The Moderation of Learning in Teachers

As a classroom teacher, the learning which one experiences on a regular basis is largely composed of information one knows will ultimately be dumped.  A teacher is primarily tasked with retaining knowledge of students that may aid in personalizing their learning experience.   It is a challenging thing to develop a relationship with one student such that a teacher might understand the student’s strengths and weaknesses, the motivators which will drive the student, and the methods through which to assist the student in their learning; it is monumental to do it with more than one hundred students simultaneously.  ​

​I recently had a conversation with a colleague about how quickly I forget a student’s name once the school year is over, and he concurred with me.  At first it seems a curious thing.  Most teachers seem to have remarkable memories.  Most I know will typically remember up to one hundred names of students within three or four hours worth of lessons.  Within a month of teaching, those same teachers have frequently developed enough working knowledge of those students such that they are able to identify academic strengths, weaknesses, dispositions, and proclivities.  This is deep knowledge which a skilled teacher may recall, on-the-spot, to structure the classroom and guide instruction.  Yet it is all fleeting; when the last bell rings in June, the information is dumped.  The cognitive load of retaining such information while trying to process a new set of students come August is simply too much.  

In this sense, the learning of a classroom teacher is environmentally regulated.  The necessities of sound instruction and the cyclical nature of the school system demand it.  

From a professional learning perspective, the majority of learning is managed organizationally, hierarchically, and unilaterally.  The school board sets a vision and mission, administrators refine operational parameters within that vision and then orchestrate professional learning for teachers. They dictate what needs to be learned, when it needs to be learned, and sometimes how it needs to be learned.  Of course, in the best of schools there is at least lip service to the value of personal professional development, but it always takes a back seat to perceived value to the organization’s vision.