Learning and Teaching: How do we do it?

I think that most people are learning and teaching for most of their lives.  We can learn new things almost every day if we are curious. We can share our knowledge with others almost as frequently.  Learning and teaching require great listening and/or observational skills. They both require asking questions.

Those of us who love to learn perhaps don’t appreciate our own knowledge that others could benefit from. I suppose it takes confidence to learn and to teach. We can learn and we can teach in the same interactions, or perhaps we focus on one thing or the other at different times.  Have you ever thought about when you learn and when you teach? Do you know what conditions in your environment help you learn or teach?

Sometimes learning is easy, like osmosis, sometimes it’s fun, like a Duolingo game/lesson, or engaging, when strolling in a park and observing the natural world around you, and sometimes it’s frustrating, like a Duolingo lesson/game. Sometimes teaching is fun when the learner is engaged and happy, and sometimes it’s frustrating when the learner just doesn’t want to learn. Have you ever considered that it’s harder for some people to learn when they are not confident that they can learn? That’s why learning the building blocks or the basics first helps build confidence.

Some people have a natural intuition about how things work.  I have met several people who never look at directions on how to build something, and yet still can figure it out. Some of these people are the ones who pulled things apart when they were kids to try and figure out how the darn thing worked (guilty). This can be a very dangerous way to learn…

Next time you catch yourself learning something or teaching something, please write it down and send it to me.  With your permission, I’ll share your stories in a future post.