Chapter 17:
Learning is about making connections. This is an idea that grew in many different ways over time. Before this statement pointed to the power of relationships within the classroom community, it presented the idea that we connect new learning to existing learning. There is a great deal of power in examining current learning and current understandings. Many times, powerful learning opportunities emerge when we shift our focus from learning “new ideas” to learning more about what we already know — or at least what we have begun to understand.
Ideas can be grown. They can be developed. They can be examined and furthered. This is a clear reality that rubs against the grain of our need for completion and tidiness in learning. If there is one word that fails to describe learning, it is “tidy.”
Consider how messy, and amazing, and beautiful, and complicated learning is in a classroom setting where so many unique students are learning and growing their ideas about the same concept using several different methods. Understandings may constantly be developing, sprouting, extending, and connecting in a wide variety of ways that we were neither intending nor anticipating.
A tempting inclination to respond to the messiness of classroom learning may be to attempt to contain it to the measurable, to the succinct, to the quantifiable. Don’t do it. Instead, acknowledge that learning is a natural and often untamed expression of how we make sense of our encounters with life. And frequently, life is messy.
It is true that those specific, identifiable parts of content learning are extremely important.
Yet there is much more that can be unleashed if we resist the urge to contain learning to activities and outcomes that can be easily identified or measured.
There is the wild dare into the very nature of learning that can feel extremely risky. It is a risk into the unknown and the unpredictable. It can be very uncomfortable. But that is the very risk that needs to be embraced. So I posted the next Big Idea on the wall.
“Today I would like to share a new Big Idea. This is Big Idea 17: ‘Grow Your Ideas.’ You are powerful learners with powerful ideas. The ideas that you have will become bigger and deeper and stronger as you learn more about them.
“You can use those ideas to help you understand new ideas. But you can do something else, too. You can use the ideas that you have to help you understand your own ideas more and more.
“When you learn something new, that is not the end of your learning about that idea. Learning something new is a beginning. It is the start of a journey with that idea. Your learning will grow and grow and grow. I want you to understand that learning does not come in completed packages. Learning grows.
“When you learn something new, it may feel powerful and amazing. Because it is. But it is also a beginning. It opens up the door to learning even more. It is important to understand that new learning is not an end. New learning is a beginning, especially when we decide to grow that learning. Especially when we decide to grow our ideas.
“Let your learning become big. Give it space to grow. Expect to learn more and more about what you are learning. Don’t wait for someone else to help your ideas to grow. You be the one to make your ideas grow. You be the one to cause your learning to become rich, and deep, and strong. You be the one to grow your ideas.
“That is exactly what our new Big Idea means. It says, ‘Grow Your Ideas.’ As we learn together, let’s all do that. Let’s all grow our ideas!”
This Big Idea creates space for students and teachers to seek a growing depth of understanding over time. I have discovered that it provides an unexpected freedom to me as a teacher. This concept allowed me to pursue a further understanding that the depth and richness of learning does not have to be contained within a single lesson.
Growing our ideas means that we are never finished with them. In fact, it signifies the opposite. If these ideas are truly important, we will certainly return to them. Sometimes we return to them in ways that are anticipated or carefully orchestrated. Yet due to the wild nature of learning, we may return to ideas unexpectedly. When that happens, we may be surprised by unplanned, but welcomed, growth.