Consider how messy, and amazing, and beautiful, and complicated learning is in the 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. |
This...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.
As students travel through the process, their awareness of their growing strengths empowers them to keep learning more about learning itself. They will understand that very often wrestling, struggling, and contending with ideas is at the heart of learning. One of the greatest strengths they can develop is the willingness to enter into risky territory and to grapple with new concepts.