A Point That Needs To Be Made

I want you to understand something, about me as a teacher, about real education, the kind of learning that is transformative.

Firstly, real learning is hard. It’s hard work. You’re going to have to sweat (figuratively). You’re going to have to get your hands dirty (figuratively). It takes effort. It takes sacrifice, not of your life, but of your time, of your intellectual processing power.

And it takes time, in little and big ways.

Here’s where I come in. My job as a teacher — the only real job that teachers have — is to set up the circumstances under which, if you choose, you can teach yourself something valuable. Because this is the main point here: you only teach yourself.

You DO the learning — nobody else can do it for you.

Teaching is not telling.

But that’s what most of school is: you sit in a chair, listen to a lecture, take notes, memorize some things, and then spit it back on a test or essay.

This is not learning.

This is memorizing. This is following orders. This is about obedience, not real learning.

Real learning is active. It’s something that you, as a student, do — on your own. It’s the new connections and ideas you create in your own mind.

You own the learning. You own your own learning. There is no other way. This is how learning works.

Let’s step outside the classroom for a minute.

Think about all the things you have learned in your lifetime. Think about the sports you have played, the hobbies you have picked up, the card or board games, the jobs you have had — whatever it might be — and, if you think about it, think about how you learned these things, you will realize you learned all of them on your own.

Take sports, for example. Your coaches taught you the rules. They conditioned your body. They taught you teamwork and the skills you need to play the game. But you learned how to play (mostly) on your own — by playing, by watching other people play. Maybe you read a book or two about the sport, a memoir from a famous athlete. But for the actual playing of the game, how to do it and do it well — you learned this on your own.

Or consider your hobbies. For me, it’s target archery. I got a half-hour lesson when I bought my bow. I’d never picked up a bow before in my life. My instructor taught me about the bow, about its care, and he taught me the very basics of how to shoot: where to place my feet, how to find an anchor point, the necessity of an anchor point, how to hold and draw the bow, how to aim, how to release.

He taught me the basics. But I did not really learn how to shoot until I buckled down and started to put hours into practicing it.

So now bring it back to school. It’s the same.

Anything you learn — learn really well — you learn on your own. And school is no different.

And in school, it’s your choice. If you want to learn, you have to be engaged. A teacher cannot open your skull and pour new knowledge into it. It just doesn’t work this way.

And the sad truth is: you can get through an entire education, through graduate school, and earn straight A’s… and not really learn.

Grades don’t equal growth. Real learning, the kind that really matters, has little to do with getting A’s on exams, and everything to do with what’s happening inside your head. Everything to do with what YOU do.

And here’s the deeper truth: the most meaningful learning doesn’t come from chasing A’s or praise. It comes from intrinsic motivation, from curiosity, from the desire to grow, to understand the world, to do something well simply because it matters to you.

Not for a grade.

That kind of motivation can’t be forced. It can only be sparked, and then chosen, over and over again.

My job is to provide opportunities that allow you to teach yourself something valuable.

That’s what teachers are supposed to do.

That’s what it means to teach.

Teaching isn’t telling.

Although, this is what too much of education has become, something easier, safer, more about comfort than growth.

It’s become about entertainment, not about learning.

But real learning will make you uncomfortable. That’s part of the definition. It demands struggle. It requires you to push against the edge of what you know: to wrestle with unfamiliar ideas, to sit with confusion, to take risks, to stretch your thinking, to grow.

And in the end, all a teacher can do is offer the opportunity.

You have to walk through the door.

No one else can do it for you.

That’s the path.

There is no other way.