Perspective on how students learn (Tuesday 6/29)

The Question: What does Mike Wesch believe about how students learn?  How does he act on those beliefs?

Mike Wesch believes that student learn when their investment in their learning is rooted in personal interests. Further, he believes that students learn through being challenged and solving these challenges. For Wesch, learning is an activation of the skills needed to foster the confidence to "keep loving ourselves when we fall and [know] that one of these days we will make it" (Wesch). He acts on his beliefs of how students learn by finding out what truly drives his students and proceeding to create learning environments that embrace and center student passions. Wesch works to make learning in his classroom purposeful.

Through his Ted Talk, Mike Wesch works to define learning for his students as, "Living inside of learning. Doing something they love. Challenging themselves" (Wesch). 

Wesch explains, in his Ted Talk, his beliefs about how students learn through repeated reference to the analogy of his son, Baby George, learning how to step off the stairs. How he actually measures student engagement and investment in learning comes from countless lunches with his students. Each lunch is an open discussion with one rule: No small talk. Through these lunches Wesch concludes, "It became apparent that there were actually three really important questions that were driving students and they were completely ignored in the classroom. And those questions were: Who am I? What am I gonna do? Am I gonna make it?" (Wesch). 

Baby George getting up after he falls and trying again. On repeat. 

Wesch follows up with past students who are now alumni. "when I asked him what education was about, what he could get from classes like mine, he said it wasn't that he learned how to make a living. It gave him the resources to go through these dark nights of the soul and allowed him to build up a life that was worth it. And of course it gave hime the ability to love himself enough to pick himself back up on the step again" (Wesch). This reflection on education connects directly to one of this courses's anchors: Education: as Empowering. 

Wesch opens his talk by analyzing the lecture hall that was his first classroom. He shares, "I am an anthropologist and I study all humans, all times and all places. And I've been to a lot of pretty strange places, a lot of places all over the world, but the strangest place I've ever studied is right here. This is my classroom" (Wesch). Wesch goes on to discuss the common recognition that their is school and then their was the real world and that they are two separate entities. This lead him to a discussion on the set-up of a lecture hall, the large speakers and large screens directed at fixed seats, he notes that this design tells us that learning is all about, "dumping information into people's heads" (Wesch). This thought mirrors Sir Ken Robinson's critique that, "Teaching is a creative profession, not a delivering profession" (Robinson). Further, in observation of teaching, he says, "If no one is learning anything, she may be engaged in the task of teaching, but not actually fulfilling it. The role of a teacher is to facilitate learning. That's it." (Robinson).

"Real learning helps us to realize that we are more than our score. And that learning is a lot more than what can be scored... We just have to keep on loving ourselves when we fall and that one of these days we will make it"

- Mike Wesch