Welcome to my classroom!

Lesson plans versus learning experiences

Welcome to my Learning Experiences Newsletter! 

I have spent the last twenty years working to improve the classroom experience for my students. 

As an educator, I no longer see myself as just a “teacher.” I think of myself as a designer of learning experiences. Instead of believing that I hold all of the answers to complete a task or solve a problem or communicate a concept, I work alongside my students to design learning experiences that immerse everyone in flow.

I don’t believe that teachers should be be content-delivery managers or authoritarian adults. Academic content and learning are not things to be managed or delivered.

Being student-centered is at the core of my pedagogical process.

I have learned that my classroom can’t be an artificial learning environment where relationships are only built on the first day of school. Learning is part of those relationships. If I want students to be lifelong learners, I need to build trust with each of my students and help them build strong relationships with each other as well as with the content.

I believe that learning is connected to each individual learner. It involves passion, challenge, and connection to both the real world and relevance to the student. It is both a messy and cyclical process. When something doesn’t work, I make modifications and try again. Learning is supposed to be fun! 

I run learning experiments in my classroom. I take what I learn and engineer engaging, meaningful learning experiences for each and every one of my students.

Lesson Plans vs. Learning Experiences

As educators, we understand the lesson plan. As pre-service teachers, we were expected to create lesson plans to be graded by our professors. In some school districts, teachers are still expected to submit lesson plans to their administrator for approval. How often have you thought about the purpose of a lesson plan? What really is a lesson plan? Put simply, a lesson plan is a teacher’s detailed description of the course of instruction. Some educational texts refer to this as the “learning trajectory” for a lesson (although I have never heard teachers use this term). A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide class learning. Details will vary depending on the preference of the teacher and subject being covered. In some cases, teachers will also adapt their lesson plan to better serve the needs of their students. This guide can also include the goal (what the students are supposed to learn), how the goal will be reached (the method, procedure) and a way of measuring how well the goal was reached (test, worksheet, homework).

Traditional lesson plans miss having a strong purpose or meaning.

In Japan, there is a specific term for this type of purpose: ikigai. It embodies the idea of happiness in living. In the United States, many understand ikigai as an overlapping intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. Ikigai is something deeper, however. It’s the reason people wake up in the morning.

Illustration by Sarah Shin, George Washington University

In 2001, Akihiro Hasegawa, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Toyo Eiwa University wrote about how the word ikigai is a vital part of everyday Japanese language. It is composed of two words: iki, which means life and gai, which describes value or worth. According to Hasegawa, the origin of the word ikigai goes back to the Heian period (794 to 1185). “Gai comes from the word kai (“shell” in Japanese, considered highly valuable), and from there ikigai derived as a word that means value in living” (Hasegawa & Hoshi, 2001). Over time, ikigai evolved to be thought of as a comprehensive concept that incorporates such values in life.

Hasegawa points out that in English, the word life means both lifetime and everyday life. So, ikigai translated as life’s purpose sounds grand. “But in Japan we have jinsei, which means lifetime and seikatsu, which means everyday life,” says Hasegawa. The concept of ikigai aligns more to seikatsu and, through his research, Hasegawa discovered that Japanese people believe that the sum of everyday small joys results in a more fulfilling life as a whole (Mitsuhashi, 2017).

Most lesson plans are not designed with a strong sense of life purpose or passion or the needs of a community. Students don’t remember lessons 20 years later. They barely remember them once the bell rings! By definition lesson plans are an isolated incidents (even if planned) that come and go without much impact or joy. Some classroom projects can be memorable, but lesson plans tend to be a collection of brief activities that move a child from one day to the next, from one grade level to the next, without much thought placed on how these activities make the students feel and what impact they have on students’ lives.

Authentic and meaningful learning experiences show students the infinite learning possibilities available to all of us on any given day at any given moment.

This is how I run my classroom. 

In this newsletter, I will share with you all that I have learned about teaching and learning and designing learning experiences. All students crave academic experiences that mirror their everyday lives. Students have a desire to feel efficacious with regards to their cultural and academic identities. Teachers want to be trusted to do what they feel is best for their students. Therefore, it is up to teachers and other school leaders to make learning joyful and connect it to students’ lives both inside and outside of the classroom. Using human-centered design thinking engages students in experiential learning and contributes to their academic development. Learning experiences, not lesson plans, help students connect their culture, race, ethnicity, gender and academic abilities to the world around them.

My students learn with me as much as for me. Through this newsletter, I hope you learn with me as I continue to design, test, tweak and share our learning experiences throughout the school year. I plan to share my favorite resources for creating memorable learning experiences, my most fantastic fails and hopefully some inspiring success stories.

Welcome to my classroom!