Learner Autonomy? Clap clap Nice! Whooo  

There’s a reason I love my job. It’s because I see people award themselves every day; it’s because I see communities built and strengthened every day; it’s because I send packages full of science experiments on their way to the edge of space… sometimes. I’m talking about Learner Autonomy, about learners enabling themselves to be the people they want to be, making connections within themselves and the world around them.  Learner autonomy is vitally important to me. Without it, I can’t think of a more boring job than “teaching”, and there are a few lessons I’d love to share with you.

First, do your learners know how they feel about their efforts? Have they been given a chance to reflect on their activities; to make the connections between themselves and their performance, rather than their performance and the goal? Make it happen. Grab it; embrace it. Consider this remark: “at first I didn’t understand, so I couldn’t do the activity correctly, but now I understand. I want to try it again.” Now imagine that same student without the opportunity to reflect and to clear their chest: how damaging would that same performance be to their relationship with the subject? In these opportunities students are enabled to support themselves; an encouragement and assessment fundamentally different from what teachers can give, but through negligence can definitely take away.

Matt Shannon is an educator, cultivator and curriculum developer who works with 
elementary and junior high school students in Saitama, Japan. His goal is to provide real-world opportunities for EFL learners, specifically in the areas of debate, journalism, and science.  Some of his students will have an experiment launched into space soon. He enjoys cooking, gardening, and the life sciences. He likes to build things.

What are you passionate about, Matt?

I’m passionate about thinking, sometimes just about thinking itself. Whether it’s a purposed sort of thinking to help you go from a gut feeling or idea to a realized vision, or the unstructured process of seeing where you are, seeing what’s possible, and then seeing what else might be possible from there. That moment that happens a short while after you’ve emptied your mind across enough sheets of paper or blackboards, when all the new thoughts rush in? That’s the best, and we’re fortunate as humans to be able to pick up on that energy from those around us.  As a mind lives in a body, and a body in the world, our thinking affects the world as it affects us. It’s a reciprocal relationship. I believe that a deep appreciation of the possible realities afforded by thinking leads to increased stewardship to the world we live in now. Buckminster Fuller used to ask, “What is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment?” That’s a beautiful statement.