A good sign that a class, course, or workshop went well is when I (the facilitator) learn something from it. Last week our first Facilitating Individualized Education workshop had a few of those learning moments. The workshop reminded me about what motivates learning. Rarely do someone else’s desires or interests serve as good motivation for learning. Who has ever learned a subject well because their parents wanted them to? Yet how often have we tried to get good grades in order to please our parents? The habit of listening to other people’s considerations likely settles in at an early age, and it is a hard habit to break.
Desire, inspiration, interest: these are the things that fuel true learning. Obligation, expectation, and fear do not do the same thing. Many of us have learned to learn in order to satisfy what others expect from us. How often have we heard the phrase, “you should learn X, you’ll need it later,” and then later never materialized?
Facilitating individualized education means we have to listen to the learner. Listen to what they are interested in, to how they take in information, to how they express themselves. True learning requires that we listen to the voice in our own head that does not want to listen, the voice that says “I know best.” As teachers, we have to practice being of service to the being in front of us more than to the system in which we find ourselves. The system in which we are learning will change. The people with whom you work are the source of inspiration for how the system will change.
Accept people as they are, not as you want them to be.
Abraham Maslow, on the self-actualized
Facilitating individualized education starts with that kind of listening. It is slower than telling, and it is the only kind of learning that lasts. There is an upcoming workshop here in midtown Toronto for anyone who wants to explore it further.