To MLE or Not to MLE... That is the Question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The ways and means of teaching no longer relevant,

Or to take arms against school traditions

And by opposing change them.

To learn —to sleep, no more;

and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That past is heir to: 'tis a redundance

Devoutly futile.

To learn: to teach;

To teach: perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in the teaching of teens what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

They give us pause—they reflect upon our time spent

And they thank us for a life taught to dream.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of cynic?

Th'oppressor's wrong, the children create!

The pangs to innovate and lead the way,

Silences the office, and the spurns those

That block path many innovators take,

When naysayers might their quietus make

When learning flourishes. Who would history bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

When that the dread of visions unfulfilled,

The undiscovere'd brilliance, from whose mind

No brainchild is birthed, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills of tradition

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus custom does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of transformation

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great import and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Shakespeare was such a great writer. He had such a way of communicating big ideas. I borrowed his structure and changed up a few words to change Hamlet's speech to be one about the changing face of education.

Is it hypocritical to use a piece of writing more than 400 years old to lead into a post about Modern Learning Environments? The traditionalists might be surprised: No. Shakespeare has just as much place in modern teaching environments as in traditional schools. The teachers I know - in a range of school types - don't wheel out Shakespeare because they can't think of anything else, or it's the 'right thing to do'. Shakespeare's work comes out when it's the right fit for the class (although this might change if people are afraid that English teachers don't know how to teach, and an arbitrary panel of disengaged 'experts' tells the nation what they will and won't read and learn about...)

Open plan learning works. Modern learning environments work. Single-cell classrooms work. None of these concepts are new. Traditional teaching is no longer as relevant as it used to be. Flexible and responsive spaces enable flexible and responsive teachers. Flexibility and responsiveness happen in single-cell classrooms, MLEs, and OPLs.

As a student I was a quiet introvert in an MLE environment in intermediate. There were two teachers (sometimes more) around and 60 students in a twin-class set up (one room that was the length of two classrooms). There were three of these spaces in my school, a number of single-cell rooms, two rooms for independent learners... It had a film studio, a music room, a dedicated science room - and this was a public school.

I always felt my teachers knew me, and knew where I was at.

This year we moved, and my children have moved from a traditionally-built school to a full MLE school. They received excellent teaching at their previous school in their single cell rooms, however there are some significant differences I've noticed this term.

1. My eldest child has struggled with self-direction to start with because she was so used to being told what to do. She wasn't used to thinking for herself. This is a child who attended a gifted school one day a week alongside her regular school. The gifted school is a place where creativity and own thinking was not only encouraged, but expected. She one referred to her new school being like the gifted school on steroids. It has taken her a term to transition, however I still believe that this environment will be of the highest benefit to her as there is a duel focus: academics and relationships.

2. My son is at the other end of the scale where he has a team of therapists and other adults around him helping him to access the curriculum. At his most recent team meeting I was blown away to hear that he was talking, participating, answering questions in class, and that he had made friends BECAUSE HE WANTED TO. This had never happened before - he usually required a lot of intervention from his teacher aide to support him to do these things. He is a completely new child  the MLE. He is not lost, he is a happy, contributing member of the class.

3. My third daughter is exceptionally advanced in her reading, and so I give her te Reo books to read because she loves learning the language. When her teachers found out, they invited her to run a workshop to share her love of te Reo with others. She's so excited to be given this opportunity.

What I love about my children's school is that they acknowledge individual needs and have flexibility. There are large open spaces and small enclosed spaces. There are quiet spaces and communicative spaces. The teaching is online, off-line, high-tech, low-tech. It's hands-on, hands-off, It's reading, writing, maths, and science. It's playdough, it's music, it's sport, it's STEM. It's relationship building, communication enabling. It's a place to try, to learn, to make mistakes, to have a go, to fail, to try a different way, to explore, to make sense, to focus, to refine, to generate, to evaluate, to test, to refine. It's a place to learn to be people. A place to learn knowledge and skills. A place to practise skills.

My experience shows me that MLEs work - and they work well. So well, in fact, I too have returned to the MLE environment. I want to be a part of this. In a world where, like the Industrial Revolution times, society is going through a massive change, unlike the IR times we have a different type of change. It's exciting. I want to prepare my students for this world as I explore it with them. I want to go out into businesses and enterprises and find out what the future of employment looks like, and bring it back to school and unpack that with my students. My students in my MLE school get the same high expectations placed on them that I've always in traditional schools. They also get to have real-world experiences to an extent I've never been able to provide on my own before. The students' thinking is sophisticated and interesting.

Do all of them always do all their work all the time? No. I still work with teenagers. I still have to keep track of where they're at and make sure they're completing what they need to complete so that they can demonstrate to others the proof of their thinking ability. If they don't do their work, they still get fair and logical consequences.

Kids will be kids and environment's important. An MLE can, in fact, be found in a traditional, single-cell classroom. I certainly did, and many of my colleagues did too. It's not about being right - it's about being flexible. When spaces and teachers are flexible, they can respond to the needs of the students. That's what teaching is about.

I believe in MLEs. They work. But even more, I believe in teachers who teach in these spaces, and the kids who learn.