I woke up this morning in a funky mood, and then read an article I'm about to strongly encourage you to read, which both exasperated and relieved my funky mood, and spurred me to action, which always lifts my mood.

First, the Rant

One of the things I was irritated about when I woke up was related to our education world. It comes down to this: in many of the schools I work in, teachers are being told to do something in their classrooms for which they don't have the knowledge or skill set. Those telling them to do this know that--they know that the teachers don't have the skills or knowledge. And yet they tell them to do it anyway. As if that will do what exactly? Make it so that they instantly acquire the skills and knowledge?

The phrase that keeps going through my mind is this: that some decision-makers (administrators) are operating without any kind of learning mindset--it's not a "growth mindset" that's missing, it's a mindset that holds that in order to do what we're being asked to do, we need to learn. Learning takes time. And people can't learn when they're told to learn 76 things at the same time, and they are fighting off the flu, and their students are experiencing extreme violence and trauma in their communities and having PTSD in school, and so on. The conditions for learning are not present; the time needed for learning isn't provided; and the basic needs of an adult learner aren't recognized, respected or attended to.

This doesn't need to be this way. We can create these conditions and adults can (and want to) learn.

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