#30DaysofLearning Day 1 - Let Me Do It

I promised myself to model learning as a leader, and today is day 1 of this 30 day adventure.  I hope to focus my learning in 2 distinct areas:  (1) improve my questioning when coaching and giving feedback and (2) communicating using American Sign Language (ASL).  

While today is not officially day 1 for ASL, it is the first in a 30 day, non-stop practicing series.  I am following lessons I find on the American Sign Language University website.  I'm starting with Lesson 1 and proceeding one at time while I attempt to integrate the signs into my everyday life.  I find it easiest to share my newly acquired signs through a Share-out Activity with a colleague who kindly allows me to fumble through this new language.

I am also finding myself thinking more often about what signs I might use to communicate the random thoughts that enter my brain as I'm walking to and from work and home.  Visualizing has been really helping me.  I'd swear I read somewhere that visualizing can, in fact, help with new movements you are attempting to learn.

I haven't taken pictures of videos of myself signing yet.  I hope to take the time to do that soon.  

I am spending time at a school site this week to lead the building.  What a perfect opportunity to work on questioning more and answering less!  Coming up with answers is a tough habit to break.  I'm a solution guy.  I look for answers.  Usually to questions that I am asking.  But this desire to find answers is tough to fight.

A few times today, I found myself internally reminding myself that I do not have to have the answer.  It is more important to build capacity in the person I am working with to think about and find their own answers. 

Young people really made my day today, and it happened because I gave them the opportunity to figure out their own answers, and they answered in pretty amazing ways.  They are so much more capable of solving problems and leading their learning than we give them credit for on most days. 

A young man in the middle school appeared to be restless and not working on an assignment, so I walked over to ask him what he was learning.  His response was, "I don't know."  I just kept asking or more information about his work and progress, and then he took me on a journey through his thought process that he said was "not exactly the same topic, but it's what I want to know."  He shared some assumptions and inferences that answered the inquiry questions he designed to "take his readers on a chronological path" through his paper.  I asked how he would find evidence to support his answers, and told me it would take more time to search for his answers in his text and through some articles, but that he would spend the time to look.  Who would I be to deny his inquiry and desire to work through this path?  I smiled, encouraged, and then got out of his way.

I was also happily taken on a learning journey (a learney, if you will) by a young man in elementary school.  His class had taken a field trip, but eh did not attend the trip.  He found himself in a class that was a grade level higher than his class.  By the end of the day, he was distracting students trying to learn Mathematics in his host room.  He found his way to me to settle for the last 20 minutes of the day.  He told me I could call him Little E.  I told him to call me G, and we shared a special handshake.

I asked him what liked to learn the most.  He told me, "Math is my favorite subject," but multiplication was just too hard for him to learn.  He told me he could add pretty well.  So we talked about money, and how much money did a group of 3 friends have if they have $5.00 each.  We counted together.  We counted by 5s.  I showed Little E the equation 3 x 5 = 15, and then it was non-stop multiplication practice for the rest of the day.  "Give me a harder problem!"  It was a joy to end my day with him jumping from imaginary place to imaginary place, pretending to be each person and counting their money as he worked through the problem in his head, step-by-step, jump-by-jump, and then gave me the total and wrote down the equation. 

I think the best line I heard today that has me thinking pretty deeply right now is, "No, let me do it."  Thank you for that little gem, Little E.  I'll see you in the AM.