We Walk Before We Talk: Exploration is a Human Need

We evolve, improve and progress because we are curious beings. Students grow as learners when teachers let them control their learning. We solve, invent and process data because we can see the big picture. Classrooms are the conduits for the power of knowledge and students should be free to harness it on their own. Direct it towards their interests and use it to make connections. We make informed decisions, form fundamental understandings, and develop skills because we explore the world around us. Curiosity leads us in a forward motion while motivation keeps the momentum. If students are not lead but simply directed to their individual thoroughfare the potentiality for personal interest and growth is boundless.

If we are given specifics, commands and decrees with little negotiation, we may forge ahead and innovate however, we lose the drive of imagination that makes us engineers and inventors. Likewise, students without freedom and independence might comply but they will never become truly responsible for their own actions. The spark of limitlessness and ingenuity is only bright when our vision is not shadowed by apathy and compliance. Teachers need to step aside. Student drive and motivation will remain steadfast if they are given opportunities to sharpen their technique. Provide the objective and let students write the lessons that will allow them to learn at their fullest potential. As humans, we are not a collective of one mind, one thought, one solution we are individuals with independent notions that when combined with other ideas determine the course of history, lead us to the ends of the universe and to the deepest depths of the oceans, but we are only as strong as the limits we place upon ourselves. Through collaboration comes genius and innovation.

We walk before we talk because we are mobile beings always in search of answers. Our instinct is to use our senses and acquire new knowledge with every moment. Sitting in a desk limits a student’s perspective. Completing handouts takes most of creativity out of learning. A continuous flow of data is entering our data stream and being processed allowing us to make sense of everything. This is how we live every day of our lives, gathering, processing and applying new information, altering and changing our circumstances in a split second. We are inquisitive, analytical and scrutinizing. But if students are placed inside predetermined learning experiences the experience becomes routine and mundane. Students need to have self-determination, this is when they are no longer walking but jogging and eventually running to keep up with the influx of new ideas being added to their imagination and thinking.

We are reflective and deliberate. We learn best through experience and are designed to be scientists, mathematicians and cartographers, mapping out a continuous plan to keep assimilating new information, trying new things and growing as individuals even if we are unaware of it. Therefore, every student has the same potential for greatness. They just need teachers to understand the way they think. To provide them strategies to be successful. Learning is integrated into our neural framework and the classroom is the network of nerves, synapses and neurons that provide the stimulus for response, reaction and resolution to occur. The classroom is a literal playground if we allow it to be. A place for discovery, calculation, experimentation and revelation. It is place where exploration removes desks, inquiry extinguishes explanation and experimentation produces evidence that in turn leads to further curiosity. If teachers step back and let students have autonomy and ownership of their learning, every student will take their first steps, toddle forward and begin to walk with ease until learning is a sprint exhilarating, fulfilling and automatic.