Your Own Experience Is your Ally
Take Action Based on Your Own Situation
This Book Can Help
Networking Will Enhance Your Efforts
Biographical Information
Afterword by Kelly Patrick Gerling
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You have read some or all of this book. Where do you go? What do you do? Whether you are a parent, an educator in a traditional school, an educator in a non-traditional organization, a student, a writer, or another interested person, here are four suggestions:
- Your own experience is your ally.
- Take action based on your own situation.
- This book can help.
- Networking will enhance your efforts.
Your Own Experience Is Your Ally
Think about your less-than-enthusiastic experiences of being educated. Perhaps there were periods of boredom, and incidents of pain (I recall many). Perhaps you watched the clock in the back of the classroom hoping it would magically speed up (I did). Perhaps you remember looking out the window, daydreaming about what you really wanted to do (I did that a lot! And a few times my daydreams were rudely interrupted by the loud sound of a book slamming on my desk).
Aside from such problematic experiences, you may have memories of enthusiastic learning at different times in your life. Recall what you did, explored, and learned of your own accord. Recall the fun of such learning. Remember what you learned because you wanted to learn it. (In my case, my dad took me fishing, gave me books to read, and invited me to watch dark skies for meteors and constellations. He asked questions and encouraged me to do the same. He told me the names of every tree we encountered—even the scientific Latin name. Overall, he encouraged me to explore my interests and he considered them to be important. He is the educator I remember most fondly.)
Your less-than-enthusiastic experiences of education and your enthusiastic experiences of learning matter. They help you determine what to prevent and what to advocate for students and their education. Take Action Based on Your Own Situation
Pay attention to your situation. It presents your opportunities for what to do. You can't do everything. You can do what YOU can do. If you are a parent, your children need your support and guidance. If you are an educator in a traditional school, you can be a source of innovation and change, getting and responding to feedback from students. If you are an educator in a non-traditional program of some sort, you can improve what is happening there. If you are a student, speak out, for you are a client of your educational organization. If you are a legislator, legislate innovatively. If you are an administrator, administrate to help. If you are a school board member, make significant proposals.
Whoever you are, you can help reduce or eliminate the experiences of boredom and incidents of pain in young people. And you can help young people experience opportunities for enthusiastic learning.
Helping people learn is natural. Human beings are pleasure seekers, tool makers, hunters, gatherers, and city builders; but above all, they are learners. Human beings learn. Think about whom you can help. Think about what you can teach. Do what you can do to make a difference. This Book Can Help
Creating Learning Communities represents a guide to the kinds of innovative, responsible action that will bring out the inner potential of young people.
Some of the ideas and assumptions in this book are borrowed from other fields and domains. Some emerge from anthropology. Some draw from biology and cosmology. Others hail from philosophy. You don't need to believe everything in the book to use it. Instead, you might consider this book to be like a smorgasbord.
Creating Learning Communities is a smorgasbord of ideas and options, methods and ideas. When you are walking through the line at a smorgasbord, you don't have to put everything on your plate. You may want to taste the unfamiliar, since it is available. You can sample the familiar and enjoy it. By the time you reach the end of the line, you've got a unique, tasty feast on your plate.
Creating Learning Communities helps you put together your own tasty educational feast, whether the plate is for you or someone else. If you have read the book once, consider it your first helping. Go back for seconds, focusing on what tasted the best or what you might have passed over the first time. Go back for thirds and more. Networking Will Enhance Your Efforts
Significant accomplishments happen in relationships with like-minded people. A great advantage of this book is that it represents an invitation to a relationship—a relationship with a community of educators, thinkers, and most of all innovators. The authors in Creating Learning Communities are available to you. In most cases, their contact information is listed in this book. Each person may be able to offer you help with your particular goals for improving the learning of young people.
I urge you to take advantage of the opportunity to contact this resourceful group of people. One or more may be able to assist you in doing what you can do in your quest to improve education. Call them. Write them. E-mail them. Join the discussion on the listserve that interests you the most.
The concept of creating learning communities instead of schools is just now emerging. No one knows whether learning communities will become a slight influence on mainstream society, a significant trend, or a full-blown movement. You and others like you will determine that. You can participate in creating learning communities. Use what this book offers to do what only you can do. Young people you know depend on it. Biographical Information
Kelly Patrick Gerling, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, workshop leader, and consultant. He specializes in providing leadership development processes for corporations, agencies, and school districts. He co-authored the tape set (Nightingale-Conant) and book (William Morrow Inc.), NLP: The New Technology of Achievement. Kelly is also the author of The New Fundamentals of NLP, a tape set published by NLP Comprehensive in Lakewood, Colorado.
For more information contact Kelly Patrick Gerling at The Leadership Project, 5905 Slater Road, Shawnee Mission, KS 66202-2839, USA, phone: 913-248-1010, fax: 913-248-1002, e-mail: kelgerling@aol.com
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© Copyright 2000. Kelly Patrick Gerling - All Rights Reserved.
kelgerling@aol.com