What messages do students pay attention to? Does anything that we say stick? I was able to discover part of the answer years ago during a career and life lesson taught to 6th grade students. I asked them to imagine living 25 years later. I asked many questions like what job would they have, now would the get to work, what is their greatest accomplishment and what makes them special.

The last question asked was “What advice would you give 6th grade students?”

There were several versions of answers. A few highlights:

• Keep up the good work and you will see that hard work pays off.
• Don’t give up ever!
• Try your best and get a good education.
• You need a good education to get through life.
• Believe in yourselves.
• Think ahead of what you want to be and make your own decisions.
• Strive for what you believe in and you’ll accomplish it.
• Follow your dream and never give up on it.
• Take care of your life the way you want it to be.
• Just keep on trying and don’t let nothing get in your way.
• Don’t smoke. Grow up to be somebody. Do not do drugs. Try to get somewhere and be happy of what you did accomplish.
• If you have a dream, catch it and run with it.
• Do your work and finish college and have a nice future.
• Achieve what you believe in, strive for what you want to achieve.
• Never give up on your goal you want to accomplish, because you might accomplish it.
• Seize the day, go for it and don’t let anyone stop you.
• Never give up, just keep trying.
• Be whatever you want to be.

After the students shared their answers to that question I challenged them with Are you walking the talk, are you practicing what you preach, are you following your own advice?Most of them said yes.

My challenge to them challenged me. Am I living the way I say for others to live?

The students see how we live and they do listen to what we say and what we don’t do. May we always walk our talk.

“Grandpa, how much longer?” My grandsons Brandon and Brian would ask. My response was usually, “when you stop asking”. For some reason they never stopped asking. 

There is a sense of not making any progress your  focus is only on a goal. You have a goal in view but are not conscious how much progress you have made along the way. 

We can apply measuring to learning. I call it The Learning Gap. I learned about The Gap from Bill Harris of Centerpointe who learned it from Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach.  Dan identifies two kinds of people and how these two types measure and evaluate their progress in life. One has an ideal in mind for who they want to be and where they want to go, and they evaluate their progress by that ideal.

An ideal is a concept of what is perfect. An example of an ideal is the horizon. The horizon isn’t real, it exists in your mind. You travel toward the horizon but no matter how far you travel you never get there. When you start to learn something, you may have an ideal in mind and benchmark it against how others have succeeded.  Having the goal with mental pictures to motivate is important. The frustration happens when you measure your progress against your ideal. You never have the satisfaction of making progress. It becomes an exercise in futility because you feel like you’re never making any progress. The gap between where you are and where you want your learning to be stays the same no matter what you do. 

Albert Einstein asked “What if we change the yardstick?”. The question is what are we measuring and why? About 10 years, Linda, my coach, challenged me “What are some other ways to measure your success besides how much money you are making?” For the following week I began to count how many times I smiled while interacting with people. Also, how many times I made a person smile. It shifted my yardstick of success.  It became how many people I touched.  

 Create your own learning yardstick to track your progress. For example, how many books did you read this month. What are 3 things you learned from your reading? What is one thing that you could share with someone else? 

It’s the steps you take on the journey, not merely the destination.  Measure your learning progress by your own standards and  celebrate your learning milestones. You may be surprised at your progress.

“No more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks”. I distinctly remember saying that the last day of school for 7th grade. I was one of those kids who usually got teachers’ dirty looks and sent out into the hall for talking too much in class. Hey, I’m a guy with lots of energy. Besides, since when did learning only occur in a school building confined to a room and strapped to a desk?

I have been fortunate to have a few good teachers. Miss Maurice, the librarian who challenged me to read with an eye on quality. Mr. Harper, 6th grade teacher who used real world examples from the Wall Street Journal to teach us math and English.  Their examples encouraged me to learn in school. And I never quit learning because school was out. To me, it just meant no grades and no stuff I had to learn. The summer reading program at the public library in South Bend,In was an annual event for  me.

Earlier this year, I retook the Gallup Strengths Finder Profile. Learner is my #2 strength. Which clearly explains my passion for learning. The learner loves to learn. It is the process that excites me. A new skill, a new subject all become a new challenge for me. Engaged in the process, I then want to share that information with others. 

Now, I believe we all love to learn. Unfortunately, some of us had a rough start. Possibly not enough example and encouragement in the home. School teachers who could only relate to students who learned like them. And usually have zero tolerance for students who learned differently. 

Well, don’t let your past learning experiences stop you from learning today. I often had to remind myself “this is now, that was then” whenever a negative experience surfaced. Those negative experiences combined with some professors who couldn’t teach. They say, “those who can’t do, teach,” So what does that say about the ones who can’t do or teach?

What helped me was to focus on my goal of finishing the degree so I could get a good job to support my family. And I would energize myself by resurrecting my inner joy of learning recalling times that were pleasant, usually learning outside of school.  

Someone said, “we start school as a question mark and we end as a period”. That’s not good! Let’s help each turn that around for our learning today and in the future. Also, to help our children navigate their learning in and out of school so they always maintain the joy and wonder of learning.

What positive experiences did you have in school? What made them positive? The teacher? The subject?

What positive experiences did you have learning outside of school? How has those experiences impacted you?