Perspectives of Learning Course Reflection Spring 2018

How do people learn? This is the guiding question for Perspectives of Learning. This question shaped everything we learned in class this semester. All our readings, and writing assignments were geared towards this question. As future teachers, it is a question we will be faced with regularly and we need to understand and accept the differences of How People Learn.

Born on a Blue Day, a memoir by Daniel Tammet was a great book for Perspectives of Learning as it examined an autistic savant with mathematical skills not to be believed, think Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Daniel was a human calculator and that made him different from his peers. The book went on to describe how he was shunned by his classmates because of his differences. His ability to remember facts and inexplicable ability to work with numbers. It offered readers an insight on how he experienced the world. I loved this book. Daniels thinking was so different than my own. It made it hard for me to relate to him. At the same time, it made me appreciate different styles of learning and it certainly made me appreciate how difficult the world can be for someone who is viewed as “different” As teachers we need to be prepared for students who learn and experience the world differently than ourselves.

 Our educational autobiographies were another great introduction to How People Learn. You learn from experience.  Each student is so different, we have different experience and view the world in so many ways. Admittedly, my greatest learning experiences have not been in the classroom. I have travel and racing to thank for many of my experiences. The Educational Autobiographies allowed us as students to dive into exactly what has shaped us. I have traveled the world, lived in many different places with vastly different cultures than my own. I’ve lived and traveled to places where I was the minority because of my skin color and the way I talked, add in my disability and you can really feel how different you are. Experiences like that change you. They change you from who you once were to someone completely new. You learn how to navigate in a new world, a little scared and fragile but you learn. If you’re lucky you can bring those experiences to light and teach other people.

 

Each class discussion we had brought a new light of understanding, there were agreements and there were disagreements, each student had something to say and many times it was something new to me or something I’d never thought of. As an example, I grew up in an affluent town in Massachusetts while this may seem like an “easy’ way to live, it is no easier or harder than a fellow classmate who grew up on a farm in rural Vermont. I knew little of Vermont until I moved here, and I’m continually surprised at how different it is and what a departure it is from my little seaside hometown. It’s forced me to come from a place of understanding, to be less judgmental and truly decipher How People Learn.