Here are just a few suggestions for administrators for promoting these conversations:
- Hire learners. Ask prospective employees, “Tell me about something that you have learned lately.” “How did you learn it?” “What are you seeking to learn more about right now?”
- Open your faculty meetings with something that you’ve just learned – and how you learned it. It does not have to be about school, instruction, education managements, or the latest theories of learning.
- Make frequent mention of your Twitter stream, RSS reader, specific bloggers you read. Again, this should not be limited to job specific topics.
- Share links to specific TED talks or other mini-lectures by interesting and smart people, then share and ask for reactions during faculty meetings, in the halls, or during casual conversations with employees and parents just before the PTO meeting.
- Include in the daily announcements, something new and interesting (Did you know that a California power utility has just gotten permission to start buying electricity from outer space?).
- Ask students in the halls what they’ve just learned. Ask them what their teachers have just learned.
- Ask teachers and other staff to write reports on their latest vacation, sharing what they learned – and publish them for public consumption.
- Ask teachers to devote one of their classroom bulletin boards to what they are learning, related or unrelated to the classroom.
- Include short articles in the schools newsletter and/or web site about research being conducted by the teachers – again, related or unrelated to the classroom.
- Learn what the parents of your students are passionately learning about, and ask them to report (text, video, Skype conversation, or in person to be recorded).
—————————————- added later ————————————– - Find ways to be playful at your school — and perhaps feel less grown-up. (see Do Grown-ups Learning?)
