Chapter 8:
Our weekly staff meetings took place in the music room, always after the last bus had left. It was nearly time for my colleague, Bonnie, and me to give a report on the status of the Theme Team — a representative group of teachers working to identify a schoolwide theme for the year.
As staff meetings sometimes go, it’s nice to mix things up a little bit once in a while, and that was exactly what Bonnie and I had in mind that day.
The voice traveled down the agenda. “Okay, Theme Team. You’re up.
What’s the latest?”
“Oh, that’s right,” I began. “We are giving a report today. We’ve been working on the theme for a while now. Bonnie, do we have any updates to share from the last meeting?”
Bonnie stood and smiled. “Yes, we do. The theme for this year is…” She paused dramatically before the announcement, “Under Construction!”
I turned to Bonnie. “Okay, we’ll keep working on it. The theme is under construction, everyone. We’ll keep working and get back to you. It might take a while.”
Bonnie smiled again and shook her head. “No. You don’t understand. The theme is “Under Construction.” That’s our theme. It’s “Under Construction!”
“Ah! Nice!” floated a comment from across the room.
At this point, anyone who was not paying attention sensed either the rising conflict, the chuckles that were starting to spread around the room, or the fact that some people were noticing something ahead of others and they didn’t want to be left out.
“Oh, I see!” I finally said, nodding my head. “I understand now!” Bonnie smiled, so I continued. “Everyone, the theme team is working really hard on the theme. It’s under construction and will probably be ready any day now.”
Bonnie’s hands flew to her hips, but this time she didn’t say anything at all — at least not with her words. She marched to the front of the room and pulled out a large sign, which she unrolled, revealing two very large words: “Under Construction.”
Applause spread throughout the room.
“Well,” I managed to say. “Keep working on it! Hopefully we’ll be able to stand up here soon and share the theme with you. I have a feeling that it won’t be long at all. And I know that I wouldn’t want to miss that moment.”
With that, Bonnie tossed the sign over my head and began explaining how this theme matched our school and our learners. She also shared some highly creative insights and ways the theme could be used to connect our learners throughout the school.
Our schoolwide theme that year reflected our reality. We had recently completed the construction of a new elementary school and were still working to thoughtfully define the qualities and attributes that would define our school community. It also reiterated the nature of the hard work to which we, as a learning community, felt committed.
Most importantly, it provided us with a context to share with the students about the nature of learning.
Soon after that meeting, I posted Big Idea 8.
“Girls and boys, today I would like to introduce another Big Idea! Big Idea 8 says, “Learning Is Construction.” This Big Idea connects to our schoolwide theme, which is “Under Construction!” Something very important about construction — or building — is that it does not happen all at once. When something is built — like a school, or a house — there are often several layers that rely on one another. You can’t build the roof until you build the walls. But you can’t build the walls until after you have built the foundation. As we learn, we are often building important foundations for ideas that we will learn much later. We also need to know that what we understand right now is standing on foundations that we have already worked very hard to build.
“Learning is construction, and that causes us to think forward about the new ideas we will build. This Big Idea also causes us to think back to the ideas we are building upon.”
Learning is far more multi-layered than I had believed it to be earlier in my career. One of the most important understandings that I continue to derive from this Big Idea is that it is impossible to separate learning from the context that makes it meaningful. Learning rests on paradigms and experiences we have spent years building and organizing, and it sets the stage for future learning.
Some of the very best learning challenges our paradigms and causes them to expand or change to accommodate surprising new information.
It is true that the strength of the walls supports the roof, but it is also true that the roof protects the walls. In many ways, the roof brings new definition to the very walls upon which it rests. Likewise, learning is much more than building layer upon layer. Those layers continually redefine one another.
Unlike a construction project that eventually reaches completion, learning is not something that should see the concrete harden around the rebar. The very foundation of learning may flex and grow and change. Thankfully — impressively — our students have a stunning capacity for learning — and for growth and change. Extremely agile, our young learners continually construct and reconstruct meaning. They cause me, on an almost daily basis, to reconstruct my thinking about their deep potential and about the nature of learning itself.