My Learning Manifesto

I first wrote this series of state­ments as grad­u­ate stu­dent in 1999 as a way to artic­u­late my val­ues, moti­va­tions and strate­gies. It con­tin­ues to guide my teach­ing and learn­ing practice

Act like learn­ing mat­ters (because it does)

1. Let events and peo­ple influ­ence you. There is a lot of power in being a learner; only you can choose to be open to experiences.
2. Take time to won­der. A relaxed mind, briefly unteth­ered from an oth­er­wise full sched­ule, is open to serendip­i­tous expe­ri­ences and serendip­i­tous learning.
3. Make learn­ing per­sonal. You will only learn if you believe that a new insight, a new idea, or a new form has sig­nif­i­cance for you. (This is a no-brainer; but a lot of effort can go into doing otherwise).
4. Ask ques­tions. Of your­self, or even bet­ter, some­one else. Active dis­cus­sion and debate improves crit­i­cal think­ing, and helps you grasp the sig­nif­i­cance about what you are learning.
5. Lis­ten care­fully to alter­na­tive points of view. Resist con­sum­ing opin­ion after opin­ion when they merely reaf­firm your own. (This is very dif­fi­cult to do consistently).
6. Think like a researcher. Effec­tive research atti­tudes also char­ac­ter­ize effec­tive learn­ing strate­gies: be curi­ous, be skep­ti­cal, be project ori­ented, sus­tain open-endedness, and con­tin­u­ally experiment.
7. Become com­fort­able with con­fu­sion. Con­fu­sion pre­cedes learn­ing. This prin­ci­ple comes from Mar­garet Wheat­ley who rec­om­mends that we trust life’s self-organizing processes. “I’m learn­ing to par­tic­i­pate with things as they unfold, to expect to be sur­prised, to enjoy the mys­tery of it, and to sur­ren­der to how much I don’t know and can never know.”
8. Take respon­si­bil­ity for other learn­ers. Cre­ate a safe place for dis­cus­sion, encour­age for­tu­itous encoun­ters, and dis­cover what they find mean­ing­ful. This is how you begin to rec­og­nize that you have suf­fi­cient, sig­nif­i­cant shared inter­ests that trig­ger change.
9. Be vig­i­lant to con­text. Fig­ure out what mat­ters, what works, what endures. Again, to quote Mar­garet Wheat­ley who writes about the value of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the moment, “The present moment over­flows with infor­ma­tion about our­selves and our envi­ron­ment. But so many of those learn­ings fly by unob­served because we’re pre­oc­cu­pied with our images of how we want the world to be.”