Educators, stop fantasizing about the perfect student to fit your perfect lesson in your perfect school. They don’t exist. Educators, students and schools are what they are.
They are imperfect and sometimes messy with bravado. That’s one part of their genius, their humanity peaking through the rigid structure of education in its many forms.
Humans share in common another part of this genius. Fantasies may hide it, but it peaks through the imperfections and bravados of schooling when you look and listen for it. Experimental scientists have been describing how this common part works for over 100 years: people learn!
These descriptions of scientists have a twist that makes some educators so uncomfortable that they return to fantasies of idealistic perfection, a Platonic vision of teachers, students and their families as well as of schools where everything works together.
Scientists describe what exists, including what people do while learning teachers’ lessons in schools. Simply stated, learners make choices that result in learning.
Here’s the twist. Those lessons that learners learn match the choices learners will likely make. That means that teachers who match likely choices of learners in their lessons more likely have students who learn their lessons.
From this view, called a learners’ view (ALV) of learning, educators who expect students to “bend” to fit lessons and rules are fantasizing an ideal reality that educators do not share when they learn something. When educators do bend to fit lessons, they leave professional development sessions expounding the virtues and utility of that session for accelerating, increasing, and deepening learning of all students promptly and sometimes dramatically.