Learning and Doing

I love to learn.  I seriously do.  I'm not to big a fan of homework and projects and papers and such, but the learning - I LOVE it. As a teacher, I have to go to workshops and take classes to keep my certifications current, so I get to indulge my love of learning.  However those aren't always the topics I want to study.  This summer, I took a math class for several reason.  First, I can use it toward my certification renewals, but also, I am really horrible at math, and this class helped me and will allow me to help my students.  So while I got to indulge my love of learning, it still wasn't a topic that I had a burning passion to learn more about, and I had to shell out some serious money to pay for the college class.  Paying isn't necessarily a negative, but it can get rather expensive. I needed to find a place where I could indulge my love of learning without breaking the bank, AND have an opportunity to learn about things just for the fun of it.  There are night classes offered during the school year at a neighboring school…

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Teaching Others to Help Yourself – Chris Cade

"We teach that which we most need to learn." ~ David Bach Some version of that quote has been used by leaders for as long as I can remember, and for good reason. While it's wonderful when we learn something new, the best way to integrate new knowledge and make it stick in our lives is to teach it. This is because teaching challenges us to really understand what we're learning. It challenges us to understand it with such clarity that we can effectively communicate it to others. Teaching also exposes us to feedback from others, and that feedback is helpful (and sometimes even necessary) for us to understand something deeply enough to integrate it into our lives. Those are just a few of the benefits you get by teaching something. Studies have shown that when you are first learning something, that if you teach it to somebody shortly thereafter, you'll remember what you learn more effectively and understand it more thoroughly. In fact, some teaching methods ~ ironically ~ require students to immediately turn around and teach others what they learn. The beauty of this approach is that it doesn't only deepen learning; it also creates more effective leaders…

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