Grammar Lessons: Learning is a Verb

I am starting my graduate program today.

I will be studying Marriage and Family Therapy over the next few years, and hope to primarily counsel gifted adults, children and families eventually, and use my skills and knowledge to help this exceptional subset, among others.

I am a kid on the first day of school.

I woke up several times thinking about my classes. I only hit the "snooze" button twice this morning. I logged on to my computer at 5:30am and read my course plan, my goals and assignments, until the excitement to write about it overwhelmed my need to memorize my syllabus.

This is what being inspired to learn feels like. This is the spark of passion, the eagerness to follow a new path.

Learning and school should feel this exciting for our kids.

Let's teach them that learning isn't sitting at a desk for eight hours, listening to an adult tell them what to think and how to understand, then completing hours and hours of homework in the evening.

Let's teach them that learning is passion - self-directed, need-to-know, delve in deep passion. Learning is questions that keep your mind awake far past your bedtime, discussion that exhausts your parents, and a book that you just can't put down.

Acquiring knowledge is not accomplished by sitting still. Let's teach them to move, to fidget, to run, to pace, and let their brains sort through all of their thoughts and ideas.

Learning is not a one-dimensional activity. Enable the children to pick their own resources and topics, permit them design their projects. Allow them to sit and just think for awhile, without feeling pressured to answer.  Accept that "the project" can be simply letting the information be absorbed and become imagery in their heads, that will materialize once it is processed. Be patient.

Learning is a verb. Let's get out of the way, and let our kids show us which direction they'd like to go when we stop treating it like a noun.