The centre of every educator lies a schema or set of rules they apply to how they educate young people and themselves. I start my classes with a story of how they learn to walk, using blooms taxonomy posters on the wall. The human brain gets a stimulus and for a reason, we as 6-12 month old decides its time. Might be the need to know what that noise was, might be the need to find out a smell from the kitchen and might just be you are sick of everyone else walking off and leaving you crawling behind.
But at that point you apply some previous knowledge, remembering that there was a table next to the lounge that I could pull myself up on, I did that the other night. Once there, and standing you examine your brother and he places one foot in front of the other and leans forward.  While still holding the table you test this movement and evaluate that it may just work. While standing your legs are getting tired so you begin to create the short journey which you are about to embark upon. At this point you look around the room to analyse any further challenges to the success journey from table to lounge on the other side of the room. Showing the fear on your face you embark upon this first walking journey and make it successfully to the lounge then fall to the floor with a massive smile on your face and your parents cheering in the background for something that over the ensuing months will bring much pain to all of you. But ignorance is bliss.
Here starts the journey of life-long learning and how to scaffold it the explain the why, how, what and when of your life journey. It really doesn’t matter what format you share it in, the important thing is that it is understandable to others.

There are no answers to many of the questions we ask as we face our learning journey, in fact what we meant to learn did not end up being what I did learn. As a educator of some 20+ years of experience learning has stumbled upon is in deed quite confrontational.

Setting out a learning journey for every student in my class of 30 and working myself hard to gain quality relationship with every child it appears that maybe I should not be working as hard. Children have to learn how to build relationships and children have to learn how to build their own journey through life. They need to read the faces of their peers as they try to tell him to "shut up their trying to learn". But no, the ever stoic teacher yells at him to be quite before he even looks at his mates, as the principle walks past this noisy classroom with a teacher yelling and wonders why he ever allowed that teacher to become a coach. Meanwhile the teacher is thinking wow that was close the headmaster just walked by and saw me getting the class back on track. The reality as a practitioner is that the whole situation really needs a overhaul and real relational understandings need to be built between all parties in the educational arena.

What challenges me the most on a daily basis is the systems of learning we have set by people who don't learn! The idea that the sharing of failure is critical to success, the idea that to create and design something new is a truly difficult act. But we continue to work within frameworks that exist and use techniques that we have used over time. Is it just me or can we all see this glaring issue that our current learning apparatus is only going to create more of the same issues. I love teaching however, I love learning with my students more the teaching my students as they challenge me to grow also. The true nature of learning is to learn to adapt to the environment in which we live and the animals and plants we live here with. The custodians of this great country in which we live are begging us to learn that our journey of learning must not impact on the journey of Mother Nature, for if it does then we have much to learn.
Mother Nature also sends us stimulus and metalanguage in the weather, the rain the heat and the animals, like that young boy in class what we chose to do sit firmly in our learning journey.

The idea of being unemployed for a period is daunting, but it is placing me in a space that leaves me a little cold on what education is. I truly love what I do, I live what I do, and I rarely stop thinking about what makes the human body learn from birth to death.


It is this inquisitive nature I believe we are missing in our schools. The environment in which students can explore, break and make mistakes in all they do.

Then innovate, empathize and create the 21 century thinking to get this world back on track!
G

The 25 years of my life I have been working as a teacher much of that time I have spent in the domain of "intellect" believing to my core that all things came from this point and that everything could be explained by decisions or choices made in that domain.

11 years ago I had children and found myself in a emotional place that I had not truly understood. I loved my wife and felt extremely defensive of her and myself many times but suddenly something was different.

It has taken me much research and many hours to understand that "there are some things about our body we cannot control" we simple need to recognise and seriously avoid if we can.

The Amydala a part of the brain which just does what it does with no regret for anything else. So I am learning stuff I wish I learnt at university, how to better understand me? What are my triggers? What should I do when one gets triggered? What are the effects on those around me when this happens?

These are fast becoming the kinds of discussions had in my classroom on a daily basis! What I find interesting in all this is that my students are so massively interested in my inability to control certain aspects of me. They then begin to ask questions about themselves and share their stories with their peers!

Emotionally healthy classroom is such a beautiful foundation to build everything else upon!

Reflections upon 😂😡😍😐😟😠😰😩

Learning for me at this current point in my journey would be described more like a 'awakening' or a 'catalyst'.

This is because it appears as a small insight like a fish hitting the surface of a perfectly reflective calm pond and then continues to ripple out in uncontrollable circles in my life. However it usually isn't at the point of a event, it is when glancing back upon that event that I become aware of my learning.

Upon reflection of my sharing with students that in order to have this deep understanding of their learning we MUST first give them the time to recognize that learning in themselves.

I guess this is something I always new but in these busy 21st century learning times with so much pressure on the speed & accuracy of what they and we do, I really needed to reinforce this in my head!

#20yr+educatorlearning

Doing this education thing has been great but the more I discuss and talk with educators especially the young ones I am concerned we are lacking solid boundaries. The need for educators to take a look at themselves and the time they put in over and above.

My feeling is we are reaching a point where we are losing many excellent young educators due to the subtle but ever present pressure applied by systems used within administration in our schools.

The implementation processes of many things, eg Technology and Australian Curricula to mention two! There are of course many more.

These implementation procedures have in my opinion failed across many schools due to the lack of time and feedback opportunities for actual classroom teachers to engage with these programs and then give accurate and concise feedback to implementer.

So where has this left us, again in a place where educators do everything they can for the students in front of them with the skill set they have.

The thing I see as most scary is that teachers are thinking they are doing the best possible, but as they have little ability to collaborate due to out dated building design they are doing identical things in their classrooms and are unaware!

Building design and furnishings in buildings of our educational institutions needs to change to allow collaborative spaces for learners both teacher and student to do their best work utilising 21st century technology. This saves teachers time in their lives with their families and loved ones!

Why is stimulus so important to what educators do? The idea that the day starts with a human opening their eyes due to a thought and from then on it is all about reaction to stimulus!

Given the ever increasing stimulus around humans, I believe it to be a reasonable assumption that the 21st century learner is driven is very capable of processing stimuli.

Where I think we need to place our efforts as quality educators is in the contextual interpretation and the empathetic response to the stimulus in front of us!

This cannot be seen heard or tasted in has to be taught/learned through interaction with other humans and the understanding of cause and effect of relationship!

Restorative Justice is looking very good in the light of this new awareness of mine!

The idea that I as a teacher with experience in teaching knowledge over so many years is now obsolete is threatening! But what I have discovered is that we hold deep in our subconscious a extremely valuable resource that only I have the key to drive. This resource is the combined knowledge and skill of learning how to build quality relationships with students, that in turn enables me to motivate.

I have this activity that I do to show kids how important learning is and it goes like this:

Student D

Work for 1 minute per day on the subjects you had that day!

You have that subject 3 times a week!

You have 40 weeks in a year!

How much work has he/she done in a year?

Student A

Works for 10 minutes per day on the subjects you had for that day!

You have that subject 3 times a week!

You have 40 weeks in a year!

How much work has he/she done in a year?

Do you think MOTIVATION plays a role in what you know?

That's the activity its a good one, but today I used this on myself! This is what happened!

I build relationships with roughly 25 students per lesson!

I have on average 5 lessons per day!

In a year I do this for 40 weeks in a classroom environment!

I have been doing this for 23 years!

Do you think I know how to build relationships that will foster learning of new skills and knowledge for students even if I don't know the content and they do?

115 000 interactions suddenly I realised that this was more about me being there to support, create pathways, guide, celebrate and love learning with, rather than the giving of knowledge!

One of my favourite #'s is having a conversation on "research" tonight and I found myself wondering what it was. Research in my opinion is the determination of new fact or opinion from multiple sources of data or sourced opinion. It needs to give a answer.

But when it is applied to education and learning I feel this becomes a little different, especially when dealing with youth. The word "art" comes into play and this implies feelings and emotions and they are not either fact or opinion from multiple sources.

This is a reaction of one educated professional adult based on their experiences that leads them to react to a set stimuli in a particular way. This then creates a set of hopefully positive behavioural reactions to occur and thus quality learning for a child.

I worry that by the time the research is done the reaction will be to late! The 21st century moves very fast and education has historically adapted poorly to change, and it is this cycle we need to look hardest at?

The "research" maybe is needed not in the learning bit, but in the systems education uses to stay current to the generation that it is educating!

I my last few years I have spent a lot of time reading lots of different strategies from lots of different places in the world. Something I have noticed is there is a growing number of strategies for sale for school/educators to bolster the classroom structure. $$$'s flow out of schools to these Strategy Builder's for their knowledge about how relationships work.

I want to share what I have learnt,

• People don't like being let down.

•The more you get let down the less you trust.

•Trust is a "need" in the classroom.

•Trust is earned.

•Earning trust takes time

•I have many more tasks every year due to these strategies therefore the less time I have to earn trust.

I see a pattern, far be it for me a simple teacher to say "let's get back to basics" but at some point maybe we need to.

Advice for young teachers is build that trust. Advice for Senior teachers continue to work on that trust. Advice for administrators the biggest gift you can give your teachers is time and the trust that they will use it well! Remember your teachers are kids at heart and they want your trust too!