Teachers as Master Learners — from Will Richardson

Quoting Will:

More and more, though, as I look at my own kids and try to make sense what’s going to make them successful, I care less and less about a particular teacher’s content expertise and more about whether that person is a master learner, one from whom Tess or Tucker can get the skills and literacies to make sense of learning in every context, new and old. What I want are master learners, not master teachers, learners who see my kids as their apprentices for learning. Before public schooling, apprenticeship learning was the way kids were educated. They learned a trade or a skill from masters. When we moved to compulsory schooling, kids began to learn not from master doers so much as from master knowers, because we decided there were certain things that every child needed to know in order to be “educated.” And we looked for adults who could impart that knowledge, who could teach it in ways that every child could learn it.

From DSC:
Coming from the world of an instructional technologist, I would also like to add how key it is for teachers, instructors, professors, etc. to be willing to try new things out. Let’s forget about being experts in anything! It’s ok to not be an expert in something. For me, it’s almost unbelievable that anyone can be an expert these days…because for most of us, the world’s spinning far too fast to be an expert in anything anymore.

To Will’s point, we need to be constant learners. But we also need to be willing to try and do things differently (at least in areas where it makes sense to give things a try). Whether teaching or not, I think we all need to learn from our students…and from each other. Let’s be willing to try some new things out. We can fail and model learning from our failures. We can show courage; humility. We can show our students that they too are going to need to be willing to change.

Willingness…it’s key.