Creating School Environments Where Deep Learning Really Happens

<p>After experiencing incredible challenges during the pandemic, schools are returning to in-person learning. Podcasts for Leaderful Schools hosts, Bob Maxfield and Suzanne Klein, invite their guest Will Richardson, co-founder of the Big Questions Institute, to reflect on the pivotal question of what’s worth teaching and learning, and how to promote learning so we can live up to the promise of American public education.</p><p><strong>“It really is about not going back to school, but going back to creating environments where learning happens really deeply.”</strong> Will Richardson pointed out “the distinctions between learning loss and schooling loss; let’s get back to learning versus let’s get back to school; and not just going back and doing things a bit better, but doing things different. We’re helping schools, teams and communities build capacity to engage in conversations around different not just better, which is a shift in the way we talk about schools and education traditionally.” </p><p><strong>What is a coherent definition of learning? “</strong>The first step is you have to have some coherence as to how you define what learning is, and how it happens, and what the conditions are that are required for that. And the honest truth is that a lot of schools are still incoherent about that.”</p><p>“If you don't have a coherent, shared, lived definition of learning, then kids are in ‘incoherence’. They're going from classroom to classroom, having to figure out what every teacher means when they say to learn something. There isn't a coherent narrative or this thread or through line in their experience where everyone is building on the same understanding of how learning happens and what it needs to look like in classrooms.”</p><p><strong>What contributes to learning? “</strong>We're starting to realize that a lot of what we do in schools really is not supportive of the way humans learn. Putting kids into age-grouped classrooms is not a great condition for learning, nor is limiting them to fifty or sixty, or eigh