Are You Operating Within the Learning Zone?

 I am sure many of you already know that Twitter can be a great way to stumble across

nuggets of information which help to shape how we view education.  Many times, depending on who you follow, it is more of a reinforcement of our own philosophical approach to education. However, every once in a while something  jumps out that gets you really excited about your “new” discovery. Usually, it is something recently posted, but sometimes it is something originally posted from years ago and it makes you wonder, “Where was I when this came out?”    This humbling experience happened for me earlier this week and although it is was originally posted in 2016, I still found it very relevant and felt like I should share.

    What I stumbled across was this illustration for the Learning Zone vs. the Performance Zone.   I thought it was a great way to visualize the value of keeping an open mind to learning and being willing to try new things whether  in a practice for a sport or classroom activity at school. In other words it emphasized we don’t have to be perfect all the time and need to relax and allow ourselves the opportunity to learn.  So, I posted it on Twitter with a comment. Not five minutes later, and this is what is amazing about social media, the originator of the illustration responded back to me via his own tweet.  Eduardo Briceño‏ @ebriceno8 stated that he was glad I liked the illustration and then shared that the poster was inspired by his TedTalk “How to Get Better at Things You Care About.”  How cool is that?

   If you haven’t stopped to view the video yet, I would encourage you to do so right now. The distinction between operating within the learning zone as opposed to the performance zone is powerful mindshift.  “Working hard” and “doing your best” are ideals we, as educators, believe are important and we typically hold ourselves to that standard.  It is also the dominant message that we send to the young people in our class as well as our own children. I am ashamed to say that I was blinded by the idea of hard work and never really thought that it would get in the way of improving.  At first it sounds counter-intuitive that working hard would be a hurdle to learning. However, if you our working hard at trying to be perfect all the time and not be willing to make any mistakes you are trying to operate within the performance zone instead of the learning zone.   Operating within the learning zone means you are trying to improve, not be perfect, which means you must be willing and able to put yourself in situations in which you might make mistakes.  The key is to be able to know when to operate within the learning zone and when to operate within the performance zone. This can be applied to any part of our life, but I will focus on education.

    Most of us will agree that the young people in our classroom should be operating within the learning zone on a daily basis.  This is the best opportunity they have for learning and therefore improving. Occasionally, during a summative assessment for example, they need to shift to operating within the performance zone in order to illustrate what they have learned.  However, what I think needs to be emphasized is this same approach goes for the adults in the school as well.

    As teachers, we can’t approach every day in the performance zone.  That is to say, we can’t try to or expect to be “on” and “perfect” at all times.  We need to be in the learning zone as well. We need to listen to what the young people are saying and adjust accordingly instead of trying to stick to our own timeline.  We should be flexible with our thinking in order to put the young people we work with in the right situation to make connections instead of stubbornly following the lesson plan as scripted.  Most importantly, we have to be willing to try something new, question ourself, make mistakes, and reflect. We are not performing on a daily basis we are learning as well and as a result we need shift our mindset to be in the learning zone.  This learning extends beyond the classroom. We should also be operating in the learning zone when we are collaborating with colleagues and therefore be willing to share our mistakes. PLC time can look like this: reading an article and discussing, reviewing a video and reflecting, analyzing data and asking for help are all examples of operating with the learning zone. This, by the way, goes for administrators as well.

     There are times that we should be operating within the performance zone, maybe during a small segment of your class when presenting new information or perhaps in front of parents at a Board Meeting, but the key is to know when to and then be able to alternate between being in the performance zone and in the learning zone.   One example of this is to video a segment of one of your lessons (when you were in the performance zone) and then reflect on it during your PLC to analyze ways to improve the lesson (operating within the learning zone). If you find yourself working hard and doing your best to operate in the performance zone more often  than when you are working to improve within the learning zone it is highly likely you are not going to grow as much as compared to if you flip that combination.

Quick Side Note

    Over the last two years I have been posting on this blog as a way to reflect on what I have learned through the week.  Although, I did try something new at the beginning of this school year and pulled back my posts to once a month. To my surprise, I found myself missing the forced reflection time each week and felt a monthly reflection is not nearly as effective as weekly reflections.   Just saying.

    This is the last post of the year, so I wanted to share the top four most viewed weekly reflections of 2018 and an extra reflection that wasn’t viewed as much, but one that I still thought was worth re-sharing.

Happy New Year!

Mike

1.   What Schools Could Be

       (June 23, 2018)

2.  We Need to Change the Story

   (February 17, 2018)

3.  Working Towards Debunking Education’s “Big Lie”

    (February 24, 2018)

4.  No Need To Go Around the World to Be Mathematical

     (March 17, 2018)

Extra:  An Apprenticeship for Learning

(December 15, 2018)

An Apprenticeship for Learning

Kindergartners, like most young people their age and younger, come into school with a ton of questions and curiosity about the world in which they live.  Fast forward 13 years and these same Kindergartners, now as seniors, possess a very small amount of that energy and curiosity. Some of the change is due to maturity and a clearer picture of how the world works.  However, if we say we value curiosity, passion, and the ability to ask questions in the young people who graduate from a K-12 education, then I think we need to stop and reflect on why the dramatic change in our young people?

In the book "Free to Learn", Dr.  Peter Gray shares his view on the importance of play when it comes to learning.  In short Dr. Gray points out that those who have studied and written about play have identified five characteristics of play:  1-Play is self-chosen and self-directed, 2-In play the means are more valued than the ends, 3-Play does have structure and rules that emanate from the minds of the players, 4-Play is imaginative and non-literal, and 5-Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.  I dove deeper into the idea of substituting “learning” for “play” in a post titled Can Playing and Learning be Synonymous?, so I won’t go there for this post.  However, I bring it up because it is through play that young people satisfy, maintain, and enhance their curiosity.  The current structure of schools often counters our ability for young people to “play”. The standards in particular act as a metaphorical  governor on the curiosity engine driving our young people’s passion for learning. At the same time, I do feel standards are important for eliminating the educational lottery that can arise from low to no common expectations in school. (see also Using Standards and Collective Efficacy to get On Common Ground).  So, if not “play”, then what?

Many of you reading this blog are educators and as a result have completed your student teaching prior to graduating and gaining your teaching license.  I suspect most of you had the same experience I had in that more learning and understanding of being a teacher was gained through the process of student teaching than all of the education classes I took combined.  It was, in short, an apprenticeship in teaching that was most likely carried on in the first few years of teaching under the support of a mentor. Today, we tend to think of “apprenticeships” taking place after graduation from college or perhaps high school.  However, the history of apprenticeships dates back for literally hundreds of years, but it begins with children. Think of a page for a knight in the middle ages or a blacksmith’s apprentice in the 1800’s. These young people had the mental capacity to learn and kids today have that same intellectual ability, if not more, when given the opportunity.  Now admittedly, if you were a 12 year old page or blacksmith apprentice back then you were already close to half the age of your life expectancy. So, it made sense that you were on some sort of pathway to a vocation. Today, with a life expectancy of 80 or higher, we typically don’t encourage the same rush to vocational training for our children. We certainly wouldn’t expect, nor would we want, a sixth grader selecting what they wanted to do for the rest of their life and restricting them to that pathway.  At the same time, as we have seen with apprenticeships of the past and present, there is value in developing a set of skills that can prepare you for your future through working with a mentor of sorts. This is where an “Apprenticeship for Learning” comes into play.

What if the mindset in schools was not the current “curriculum transfer” model that is most prevalent, but instead a form of apprenticeship for learning that will help to better prepare our young people for life.  By focusing on learning as the skill to be passed down or developed, we are not restricting the young people in our classrooms to a specific vocational pathway.  After all, learning is a skill that can be applied to any vocation as well as any part of being successful in life. It is the most valueable skill we can develop in our young people.  Just like any apprenticeship, an apprenticeship for learning starts slow as our young people first learn the basics (ex. Learn to read) and then gradually apply the skill (ex. Read to learn).  What is different in a learning apprenticeship from the experience of school for most students today is that young people are not told what they should know and then expected to know it, but are instead put into situations by a mentor that allows them to see patterns, make connections, and form relationships which are the hallmarks of learning.  An apprentice must learn by doing and the first time they try something it never goes well. They are not expected to be experts at this point of the apprenticeship. That is why they learn, often through failure, from the situations in which they are put in by their mentor. Gradually, through time and experience, they get better at their craft until eventually they approach, rival, or even surpass their mentor’s skills.

If we want young people to develop their ability to learn, and we all say we do, then an apprenticeship for learning is the best model for schools.  In this model, the ability to learn is the focus and not the curriculum. The curriculum is merely the medium in which we work. The situations in which we put the young people in our classroom are what become valuable for learning and not what we “tell” them.  The apprenticeship still calls for a mentor, but the expertise is that of being a learner. Learners beget Learners, just as life begets life, so we as mentors must also be learners. It is an impossible task for a non-learner to properly mentor a learner. Which means that if we want to support an apprenticeship for learning in schools we, as the educators/mentors/experts, must be “learners” and continue to learn as well.  (see also The Red Queen Effect).  This approach in schools provides the latitude of play that Dr. Gray references with the consistency which standards provide.  It will work K-12 if we, as educators, get in the mindset that schools are an apprenticeship for learning.