My New Learning

Continued learning is essential for the 21st century professional. Nowhere is this more important than for education professionals. How can we expect our students to keep learning if we are not willing to do this ourselves?

To that end, each weekend I receive the Wall Street Journal on Saturday and the New York Times on Sunday via home delivery. Why do I do this?

• Receiving these two papers and their expanded weekend editions give me enough to read throughout the week. While I would love to read a newspaper every day of the week, I don't have the time to make full use of those resources.
• I've intentionally selected publications with a conservative and liberal editorial bent. It is important to me to be well-versed on all sides of issues. Then I am in a position to encourage the same with my students, encouraging them to move beyond confirmation bias to truly understand and intelligently converse on all issues -- even those with which they disagree. In my judgment, this is essential for our democracy, empowering the next generation to move beyond trite soundbites on issues to a greater depth of knowledge on topics.
• I am regularly taking notes on what I read in these publications and applying these notes for research or learning. For instance, in last Sunday's New York Times I discovered an organization known as The Commonwealth Club of California. This is a public affairs organization, and I found that they publish podcasts on a wide variety of topics of interest. Right now I am listening to Laszlo Bock, a Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google. There are some incredible ideas being generated by this interview. I will be writing about those ideas this week. This is an example of how I attempt to put new learning into practice as quickly as possible.

What about you? What are your learning strategies?