Why There is No Escape From the Learning Pit

It’s been almost two decades in education and I’m never sure if I’m stumbling into or climbing out of a “Learning Pit“–this term that explains when our current knowledge base and beliefs are being challenged.  It’s sort of ironic–me, the teacher, who is supposedly the expert, is often shoulder-deep with the students, trying to figure out the course and direction of the inquiry, instead of being assured and confident about the path we are going. It seems that bewilderment, frustration, and struggle have become the perks of being in a state of wonder and anticipation. Perhaps for this reason, I feel that I can never be the same teacher to a different set of students, because if they are different, so I too must respond to their uniqueness and intellectual demands. I cannot copy and paste from last year. They deserve a more customized experience, that is personal to each of them, and collectively as a cohort. I don’t know why I am this way, but I think I may have come across something that may explain my predicament.

 

I read this beautiful essay, Why Beliefs Matter by Heidi Mills with Tim O’Keefe the other day from the book, The Teacher You Want to Be and it has been a salve to my cognitive dissonance. In it, Heidi cuts to the root of this feeling for me.

The beliefs we hold as teachers shape the beliefs children take up about themselves as learners, the learning process and the world around them. …When we encounter new beliefs that resonate, we are inspired to take up new instruction and assessment practices that match them. If we are deliberately growing and changing as professionals, our cutting-edge beliefs are often ahead of our practices.

Because this feels true for me, I would also like to spin the first idea around to say that the beliefs children hold about themselves as learners, the learning process and the world around them, shape the beliefs teachers have about themselves and their approaches to pedagogy.  I feel very strongly that if I am to become the teacher that the students NEED, then I must be flexible, ready to listen and bend my practice to suit. This is precisely why I feel this collaboration and co-construction of meaning puts me “in the learning pit” half the time because my theories about education are being challenged, “growing and changing” alongside with the learners.

As I come into the awareness of my ephemeral practice, there is only one thing I am certain of: I will change as they change. And the professional conversations that I will engage in with my peers and team members will help to either clarify or complicate my feelings. Knowing me, I’ll throw all of into the “learning pit”–with the awful habit I have to challenge and question everything. But perhaps we will all clamber out of it by the end of the year, hopefully feeling a bit more intuitive and confident that we can meet learners wherever they are and go wherever they lead us, as we make sense of our worlds together.