Building a Community of Learners

Whether we are called teachers, principals, professors, or parents, our primary responsibility is to promote learning in others and in ourselves. That’s what it means to be an educator.

What sets human beings apart from all other forms of life is the ability to learn prodigiously from birth to death. The business of schools and universities is to unlock, release, and foster this wonderful capability. For me, the fundamental mandate of school reform is to examine every decision, practice, policy, and to ask of it the question, “What, if anything, is anyone learning as a consequence of this?” Who learns what from the presence of ability groups within the schools? Who learns what from the time consuming annual evaluation of teachers and principals?

One definition of an “at-risk” student, which has special meaning for me, is Any student who leaves school before or after graduation with little possibility of continuing learning. Schools teach many things well and other things not so well. One behavior schools succeed in imparting is dependency training. We learn to ask, “What am I supposed to do?” Superintendents ask it of state departments of education; principals ask it of superintendents; teachers of principals; and students of teachers. We read, we write, we learn when we are expected to or told to do so. All too often, when we are not told to do so, we don’t. At high school commencement time, it is common for graduating seniors to burn their books and notes. In this sense, most students are “at-risk”, for they leave school with little possibility of continuing learning when no one is there to make sure they do.

We might also invent the concept of an “at-risk educator” -- “any teacher or principal who leaves school at the end of the day or year with little possibility of continuing learning about the important work they do!” The perilous place of “learning” in the life of school practitioners is confirmed by staff developers with whom I speak. Most observe that the voracious learners are the beginning, first year teachers who care desperately to learn their new craft. It appears that life in school is toxic to adult learning; the longer one resides there, the less the learning. Astonishing.

I believe that a major reason so many students are “at-risk” as learners is the presence of so may “at-risk educators” within schools. We routinely ask our children, “What did you learn in school today?” I think it every bit as important to ask ourselves, “What did I learn in school today?”

As I visit schools, I find them populated with two quite distinct classes of citizens. The first class are those who are learnED. We have certification and degrees. We’re anointed. We’ve done it. We’re finished. The second class of citizens, who are also too often seen as second class citizens, are the learnERS. These are the students. The business of schools seems to be for the learned to transmit as much learning to the learners as we can. I believe that schools can become much more than places where there are big people who are learned and little people who are learners. Schools can become cultures where youngsters are discovering the joy, the difficulty, and the excitement of learning as we adults are rediscovering the joy, the difficulty, and the excitement of learning. WE are all in it together – a community of learners.

In a community of learners, the most important role of teacher and principal is that of head learner or leading learner, one who engages in the central enterprise of the schoolhouse by displaying and modeling the behavior we expect and hope students will acquire. As one bumper sticker puts it so well: “You can’t lead where you won’t go.” In a lovely piece of writing, an elementary school teacher put it even better: “Learning is not something like chicken pox, a childhood disease that makes you itch for awhile, and then leaves you immune for the rest of your life.”

In conclusion, let me suggest why, I believe, it is so compelling that schools, teachers, and administrators become leading learners in schools. The first is the extraordinary power of modeling. “Do as I do as well as I say” is a powerful message not lost on youngsters who want to emulate the most important adult role models in their lives. The bad news is you can’t lead where you won’t go. The good news is that you can lead where you will go. Secondly, the world is changing. The problem with schools is that they are no longer what they once were – the problem is that they are precisely what they once were while the world around the schoolhouse is changing dramatically.

Teaching and leadership are not innate for most of us. We teach and lead better when we learn better how to teach and lead. Improving schools without learning is an oxymoron. I found a huge sign quoting Eric Hoffer on the door of a school in East Lyme, Connecticut:

In times of change, learners inherit the earth,

While the learned find themselves beautifully

equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

There is a profound human need to experience not just learning, but pleasure in learning. Schools don’t meet that need very well for little people or big people. With learning comes replenishment of body, mind and spirit . . . and of schools. Replenishment comes from either leaving the exhausting work of the schoolhouse or from remaining there and coming alive as a learner. Only when the schoolhouse becomes a context for adult development will it become hospitable to student development.