Anatomy of a learner

ADAM GELMON

"Begin with the end in mind." This is the principle that guides educators in creating and delivering curricula to their students.

Where do we want our students to be in a month, a year, at the end of Grade 12 and, later, as healthy and contributing adult members of society? It is only once we formulate a vision of the future that we can begin to authentically guide students in classrooms today. What then, should we as educators and parents be aiming for now and in the future? What foundation of knowledge and skills developed today will truly serve students later in their lives?

Today's student is light years away from the information hunter-gatherer stage of a generation ago. A student who once found research information between the covers of books, newspapers and periodicals is now gleaning most of their material from digital sources of varying levels of reliability.

Unprecedented amounts of information are available to our students. Therefore, a new skill must emerge. The ability to find information must be tempered with a heightened ability to discern the quality of information and to separate the useful from the useless and, at times, potentially harmful.

In order to manage the immense amounts of information available, students must be able develop their own filters and firewalls. They must widen and hone their critical thinking skills, as well as their ability to question the validity of the mass quantities of data that come in from all directions.

We achieve this in the classroom by encouraging students to ask "Why?" Students must sharpen their curiosity if they are to navigate through the information they encounter every day. This requires them to develop a higher level of critical thinking. Students must be able to analyze and evaluate information before they can successfully synthesize and use it for their own purposes.

The Internet turns us – sometimes unwittingly – into global citizens. It can be difficult for a young person to grasp the size and scope of the virtual world that they enter when they interact over the Internet.

Individuals now wield an unprecedented power: the power to communicate their thoughts – constructive or otherwise – to a mass audience. The home computer is just one of the many ways we can communicate to a group of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Mobile digital devices can fit in the pocket (or the backpack) and allow immediate access to a seemingly unlimited world.

Parents and educators must guide young people to develop a sense of personal responsibility over the tools that are, and soon will be, available to them. Emerging technologies are important, but are still secondary to the importance of personal responsibility, self-awareness and the ability to maintain healthy relationships with the people and world around us.

Technologies are just conduits of information. While they allow us to communicate, create, help and hurt with increasing ease and speed, the material itself still comes from people.

Students, therefore, must learn to be master communicators. For many years, we focused on the importance of body language and the adage, "It's not what you say, but how you say it." Now, when so much communication occurs without the elements of visual contact and vocal inflections, we must also focus on replacing them with new ways in which to relay and receive information. The nuances of voice and body language are, at times, absent and a simple e-mail message can easily be misconstrued if not crafted with care.

Gone are the days in which a specific skill set will serve someone over the course of a career. We all require continuous upgrading, training and re-training in order to remain viable in an ever-chaining work environment.

Today's student must acquire the tools and appreciation for learning that will serve them as they grow into successful adults in the workforce. The habits, skills and attitudes towards learning that young people develop early on will serve them throughout their lives. This means that, in the long run, how they learn might actually be more important than what they learn. In order for us to truly serve these future adults, we must guide them to become the best learners they can.

Of course, we can't truly know what the future will bring. As it has been said, we are educating many students who will work in jobs that don't even exist yet. We must, however, keep our eyes on emerging trends, and our minds rooted firmly in where our students are going to be.

Adam Gelmon is a Vancouver freelance writer and a teacher at Vancouver Talmud Torah.

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