Learning is Change

62. How do you deal with aging? #LifeWideLearning16 @bhwilkoff

— Zac Chase (@MrChase) March 2, 2016

I’d like to think that every year I have been alive has been better than the last. While that is not strictly true, it is a wonderful piece of fiction that I tell myself often. Aging, as this theory goes, is the process of getting better, year by year.

I think that is why I despise both the fetishization of youth and the rush to define yourself as one thing by the time you are 25. The 30 under 30 lists are one of the worst example of how we make being young feel like an achievement. It is like we are celebrating the relative lack of experience as something to be both proud of and something to seek out. I hope that this isn’t just sour grapes that I no longer qualify for such a list. Rather, I believe that our emphasis on achievement rather than growth continues to perpetuate the same myth in schools and the workplace.

I am better than the me from high school or college. I am a better father than I was when my first child was born. I am able to create things that I couldn’t have dreamed of in my early twenties. This growth is not an abstract concept for me. It is something that affects my life daily. And it is up to me to tell this story rather than continuing to make references to an award I received in 2007. By sharing the ways in which I have changed, even insignificantly, I am changing the narrative about aging.

While I believe in the power of young people to be agents of change and to use their passion to create the future, I do not believe that this stops at 25 or 30 (or 40 or 55 or 70). In fact, I believe that we get better at this over time. At least, we get better at creating enduring change. We improve throughout our lives because we can better see more of the picture and because see how time can both sustain and erode our passions.

And it is time itself that seems to be in favor of the longview. Given enough time, my (current) daily struggles with your 7 year old for not yelling at his sister do not seem that important. Over the years of marriage to my wife, a single forgotten errand does not seem consequential. It does not define our relationship. And no single change, whether it is buying a new house or getting a new job feels like it will define my life either. This is how aging and time work together: they make it so only the sum total of your contributions are important.

And that is how I deal with aging, by looking at it both as a process of improvement and as a way of building a massive amount of learning and love. I do not lament my teens or twenties. I do not long for the days of knowing or being less than I am. And when I grow older still, I hope I do not look back with too much rose colored fondness for this time. That wouldn’t help me to tell my story, and in the end, that is really all that I would like to do.

60. How does the way you prefer to learn influence how you design learning for others? #LifeWideLearning16 @bhwilkoff

— Zac Chase (@MrChase) March 1, 2016

I struggle a lot with the use of paper.

It isn’t an environmental thing for me, although I do very much care that we aren’t wasting our natural resources. It isn’t a millennial or digital native thing, as I have carried around a pen in my right-hand pocket for most of my life. It isn’t even a tactile thing, as I really love the way in which it feels to scrawl something across a page or read it back.

No, the reason why I struggle with paper is because it feels like it won’t last. Anything that I have ever written on paper has been lost or forgotten. It isn’t searchable or remixable. It can’t link to the other pieces of paper or provide better context for the words written on the page with video. It is dead in a way that writing and thinking on computers will never be for me.

And yet, I can’t deny its value.

I can’t deny that putting away the computer at strategic times and jotting a few drawings or notes on a piece of paper can be transformative for myself and for others. I can’t deny that there are millions of people who (still) prefer to plan and write on paper instead of using a computer or mobile device. Most of all, I can’t deny that it is actually the ephemeral nature of paper that gives it its power. By being a temporary medium, anything that is done using paper makes it special in a way that a copy of a copy of a copy of a google doc will never be.

But, still I struggle.

And because of this struggle, I don’t tend to write the objectives on a piece of chart paper to post for the duration of the session. I also don’t tend to provide stickies for notes or questions. Instead, I look for any solution for contributing and collaborating that doesn’t require the use of paper. I do this because I want to capture all of the learning. I want to tell the story of what happened and help folks to share it outside of the room.

But, the real story is the interplay of paper and technology, the intentional choice to use one or the other for a specific task.

If I were smart, I would figure out how to make the two talk to one another. I would ensure that any time someone made an intentional choice to reach for paper and pen that it could be incorporated into everyone’s broader learning. I would encourage people to document their learning in any way they see fit and then make it authentically a part of the “permanent record” using the tools we have to do so.

I am not, yet, smart enough to do this. But some very smart folks are helping me by carrying around things like this:

Thank you Jessica and Brandon, for helping me to bridge the gap between my preferences and the needs of my learners.

61. What challenges do you hope all students face? #LifeWideLearning16 @bhwilkoff

— Zac Chase (@MrChase) March 2, 2016

I don’t have a master plan for students. I don’t know what will make them ready for career, let alone college. I don’t know exactly which classes will inspire them to become entrepreneurs or civil servants. There is no formula for success in or after school. And yet, there are certain experiences that I am convinced are essential. Each of them represents a core challenge of youth, a learning experience worth celebrating.

A Terrible Friend

I believe that each student should experience at least one terrible friend in their lifetime. Ideally, this friend should not be abusive or cause self-loathing. However, this friend should be indifferent to the student’s needs. The friend should be flaky about plans and should not worry about how they are hurting the relationship when they sit with someone else during lunch or choose a different group for a project. Each student should face this and be forced to make a choice for whether or not to continue on with the awful friendship. They should learn the self-reliance that comes with making the choice to go it alone or to find new friends that don’t treat them mean. They should also learn just how much work relationships are and how some are just not worth it.

A Ridiculously Good Book

Many students do not enjoy the books that they are “forced” to read in English class, but it is my sincere hope that there is at least one that resonates. If not from within the official Cannon, then I hope it comes from pursuing reading for the pure pleasure of it. If there is one truly great book among all of those from their school days, then they have just found their first touchstone text. It is something that will inform their lives in countless ways in the years ahead. It is something that they can draw upon for making decisions and for constructing their understanding of the human condition. It makes empathy more likely and genuine inquiry into the story of someone’s life into a default stance. A ridiculously good book has the power to influence the internal voice of the person reading it, changing forever the way the student narrates her own life. This process is deeply challenging, though, as any truly life changing experience is.

An Idiosyncratic Hobby

Nerds are having something of a renaissance. In fact, being passionate about something outside of the mainstream has truly become mainstream. But even with all of this lip service being paid to nerd culture, there still something deeply self-conscious about loving something far more than your friends. Being passionate about a specific band that no one else seems to care for or an Anime comic that only has a following in a small Japanese city is still, in many ways, an embarrassing act of nonconformity. It is stating for the record that you are not like everyone else, and that it is okay. It is through this idiosyncrasy that many students are able to find “their people”, those that can connect to their passion and to their particular brand of difference. It is the process of finding them that is one of the most worthwhile challenges available to students.

A Personal Failure

There are many opportunities for failure in schools, but if you are going out of your way to avoid them, you may miss the most important kind. We still exist in a system where, for the most part, if you study and listen to your teachers, you will succeed academically. And even if this weren’t the case, the kind of failure that an F on a paper can provide does not evoke much reflection other than “try harder next time.” No, the type of failure that is truly valuable in school is much more personal that this. It is the kind of failure of asking a friend to go out with you and having him say no. It is the kind of failure of trying out for a team and not being talented enough to make it. It is the kind of failure of asking others to follow you and no one coming with you. It is a failure of miscalculation or of overinflated expectations. It is a deeply humbling experience that shows you just how little the world revolves around you. It is the kind of challenge that reverberates throughout your life, causing you to question many of your interactions and determine what has been Ego and what has been earned.

While these challenges represent my own personal journey, I have also seen them play out in hundreds of students I have worked with. In each case, these students have come out better on the other side, knowing that they have done something more than graduate or achieve recognition for their actions. They are truly better people because of these challenges, better able to face what comes at them next. And truly, that is the most that I can hope for any of them.