The Beauty in Learning

I have thought and thought about what to write for my blogs.  I know I could go over what all Jeff taught us and the MANY A-HA moments I had.  Yet, there has been something bigger on my mind since I started this program.  Jeff's class just helped drive it home.

I first have to give you a little background history for you to understand where my point of view is coming from.  I was a child that grew up with learning disabilities.  I was called stupid by my 5th grade teacher and many other important people in my life.  I vowed in 6th grade "never to be stupid again."  From then on out, I got all 4.0s through middle school and high school.  I took first in every military course and at the corrections officer academy.  I graduated Magna Cum Laude in Electrical Engineering.  One would think, this would be enough to help someone realize they are not stupid; that, in fact, they just learn in a different manner.  This leads me to the Whitworth MIT program and the truth I am about to share with you.

I have had this fear since starting this program that I am not smart enough to make it through.  My goals coming into this program were to pass the program, get the best grades I could, and go on to teach children with the passion I have always had for teaching. I have struggled in this program because I keep finding that the instructors are giving us this freedom to learn without set guidelines and that has confused me.  I have been so worried that my way was going to be wrong, and I had to find the right way.  It dawn on me today in class that, once again, I have been missing an important piece because I was focusing on the wrong aspect.  I have forgot, as they would say in the Montessori classroom, to "play."  I have been so focused on finding the "right answer" that I have missed the point all together.  It isn't about learning to prove a point anymore.  It CAN'T be about learning to prove a point anymore.  It has to be learning to learn.  I know some people might read that and think how obvious, but it isn't that obvious when you grew up in a system that teaches in a ridged fashion.

This is where I find this program is beautiful torture.  We are being taught, throughout each class, that it isn't good enough to just learn.  History has done rote learning and it fails.  We have to learn because we are interested.  We have to learn because we want to understand something in a way we never did before.  It will be our job, to enable children to "play."  Children need to know it is okay to quote, fail.  Failing is only really failing, when we refuse to learn from our mistake and we quit trying.  I had forgot that learning can be beautiful.  That is what this program has been teaching me, and what I realized while sitting in technology class. 

That all being said, Jeff I would like an "A" for my blog please.  ✋😆