September 18, 2026 Linda Markley

Lessons

Learning Lessons, making connections, professional development, Spirit of teaching, Strategies, teacher choices, teacher resources, teacher support, Wholehearted teaching

Teachers are back to school and knee deep in planning, creating lessons and delivering them to their students.

I  do workshops and trainings with teachers across the country helping them to create lesson plans while exploring standards, strategies, resources and best practices to deliver these plans.

This is what schools and districts call “professional development”.

I think that there should be an almost indistinguishable line between “professional” development and “personal” development.

Isn’t that what learning is?

The skills, strategies, standards and best practices we learn in our personal daily lives are the same as what we learn and put into effect in our professional lives.

Things like time management, people or interpersonal skills, pride and integrity in our work, showing up and doing our best, resilience, responsibility, empathy, emotional intelligence, executive function, and so on…

I am a HUGE believer in connecting lessons learned in the classroom to lessons we experience and learn from in our daily personal lives.

That is why I wrote the book “Learning Lessons”.

Life is a cycle of learning lessons.

So, how does that apply to the lessons teachers create every day in the classroom?

One of the very first professional development workshops I attended decades ago was about the “new” learning path called 4MAT.

You can check it out here at About Learning.

Basically, when we encounter a situation, a problem, a context, an experience… we step back and ask ourselves “WHY?” (which is the highest level of BLOOMS and one wouldn’t think to start there, right?)

However, this question gives meaning and is what is now described as “Backward Design” approach to teaching and planning.

WHY is this happening?

WHY are you doing that?

WHY am I doing what I’m doing?

and so on…

You get the idea.

Then, we start to problem solve and learn the lesson and process for future experiences.

WHAT am I doing?

WhAT are you doing?

Then, HOW am I going to do it?

HOW are you going to do it?

Then, WHAT IF it doesn’t work?

Step back, start again!

Learning is not a checklist.

Learning is not a finish line.

And it goes on and on and on and on…

We are not ever there YET.

But we keep learning and trying and learning and growing into the next life experience/lesson.

The wonderful author and philosopher Diego Perez, also known as Yung Pueblo (young people), says this:

“I am not fully healed.

I am not fully wise.

I am still on my way.

What matters is that I move forward.”

(on to the next learning cycle!)

Almost every time I introduce this 4MAT model and my learning journey from Learning Lessons, I can almost hear the light bulbs clicking on and also see the illumination of the “ah-ha” moment in the teachers faces.

So, teachers:

Try to remember that students need time, patience and multiple opportunities to figure things out and work their way through the learning cycle. They also need endless rotations to grow with each cycle.

Don’t blame yourself.

Don’t blame the students.

Set up your lessons so that they are personal and meaningful for each student, and then, guide them through the learning cycle.

Please check out my book Learning Lessons.

You can also check out more About Learning here.

 

Image credit:

About Learning at www.aboutlearning.com