this, and what kinds of answers you get. What are you going to do tomor­row to start chang­ing what answer peo­ple give?