Friday, September 12, 2014

If We Knew How to Trust

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If We Knew How to Trust


we see the amazing effort
young kids put into learning to walk and talk
(this work is their play),
and we know they are capable
of miraculous feats of learning.

if only we knew how to trust
their ability to continue learning
just as powerfully and miraculously,
maybe we could build a school system
that would honor every child’s fierce desire
to master the world’s skills.

their differences would no longer sort them
into good, mediocre, and bad students,
but into artists, scientists, poets, musicians, mathematicians,
writers, inventors, leaders, organizers, and more.
and each child would be many of these,
their differences adding to their strength as a community,
their school an ecosystem of learning.



written by Sue VanHattum, inspired by Lisa Cooley, 2014



1 comment:

  1. Why is this trust so hard?

    Another perspective that compliments this: everything we are trying to teach them was cool or exciting for someone at sometime. For example, even double entry bookkeeping was a major innovation!

    I've started teaching a little programming class at my child's school. Basically, my approach is to combine these two ideas. I show them some cool things and then encourage them to play. Mostly, this involves not standing in their way or removing some minor obstacle or misunderstanding that is blocking them. The big obstacles, though, they get the joy and satisfaction of tackling themselves.

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