On January 4, I posted Learning Challenge – Take a Small Step in Their Shoes.  I was hoping my team would accept this challenge to have an experience about learning to connect with their learners.  I was hoping that they would actually change their password and track how long it took for their new password to become natural, a part of their understanding.  It took me a long time; I could see progress after a couple of days, but I didn’t completely learn my new password for over a month.

What Ed Said post’s, 10 ways to build resilience… shows Jay McTighe talking about the struggle to learn something new.  

I think this is what I wanted to challenge others to do by changing their password, just simply adding one character to the end.  How long does it take to learn one new thing that is different?  What if it is not something that you choose to learn?

Jay says

• Don’t give in to negative self-talk
• Don’t let an initial failure or failure to be successful right away discourage you.
• Good learners persist.  That’s a habit of mind.
• Let me learn from what I didn’t do well in the first lesson.
• Get the feedback from the instructor and practice.
• Stop the negative self-talk. Keep practicing.

Isn’t this what we want from and for our learners?  Isn’t this what they want from and for us?  Isn’t this what we want from and for ourselves and our colleagues? 

Can we think of this in terms of our learning about technology…formative assessment…peer observations…PBL…integrated studies…?

Good learners persist.  Good learners are strategic.  Good learners fail and try again.

Are we modeling the habits of mind for our learners in our actions, attitudes, and collaboration?

Do we experience learning something new often enough to have a different level of empathy for the learners we are leading?