So here are the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners
Begin with the End in Mind
Take Responsibility for Your Own Learning
View Problems as Challenges
Have Confidence in Yourself as a Learner
Gather Your Toolbox
Use Technology to Your Advantage
Mentor Others
Play
At the risk of sounding immodest, most of these I do pretty well. I am, after all, a tech head who is over 50. I must have been learning something along the way. But clearly I do have favorites. And while I am sure that most people might guess that the toolbox and tech options would be easy choices for favorites, they would actually come in below most of the others. When I look with an eye to what is easiest and hardest for me, it doesn’t take long to really see this list as bracketed by my least and most favorite habits.
Let’s start with what is easy.
Play.
That’s easy and natural and it’s hard for me to think that playing isn’t the easiest most natural way for everyone to learn. When I am playing, I can learn at my own pace and I can veer off on as many tangents as I am interested in (I love the whole concept of hypertext and hyperlinks because they help speed up the way I connect things to a larger context.) I actually kind of resent that play only gets mentioned as the 1/2 of a habit. I know the author was trying to ride the coattails of Stephen Covey, but still, 8 is 8 and that habit should not have some kind of second class membership in this habit list.
What’s hard?
Begin with the end in mind.
It’s so directive. It reminds me of required reading (which I will
never choose over reading whatever catches my fancy). It seems borderline fascist to me. Okay, I’m kidding. I get it that you need goals and need to make choices with the goals in mind, but still it is the hardest on this list for me. Most of my actual lifelong learning has been in areas where my goals were pretty fuzzy. Things like “I like history. I should read some popular non-fiction about history.” and “Oooo, what a cool web site with a way to edit my photos!!!” Which isn’t even really a goal at all.
My first 16 years of education were so goal directed/driven, in ways that were not necessarily positive or productive, that it has seemed like ever since then I have been extremely resistant to the “required reading” portion of my lifelong learning. So many of the best things that I learned in school during those first 16 years were incidental.
Some of what I thought was most interesting about the presentation was the list of presumptions about learning that we are being asked to let go of as life-long learners.
Look at this list. How many of us are willing to cross out all or most of these things when it comes to our students here at Moreau? How many of us fear crossing out some of these things when planning for our classrooms? We are very attached to many of the things on this list. We ARE one the things on this list. And we are supposed to be preparing our students to be life-long learners. How’s that for an ESLR coming back to bite you in the butt?
Some of what I thought was most interesting about the presentation was the list of presumptions about learning that we are being asked to let go of as life-long learners.
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