I’m 30 Years Old…
I’m 30 years old with no hobbies and no special skills. I find myself meeting people all the time that do the most incredible things; woodworking, knife making, gardening, photography, music, and all of the above. I get so jealous, I want to have something special that I can share with the world. I want to create art I can give to my friends and family, I want to play music for my wife, I want to teach my future kids how to build stuff. But, at the moment, I can’t.
Now, where I’m going next is going to sound like I’m blaming everything and everyone but myself for this inequity of skills. However, before I go there I want to make it abundantly clear that I full heartedly believe that I am solely responsible for my relative lameness. I know that I can at any moment rededicate myself to learn a new skill.
However, I also want to point out that this realization hasn’t just dawned on me recently. I’ve wanted to repurpose myself 1000 times for the past 5–10 years. Nothing has stuck and it makes me wonder if I lack the skills to know where to begin.
I’m the kid who knew how “to school”. School was easy and fun for me because I knew how to play the game. Towards the end, I could manage to do the bare minimum and still manage a B- to an A-. I was that kid. I knew how to test, I knew how to write a paper, I knew how to cram and then forget everything. It wasn’t until college that I realized the disservice I was doing myself. Wow, that first year of college was tough. I actually had to retain information (longer than the summative test like in HS) and apply it! This was brand new to me. After a pretty rough Freshman and Sophomore year, I adapted and loved learning again. I think one of the concepts that really drove this newfound passion for learning was the concept that what I was learning in college was actually stuff I needed/wanted to learn in order to be successful in my dream career: teaching.
Bottom line was my education growing up was the antithesis of personalized. I loved it because it didn’t really challenge me. It didn’t ask me to be unique, apply learning nor explore and experiment with different passions. I wonder what students in my community this is happening to now. Who is finding success in school and yet is being underserved?
I’m a 30 year old with no hobbies or special skills. I realize the blame falls on my shoulders. However, at the same time, I don’t think I was ever taught to explore, to experiment, to fail forward. I never learned the skills, the process and the behaviors of self-directed learning. Is there a YouTube video that I can watch that teaches me this?
We as educators must see our purpose as grander than getting our kids to pass the test, graduate and go to college. Our purpose must be to teach and raise students who can learn and do anything they set their minds to. Our purpose is to help raise happy, passionate kids into happy, passionate adults. We must teach our students the skills, the process and the behaviors of personalized learning. We must do this because there won’t always be a teacher, a test, a grade or even a reason that is there to motivate them and challenge themselves.
Let’s empower our future 30 year olds to be able to do, learn and achieve anything they dream up for themselves
