Philosophy of Learning: A Work in Progress

A Philosophy of Learning           

Anna Fogel

            Every single student is unique in the way that they think.  It is not rare to read a passage out of a novel in a classroom and have several different interpretations about what was just read. With this in mind, I think students should be exposed to many different types of learning so that they are open to everything and the student can learn which way is best for them.  This includes group discussions, lecture, reading various genres of literature, writing in styles we are not used to and thinking in ways that are new to us. From my experience, the classes that have been the most beneficial and the ones I have gotten the most out of, have been the most challenging ones where I was forced to try new things and think in deeper ways.

            My senior year I took an AP Literature course and it opened my eyes to English and not only did it change how I wrote and how I read but it changed the way I think; a class holds true meaning if it carries with you in the outside world. The class sticks out in my mind because it was more than just a regular class; it left a lasting impression on me. Our teacher, Mr. Johnson, had a couple main goals for us. First of all, he did not want it to be like every other English class we had taken in the past, filled with grammar and reading stories out of a textbook but never really getting any lasting meaning out of those things. He wanted to teach us in a way where we would learn certain things that would help us in the future and also in society. Every day we would move our desks into a circle to represent a more discussion-friendly environment. We would sit in our circle and talk about what we had just read; we would dissect the novel and we could spend the entire class period on a single paragraph.

Class and group discussion was a huge part of this class and I believe it is essential to the learning process.  It is one thing to write a response or a summary to a reading but a class discussion is so much more thought provoking and interesting. Everyone gets to share their individual ideas and it makes others think harder about their unique ideas and also about other’s views and they may see something they did not realize before. Students can learn so much from each other; I believe student-to-student interaction is a key part to the learning process and I base that statement from my personal experience. Mr. Johnson wanted the class to run in this fashion, he was there to guide us and add some insights but he really wanted the students to be in charge.

Some texts we have read have been extremely challenging, some of the essays from Falling Into Theory stand out particularly. It is ironic to me because many of the essays mainly focus on learning: the different types of learning, what the author feels like the best way of learning and teaching is and they are written in a style that is very hard to fully comprehend. These essays all have really good points and they are all important individually and when compared and contrasted but they should be written in a style that is more readable. Those texts were extremely frustrating to read and I believe that if they were written differently I would have been more open to the ideas represented in the text and I would have been more willing to give them a chance.

Another essential part to the learning process is being open to new things; whether it is a different style of writing like Kamau Brathwaite’s Ancestors or reading something that makes you rethink how you view certain things in the world like Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By. It is important to accept and engage in things that may seem foreign to us because in the end they are things that will make us more well rounded and well-educated.

Learning should evoke strong emotions out of people: happiness, understanding, warmth, and the want to share knowledge with others. Learning is a personal experience that is different for everybody but everybody learns and people should want to spread what they are learning.

            In class we talked about the effects of positive feelings that should be involved with the learning process and more specifically, with an assignment. The five friends are a key component to the process but I think they are overlooked and not viewed as seriously as they should be. Attitude, whether it be good or bad, really does make an impact on how a person learns.

 A positive attitude makes students more open to the project at hand, whether it is a reading assignment or a writing assignment. As a result, the reading is understood more fully and probably enjoyed more, as well and the writing will be done better; the paper will definitely be better written. Attitude plays a large role in the learning process; it is not necessarily essential to it but the quality of learning definitely depends on it. I really believe if all students had a positive attitude when completing an assignment or even just going to a class, the results would be great! This is also something that extends beyond the classroom and can be carried forward into the future.