Building the Learning Environment

For the last few weeks, I have been giving a lot of thought to this concept I use in trainings called “Building the Learning Environment”.

In the VISTA work I do, we spend a great deal of time on this – getting to know one another, listening for real understanding, setting expectations, and providing an understanding of what we are going to do in the time we have. It is in the first two parts that I find are the most powerful. This particular training is 1 week long. And even though the content of the remaining training is rich, it is the getting to know one another and listening for real understanding that most often makes the greatest impact. Each time I do this training, I reflect on that part in particular because each group is made up of the most diverse group of people of which you have ever been a part and yet the same thing happens over and over again – people who would have never interacted with one another before, whom come from all economic, racial, and regional backgrounds leave that morning time with a new and better understanding of one another, what motivates them, and what that means for this work. And it is from that point forward that the real understanding and change happens for them.

So tonight I just left the Community Studio at the United Way where we talked about creativity and innovation. And much of the discussion was on how we rarely stop – listen – and learn. We are all so driven to getting straight to the solutions that we forget there are others who not only have a stake in what we are doing but also have an investment in the end outcome.

I started to think about the struggles programs I work with have – they are often uncomfortable with the “stepping back”…with the learning process….with the “unknown”. And then I thought about one of Rich Harwood’s recent Blog entries where he states he would love to get someone to fund a large amount of money to a project they know will fail. What if we knew at the end that failure was the only option, so we could be as creative as we wanted to be and make as many mistakes in the process? What if that allowed us to take our time, to learn from others, and to just go crazy with the possibilities? What if that was the norm instead of expecting instant gratification, or working towards some arbitrary standards, or thinking we have to always aim for perfection?

In this way…building the learning environment has a whole new meaning.