Tag Archives: Learning

On My Mind

Different Eyes

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“I don’t understand how you live in different places,” a close friend once said to me. “I just feel so much better knowing how things work.”

I can absolutely understand this. Sometimes, it really is tiring to attempt something utterly banal and find yourself needing to learn a new way of doing it. For example, ATM cards in Singapore only work in bank-specific ATMs and those of their partner banks. And I don’t mean being charged a fee – I mean the card actually being accepted by the machine. Just a few months ago, a quick trip to the grocery store for flour turned into a research project about which German flour is closest to North American all-purpose flour. So I completely understand my friend’s comment. Figuring out the intricacies of living in different societies, all the small things that we take for granted until forced to think about them, can certainly be inconvenient.

However, it can also be a phenomenal opportunity to learn that there are multiple ways of doing things; that there is not necessarily right or wrong, but often just different; that people of the world have so much to share with one another.

Life in Malaysia got easier when I let go of expectations for processes and procedures. The thing would happen, just on a different timeline and with more paperwork than I was used to. There would probably be setbacks and changes. No one else was agitated or anxious, so there was no reason I should be. Just because I wanted something and had a picture it my head of what that might look like did not mean it should, would, or needed to turn out that way. Things happened and society functioned. (Full disclosure: Steep learning curve and many tears, but I am far more relaxed about procedures and waiting times than I used to be.)

It’s not only a matter of bureaucracy, though. Being in a new place requires letting go of certain deeply ingrained values, or at least a willingness to look at them carefully. The issue of media censorship in Singapore was particularly interesting to me, as someone raised in American schools in which freedom of speech is touted as the value above all values. Just because I had always understood this issue one way did not mean I should only understand it one way. Just because one society functioned based on a certain set of norms did not mean the other should, or needed to, adhere to the same norms. My understanding of the word “free” has become far more nuanced, and I have a different appreciation for the types of roles that governments take.

More recently, a comment to a friend that came as naturally to me as breathing has given me pause. I listened for a few moments and responded, “Sounds like a productive day,” something I’ve said without thinking in response to many descriptions of many days. And then came the reply: “It was a nice day. A good day. It didn’t have to be productive.” Oh. Right. (I knew I moved to Europe for a reason.) We went on to talk about productivity as an American preoccupation, one used to judge how worthwhile our lives are. A few years ago, I wrote about the problems that lie in looking to be, and claiming to be, constantly busy. I argued then that we can choose differently. In my own life I often do, but there’s clearly a deeply rooted cultural understanding or expectation of which I was unaware.

It is interesting to have this pointed out, and confronting in that it requires me to look into myself and at how I am made. We are all shaped by our experiences, and I find these compelling to dissect. This does not mean discarding all of the “old” in favour of the “new”, but rather understanding the influences I want to maintain in my current worldview and those that might benefit from revision.

As I see it, cultivating open-minded curiosity about the world around us is how we grow. This is what I have learned in my journey through the world, and this is what I hope to continually learn as the journey moves forward.

“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

On My Mind

Coming of Age

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I remember the moment when I realized I was no longer a child. But I know a few things about memory and I know that we make mistakes. Recall is often error-filled. It is malleable, fluid, heavily influenced by context and those around us. Yet, I would like to think that this moment existed as I remember it. And even if it did not, even if it’s entirely a figment of my imagination, it frames the beginning of an era that was significant to how I understand myself, others, and the world we share.

I am part of the American generation that finds commonality in where we were on September 11, 2001, the beginning of a time in which the US entered wars that are still ongoing. I remember where I was and what I said, or I think I do. But that is not the moment when I realized I was no longer a child.

I remember my dad watching TV in my parents’ bedroom and I remember asking him to explain to me what was happening. He talked about people doing terrible things and I asked why. I can’t remember what he said, but I walked away understanding, for the first time, that hatred and war don’t only exist in books.

That moment, I knew I was no longer a child.

There is a clear separation in my mind between life before and after grade 6, a separation that I knew existed but one that I did not delve into until a handful of years ago. When my parents split up for just under a year, I learned that adults are people, that love takes work, and that bad things really happen. They don’t only exist in books.

It is hard now to think about the anguish I felt as a not-quite-child at that time. It is hard to think about how awful I was in my actions towards people who were deeply hurting, even as I knew I was screaming only because there was something ripping me apart and I couldn’t make it stop.

The opening line of an essay I wrote when applying to university: “I used to make him cry and I did it on purpose.”

I was 11 and my world had shattered.

I was 11 and my world had shattered, which meant that I knew worlds could shatter. I knew impermanence, disappointment, fear, and a thousand emotions I could not name then and cannot name now.

But I learned, I think we all learned, lessons that I would not have learned any other way. I have always known that relationships are a choice. They take work, they take communication, they take people who care enough about each other to do something to be together. Love is a verb and sometimes the word itself is not enough. I have understood this for a long time.

Suicide bombers flew into Manhattan’s Twin Towers. Two months and two weeks later, my family lived in two houses and I watched adults cry. I cried with them and I was no longer a child.

However, it is one thing to understand and another thing to do. It is one thing to be aware and another thing to act. Lots of walls, lots of work, and so much safer to rebuild the walls than to stand tall without them.

We’re all afraid of being hurt, aren’t we?

And I have never wanted to hurt anyone. I do believe that most people feel this way. And this is what makes it hard to not only know what the right thing is, but to do it.

When I learned that the world and my world could change in seconds, I was no longer a child.

And there was no turning back.

Thüringer Wald – January 2022
Education

The world is a complex place. Discuss.

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“So, what exactly is ToK?”

ToK, or Theory of Knowledge, is the IB Diploma Programme’s core class, the class that is grounded in the real world and supposed to help students make connections across their six subjects and to their everyday experiences. I love what this course aims to do and the way the newest curriculum has been designed. (And no, I am not being paid to say that.) I’ve been teaching ToK for four years now and the most common question I get from students and families is the question above: “So, what exactly is ToK?”

I generally explain that ToK is the class that allows us to say, ‘The world is a complex place. Discuss.’ It is a course that emphasizes critical thinking about the world around us.

The adults are generally intrigued by this and express regret at not having had such a course, or excitement that their students will have this opportunity. The students typically look at me with bemused or skeptical expressions and I hedge: “It’ll make sense after about a year.”

Generally, it does. It takes time to learn to think critically (and it also takes brain development, which is often neglected in popular conversation). It further takes maturity, and therefore time, to develop the academic confidence to do so. The expectations for critical thinking are remarkably high in many aspects of the IB Diploma, although unfortunately not so high in the media cycles our students are bombarded with as they try to navigate the world.

As a humanities/social studies/individuals and societies teacher, critical thinking is an area of learning that I am required to teach and assess, and provide feedback on student progress. This is hard to do, especially when students are young, and far too often, the emphasis on test scores robs students and teachers of the classroom time for discussions and activities that might actually build critical thinking skills. And yet, there is clearly a desire in society for students to leave school knowing how to think critically. (My somewhat lengthy reflection on that idea from years ago, which remains valid today, is here.)

Recently I had a moment with a grade 10 student in which he walked away having learned something and I walked away feeling like we’d done something right. I’ve been an educator for over ten years now and sometimes it’s still hard to know. We went over the instructions for a task in which students were to consider an essential system in daily life, break it down into parts and rank the parts by importance, and then construct a visual representation. (I take no credit for the task; there are some real gems in teacher resource books and I hadn’t even been the one to find it.)

The young man looked at me and I clarified the instructions further. He looked down at the text in front of him, paused, and then said, “It’s not so easy, actually.”

I nodded. “Exactly. That’s exactly the point.”

“Mhm. Okay,” he said and got straight to work.

Discussing the task after visuals were created and presented, students commented on how the activity had made them think about what we generally don’t think about, areas that seem obvious but are not so obvious when we take the time to look. Precisely. This is critical thinking, and this is what I pointed out to students. I urged them to be careful when looking at something that seems complicated and someone exclaims, ‘It’s so obvious.’ That’s how you immediately know it’s not so obvious. We talked about conspiracy theorists and how they look for simple answers to complex questions. If the answers were simple and straightforward, we wouldn’t have the questions.

Another activity that I use with many age groups is considering the significance of events in the news. We read the news for 7-10 minutes and students are asked to share not only what they read, but also why it is important. It’s always to watch critical thinking develop here, and to look at the connections students are or are not able to make. This also gives me information about which students to push and in which directions.

A final recent example is from one of my favourite teaching techniques that I learned as an undergrad. (Yes, we do learn techniques! There are methods!) Students were provided with a debatable question, positions assigned (for the most part, not the positions the students themselves would have chosen), and background reading provided. Students developed arguments in favour of the assigned side, presented them to an opposing group, took notes as the other group spoke, and then were able to provide an informed answer to the debatable question.

Significant value in this lesson comes in the debrief, by which point the bigger purpose is clear to most students. It’s a challenging skill to look at a perspective you don’t agree with because it forces you to consider arguments in its favour. This then means that you have a better understanding of your own perspective because you actually know what the other side is saying, which means you have evidence to counter what they are saying. I always appreciate when students say that they were actually persuaded by the other side because they realized ideas that they hadn’t thought of before. This is why we take the time to look at the other side. (I also like to bridge into psychology – cognition, confirmation bias, active listening.)

A critical part of my role as an educator is to prepare students for their assessments. As much as I might wish otherwise, it would be irresponsible and unethical to ignore this. But an equally critical part of my role as an educator is to raise young people who are able to contribute to the world and help it become better and more peaceful. This requires them to learn, to think, to reflect, and to learn some more.

The world is a complex place. Discuss.

Trieste, Italy – January 2020