Landscapes for learning

What is this space around and between?

Perhaps if we think of it in terms of landscape it might help:

+ There’s the physical landscape: what’s available, accessible, provided for, set out, and enabled.

+ There’s the backpack landscape: the stuff the kid brings with them so they can access and extend their learning.

+ There’s the sensitivity landscape: the room's emotions, relationships, and culture.

The imperatives of the approach we take shape how these landscapes are formed. For instance, when we take a fertiliser approach to learning we are after maximum efficiency and the fastest growth rate.

But don’t forget, these landscapes have a huge impact on the most important landscape of all …

+ The inner-world landscape: the things a kid syncs with, are responsive to, their knowledge and culture, the spirit in which they approach things, what they feel enlightened by or are averse to, and their weekly-daily-hourly emotional state.

Something is happening in our passive Year 12 student’s inner world — we have no idea whether it’s vibrant but closed off to the external landscapes; or if it’s dimmed and fog-ridden, and thus full of many things unknown; perhaps it’s something else. I think lurking somewhere is a fear we can all relate to.

But a point that’s struck me, and it’s one I can’t escape, is that a fertiliser approach disregards the inner-world landscape. And because of that, a fertiliser approach

… screams, Suppress all that’s inside and get on with it

… shouts, You need to show some resilience

… whispers, Even with all the opportunity and help you’re getting you still can’t grow quickly enough.