experience is a great teacher

Everyone can learn.

There. Glad we got that out of the way.

Now we can move onto the details.

In my professional life, I work with a wide variety of learning styles. I work with children, but children are people, too, so everything I've learned working with children can also be applied to adults, in my experience. We're all just grown-up kids, anyway.

Learning is simply acquiring knowledge. It can be done in one of three ways: 

1. you can experience something and retain lessons from the experience; 
2. you can study something and retain lessons from the study; or
3. you can be be taught something and retain lessons from what you are taught.

Today, I've been thinking about experience.

Experience is a great teacher. It is the most basic teacher. If you think about Pavlov's dog, that canine would be a great example of experiential learning. 

Experience shapes behavior: if I do this, then that happens. I like that --I'm going to do it again. I don't like that --not doing that again. That's how early learning happens. It's trial and error until we find something that works. 

As wise as people like to think we are, it still all boils down to that sometimes, especially when basic needs like sleep, food, shelter, companionship, and security aren't being met. Once we find a pattern that works for us, we develop habits. Sometimes, they're good habits; but sometimes, they're bad habits. We do what meets our needs: attention, avoidance, access, or automatic reinforcement (it feels good). 

And, although we can also use our lovely brains to study or to be taught, there is something about experience that takes learning to a new level. 

Think about supervisors you've had. The best supervisors are people who have experienced what they're asking you to do. They know what's realistic to expect. They know what's reasonable and what's possible in theory (read: not going to happen unless all of the variables impacting the experience are favorable).  

Think about the converse. Think about Monday Morning quarterbacks. Think about backseat drivers. It's all very well and good to talk about things in the abstract, but actually having to do them is much harder than talking about doing them. There's this pesky thing about having to use your body to do things and having to account for a variety of variables in real time.

This is not to say there's not a place for study and being taught. There is. It is important to think about why things happen. Those bad habits mentioned before? The only way to break them is to think about them and to explore alternatives to doing them. Those good habits mentioned before? The best way to continue them is to think about them and to see if there's any way to build upon them.

The New Year is coming. We've all had a lot of experiences this year. We've learned from them. Sometimes, this learning is conscious; but sometimes, this learning is unconscious (think of anything you just kept doing without thinking about it --that was learning!). Here's hoping that the New Year brings you good experiences and good learning.

Best wishes.