While watching the video “A New Culture of Learning” (Thomas, 2012) and reading the book by the same name (Thomas & Brown, 2011) two things Thomas said really resonated with me:
If someone has a passion for something, try to stop them from learning. You can’t do it, no matter the obstacles in their way.
And,
Play combines passion, imagination, and constraint.
The first statement I had to learn for myself and has been part of my philosophy about teaching. When I was in high school, I didn’t have much of a passion for anything I was learning. Maybe an occasional book in English class, but I rarely felt compelled to really dive into what I was learning. It wasn’t until halfway through college that I discovered something I truly have a passion for – geology. Pursuing this passion led me down a road I was told I should never pursue. As I discuss in my Learning Manifesto my math teacher in high school told me never to do anything with math in my future. He told me this because I wasn’t successful in his class. Once I found my passion and a reason to learn that math I couldn’t be stopped. By this point I had the internet. I didn’t have one teacher, I had many. I found resources that allowed me to play with the concepts I wanted to learn. And I found how these concepts related to my passion.
I found it was possible to learn anything if I had a passion for it. I try pass this lesson on to my students, too. At the beginning of the year, every year, I ask what they are passionate about – what they like to do. With that information I try to relate back what we’re doing in class to why it’s important to them. My students are in high school, and like me, most of them haven’t figured out what they’re passionate about just yet. But, if I can instill a learning method where they relate what they’re learning to what they love, hopefully they can carry that lesson with them to their next learning adventure.
I love the second statement defining play because that describes creativity as well and learning is a creative process – math is creative! This is something I try to teach my math students. We often talk about how the numbers work in real life situations, but sometimes it’s fun to just play with the numbers to see the fundamentals of how equations work. I do this through play. I’ve incorporated a few examples from my students over the years in my student sample site. I give my students a few constraints, then let their imaginations do the rest. Their passions are expressed as they create! They get so involved in the process of creating they forget that they’re learning. It’s a beautiful process.
Each year I bring a few more creative play activities into my class. Eventually, I would love to be able to move away from the expected lecture, practice, test regimen, and have a class where students learn through creation.
Thomas, D. (2012). A new Culture of Learning. https://youtu.be/lM80GXlyX0U.
Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. CreateSpace?
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