From Recounting to Reflecting

I've been reading and thinking a lot about reflection this year and wondering how to create an environment that fosters the kind of thinking that leads to learning from experiences. On Tuesday, when my students came back from two weeks on Winter break and we sat on the carpet to catch up and reconnect, I asked them to take a minute and think about what they had learned? I admit I was trying to avoid the situation where some of my students had a lot to say about where they went and what they got and others felt left out. I wasn't sure how it would go. I was prepared for a lot of silence and repeated answers. But I was pleasantly surprised.  Here are some of their responses:

• "I learned that you have to be really patient when you go on a long road trip."
• "I learned that dogs need a lot of care and attention, otherwise you have to give them away."
• "I learned what it means when people say Christmas is about family. I knew it was true but this year I really got to experience it because my extended family came to visit from Mexico."
• "I learned you really need a jacket to go out in the snow."
• "I learned it takes a long time to make handmade gifts for others. No wonder people just buy presents!"

There were some who agreed with others about learning the importance of spending time with the family, some that had learned to crack eggs or bake a cake and one or two that really struggled with answering the question. But I realized how framing experiences around learning, naturally leads to reflection. If I had asked them to share what they did over the break, they would have said:

• "we drove to Houston to see a Texan's game and it was a long road trip."
• "We had to take my dogs to my grandparents' house because we couldn't take care of them any more."
• "My family came to visit from Mexico."
• "We went to Michigan and it was really cold."
• "I made gifts for everyone in my family instead of buying them."

Their answers would have been about the experience and not a reflection on that experience, nothing to take forward for next time.

When I first started teaching and a 100% of my students received free and reduced lunch, I would hear comments like: "It is hard for poor children to write personal narratives because they don't have experiences." And I might have half believed that. Now I teach a much more economically diverse group of children, some that travel abroad over the summer and have many "experiences" but still have a hard time writing about them. My theory is that they never reflect on those experiences and without reflection the trip, the adventures, the family visit and even the presents given and received are all just events that may or may not be remembered. 

This simple question - What did you learn? can be transformative for children and adults. It's a validation of the fact that we are always learning something new, not only when we feel successful at a task but especially when we don't.  It forces reflecting on experiences which consolidates the learning. It naturally differentiates because it allows for diversity in background knowledge. It rewards curiosity and openness and cultivates agency and ownership of learning.

And what did I learn from this little experiment? That often the best lessons start with a good question, one that is open and wide enough to accommodate the diversity of all of my students and one that I don't know the answer to.