It's All About the Journey

Saturday. Waitakeres. 14 kids. DoE bronze training tramp. Would have been totally amazing - if I hadn't busted my knees!! Right knee went going down hill. Left knee went later in the afternoon after compensating for the right knee. It was supposed to be a weekend away with the kids doing something I enjoyed. Instead, it was a weekend away struggling to keep up with kids, crippled with an injury.

A little after 3, I arrived at the hut. The kids had already arrived and had been there about 15 minutes / half an hour by that stage. It wasn't as quickly as my competitive, perfectionistic nature wanted, but I got there. 

Sunday wasn't great for my knees and we had to make the decision to send me out to the road early. That's the good thing about the Waitakeres - you're never too far away from a road. When I left the students and the other teacher, the road was an hour away, according to the signposts. Granny here took a little longer than that. A little over two hours, in fact. Of course, the thing about sending me out early was that I wound up at the road two and a half hours before everyone else. Gave me copious amounts of thinking time with these guys as company.

There's a message in that, I think. When we let people go at their own pace, things happen that we might not necessarily expect. As I went at my own pace down the trail, walking like a granny,  I wasn't racing trying to keep up with others who could go more quickly than me. I had so much opportunity to look at the beautiful scenery and appreciate what was around me. I could appreciate the journey because I knew my only goal was to reach the road by 2pm - and even at my pace I would still have hours of contemplative silence when I arrived.

So what does my knee injury have to do with student voice? It's the journey. Learning is all about the journey. Does it look the same for everyone? Nope. Should it? No way! Are we a race of cyborgs who all learn exactly the same way at exactly the same time? Not last time I checked. We are a race of amazing, creative people who are born with an innate curiosity. Even as I wrote part of this in the hut on Saturday night, two year 11 boys were unknowingly proving my point - there is an old piano in this hut and they are exploring the sounds they can make. They don't sound like they have musical training, but the opportunity is there to engage and so they have.

Love that!!

How can we find a new passion, a new pastime, a new 'thing' to enjoy if all we do is what we've ever done? How can we find something new to be good if we don't take time to have moments of reflective solitude and explore the information we've learned? Allowing the students time to do what they need to do to process the information is a necessity.

We live in a world with a constant stream of information - and I'm as big a culprit for adding to the bombardment as anybody. Constant emails to and from people, tweets to read, blogs to write... and sometimes having time to just sit, contemplate, and reflect is what our kids need. Not all of them will do that all the time. My kids go a little loopy when I give them too much self-guided-learning time. They're not ready for that - they have some learning about learning to do first. But small, student-sized pieces is good for them. All I have to do is be empathetic and read my kids - know when they're telling they need that break. It might be with their big loud voices: "Miss!! Can we draw on the windows?" or it might be with their still, small voices, their glazed over eyes, their expressions that say they have had quite enough of being 'fed', and now they need to digest and/or explore.

While we were tramping I was encouraging the kids to stop whenever they wanted to take photos of things that caught their attention. We'd have plenty of time at the hut in the afternoon - at the destination. Most of their enjoyment would come from noticing new things along the way. Learning - as is life - is a journey. Not a destination.