Welcome to The New High Show on Education. I'm Pamela Clark, founder and director of The New Heights Educational Group. And I'm here with David Smith, the founder of Silicon Valley High School, who has helped us get these podcasts produced and delivered to you. Yes, Pamela, when we saw the great things that you and your army of volunteers were achieving at New Heights, we wanted to get involved.
We're happy to work with you to leverage the internet and make quality education accessible and affordable to everyone everywhere. Thank you, David. We appreciate Silicon Valley High School helping us to get these podcasts out to the hundreds of thousands of listeners from all over the world. So I hope you enjoy the show.
In this week's episode, we will discuss educational reform on this year. Good evening. This is your host, Buffy Williams, and you're listening to The New Heights Educational Group, The New Heights Show on Education. Tonight's topic is Lifelong Learners.
It's Lifelong Learning, a good idea in what is Lifelong Learning. A recap on last week's show, we discussed steps for parents to consider in selecting a school for their child. On tonight's episode, we're going to explore Lifelong Learning and the future and what part it plays in our culture. So join in the discussion with us and call us at 917-948-7542 or drop your comments in the chat or tag us on social media using the hashtag NHEG or post your comments on Twitter at Buffy Underscore Awaken or on speaker, Instagram or YouTube.
Remember, my New Heights host, fellow host, Erica Hanson shows airs on Thursdays at 2 o'clock p.m. Mountain Standard Time, 1 o'clock p.m. Pacific Standard Time, and 4 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. I know that, again, we are in the process of dealing with the ramifications of COVID-19 and also dealing with a lot of other issues that are, I guess, at this point, global issues for us, as far as race relations are concerned.
So I want to, again, just take a moment and us preparing for Lifelong Learners. This particular time in history is definitely giving us a different perspective on life and the things that we should be learning and the examples that we should be setting for others in this particular time. So I just want to take just a short brief moment and I'd like for you to join in with me in thinking about all the sacrifices that others have made for those who are dealing with the pandemic that we're dealing with right now, those who are putting in extra time to make sure that our loved ones are cared for, and all of those who are out there trying to make sure that we are safe, and just remember them in your thoughts and your prayers, so we'll just take a moment. Thank you.
So in thinking about Lifelong Learner, one of the things I did with my research, and I want to go ahead and let you know where my sources are coming from, I have an article from the Forbes magazine, also Oxford, Handbooks, and the Art of Education, but I also did some research. I loved TEDx, and one of the episodes was regarding why I be a Lifelong Learner, and one of the examples that she used, and I thought it was a beautiful analogy, she used a symphony conductor, and she spoke about, you know, sometimes as with me, there are people who have a natural affinity to try different things in life and to see if, you know, those things are something that they truly have a deep interest for, and so I kind of fall into that category, and she said one of the things that she explored was once she started participating in all these things that she really liked to do, she started to question herself as to, well, if I am exploring all these areas, am I an expert in anything, but when she went to the symphony, she realized that in watching the conductor, the conductor was not the greatest violinist, or a horn player, or any of those things, but she was able to seamlessly orchestrate everything because she had a vast knowledge of each instrument, and it was a beautiful blend of all of the instruments together, and if anybody has, listen, you can appreciate that, it doesn't have to be the symphony, it could be any form of music, but you can appreciate what it takes for a producer or someone to seamlessly put those things together, and so I thought that was a beautiful analogy of lifelong learners, and so we learned things, and we know that in this lifelong process, it's an ongoing process, but when you think about lifelong learning, it's more of a voluntary thing, it's something that either you do for personal development or for professional development, and for those in education, particularly, there are, you know, and with most fields, definitely with the counseling field that I'm in and most professional fields, there's this thing called professional education or continuing education that you do, that's for professional development, but we're thinking about lifelong learners, we're thinking about something that you're self-motivated to pursue for personal development, not necessarily something that definitely could benefit your career, because it teaches you that the things that you try is going to take practice, you know, you may fail at something, but if you continue to do those things, and I think it was Erickson that said if you do something for 10,000 hours that you can learn to be good at something, and so it also kind of debunks the myth that I do believe that there are people who have exceptional gifts in life, and so like Mozart and Chopin and those those type people have particular talents, but I do believe that if you work at something that you can become better and better over time, and so that's kind of the premise of lifelong learning, it's kind of finding what your passion is or things that you're slightly interested in, and that can run the gamut of, you know, anything from, let's say if you are interested in history, you just might want to know more about a particular time in history, and you may pick up a book or you may watch a documentary on a particular thing, but on the other end of that spectrum you could potentially want to teach history and get your PhD in history, so you could go anywhere along that spectrum and still become a lifelong learner, and some of the things that we learn are sometimes there are natural traits that we have, and sometimes we might not be naturally inclined to go in that area, another example for me I did, I'm not what you would consider an athlete, so I wanted to do one of the things that I had interesting in kind of being a lifelong learner, I wanted to do a 5k run, why that came to me, I do not know because I was not a lifelong athlete, but I did want to do it, and I knew that there were other people out there who were like me who weren't in terrible shape, but they weren't in the best shape, and I couldn't like necessarily sign up to do a 5k run that next weekend, but so what I did was I did some research of course, and there was this thing called, it's pretty popular now, it's called couch to 5k, and so you start off basically walking a minute, running a minute, walking a minute, and running a minute, and it takes you through these different intervals until you get to the point where you can run a 5k, well first of all I didn't realize a 5k wasn't 5 miles, so in the research that was enlightening, and so once I learned that I was quite happy, but it was still a challenge, so I still had to do it, but one of the things is that once I was able to accomplish that, it made me see that I could accomplish other things, and in general it just made me a happier person, and so that's kind of the thing with lifelong learning, you have to figure out if this is something that you're motivated to do, because you have to be committed in order for you to improve it, or even understand how it's going to enhance you as a person, and potentially enhance you in your career as well, and so you look at things that are not necessarily things that you have a natural affinity for, but also in looking at the research that I looked at for this particular segment, one of the things that was very intriguing to me is that there are 758 million people globally who cannot read or write, but the importance of lifelong learning is that also 65% of the jobs that our children are going to potentially participate in are not created yet, and so if we think about those two spectrums, we have this large segment of people who can't read and write, and then we have our children who are going into this area where these jobs haven't been created yet, and we think about the field of lifelong learning. Well, we've always kind of delved into that because we have vocational learning, we have people who learn just from watching other people, we have craftsmen, we have people who have natural talent for different things, maybe growing crops, or maybe it's woodworking, whatever that is, those segment of people can thrive sometimes better than those who are formerly, because when we look at lifelong learning, we're talking about informal teaching, so those people sometimes thrive more through that informal setting, and so when you couple that with your formal learning, it just becomes more of an exciting part of your life, and so it doesn't leave anybody out when you think about lifelong learning. It doesn't matter that you don't have your master's degree or you don't have your bachelor's degree.
If you're looking at lifelong learning, if you're willing to put in the time and the effort that it takes in order to learn something new that you're excited about, something that could potentially benefit you, benefit your family, benefit your community, or something that's just fun for you because essentially that's why I got into this volunteer radio hosting thing, right? It's because I had an interest for it, and so there was a learning curve. I had to learn things that I didn't know, and so these are the things that are exciting. Okay, no, I'm not technically trained in it, but I could still learn those skills, and that's with anybody, so it comes with self-motivation, and you have to make it a priority.
These things, you have different levels, there are people who don't necessarily have a growth mindset for changing their characteristics of how they've naturally come up, and they feel like maybe they're stuck in a certain way, and they have a fixed mindset, but with lifelong learning, of course you have to have a growth mindset because everything is naturally changing, and you have to look at things that are your personal interests and your personal goals, and you want to improve upon that, and that can in turn improve your self-confidence. But on tonight's episode, we are talking about lifelong learning and how it can make you a happier person, and it doesn't necessarily require any particular skills, it just requires you to want to achieve something and shifting your mindset in a way that will open you up to lifelong learning and ways to cultivate that, and you can always keep a book with you. You can make a list of the things that you want to learn, and you can find smarter friends, which is something that definitely can help your growth mindset, and also guiding your thinking, think about what you're thinking about, pay attention to what you're paying attention to, and because if you clean up your input and you focus in on something different, then things will change, but you have to make that change first, and so you're going to be faced with challenges with that, and it may be financial, it may be demographic, it may be technology, but there's some way that, again, you can develop your lifelong learning skills, but I'm your host, Buffy Williams, and at this time we're going to take a short break and I hope that you join us after the break. Welcome back, I'm your host, Buffy Williams, and you're listening to the New Heights educational group, the New Heights Show on Education, and tonight's topic is lifelong learner, and we just discussed the different levels of interest that people may have that entails different ways of learning, and we also discussed that you need to have a focus and a self-control if you're thinking about lifelong learning and picking up a different skill, and thinking about lifelong learning and us as humans, can you even just imagine if every human being in the potential that we could have to extend our educational opportunities in our mindset if we were to be more inclusive of people not based on what they currently know, but what they would be willing to explore in a informal setting to better our culture and better our communities and better ourselves, and so it kind of improves the quality of our life and it can create, you know, a part of your life that, you know, it can affect, it could be a spillover into your community and make things just better in general for all of us, and it could have just such a positive impact on society, and when we think about things that restrict us from lifelong learning, it could be simply just, you know, not being motivated, but I'm hoping that with today's show that it motivates you to at least explore those things that you may be interested in, and don't be fearful, because remember that even geniuses failed at something, because they had to, you know, perfect that skill and they had to continue to hone in the things that, or weed out things that weren't working for them, and then continue to work and improve on those skills, and so you shouldn't feel, you shouldn't be fearful of failure because it always teaches you something, so in looking at lifelong learning and structured and unstructured work ways of learning, the reality is that most of us have a goal outside of our normal life or normal job or school, and it's that curiosity that kind of builds on the lifelong learning process, because as a child we learn to talk, we learn to ride a bike, and this is all before we start school, right?
And so someone is teaching you in an informal way how to do those things, and or you learn those things informally on your own, or instinctively on your own through trial and error, and then also as adults, you know, learning how to use a smartphone or learning how to cook a dish or anything like that, we're continually learning through trial and error as we go through life, and so some of us have a natural interest and a natural curiosity for things, and it motivates us to want to learn other things, and then some of us, you know, are motivated by others when we see others in their potential, because some of the, well, most of the things that I have explored really doesn't require money or very minimal cost, and then, you know, it just really takes me being personally motivated in order to continue on with that practice, but you do have to be committed to it, and the types of behaviors that we exhibit from day to day, and trying to hone in those talents can be productive for our employers. It can expand us in a different way. It could change our mindset and get us to look at new problems and new solutions and be more adaptable, be more flexible, and also be more competitive, because that means that we're looking at it with a different mindset, and so if you do something that is different from your normal routine, just remember that you can learn from different ways you can learn from browsing the internet, and I just told you about a TED talk that I listened to, it could be something as simple as that, it could be reading a book or a magazine or a newspaper, but just engaging in things that you're personally interested in, and there are a few steps in the research that I wanted to go over with you, and the first one is recognizing your own personal interests, and so we kind of talked about that a little bit and how you envision your future and what you have a passion for, and what is it that you've always wanted to explore for yourself or learn more about, and then the second thing is to make a list of the things that you like to learn or you like to be able to do, and just explore those things through the internet if you have that accessible, I know that through COVID-19 it might be a little bit difficult to get to the public library, but that's always a great resource. When I was young, we just simply, I think about not every household in the community, but most of the households, and if we didn't, we would share whole encyclopedias, and we would just pull them off the shelf and kind of explore that world in that way, but now how fortunate are we that most people have a smartphone where they can just, at their fingertips, explore things, I get laughed at pretty frequently by my friends for pulling out books when we can also pull out our smartphones, but that's just me.
I'm kind of old school like that. I do embrace technology, but sometimes I just like the tangible feel of a book in my hand. So then the next step is identifying how you would like to get involved and looking at the available resources for you, and so that could again simply be your public library blogs or magazines or even podcasts like this one, and so every person has a different gift, and you know, just don't be afraid to explore and do some hard work and be dedicated to whatever that is, because remember life is a marathon, not a sprint, and so we have, as humans, infinite capacity to be able to learn the things that we want to learn, we just have to do it, and so then you can also structure your learning into your life, and so once you decide to do lifelong learning, you have to fit it into your busy schedule at some point, and with us being or having more time for COVID-19, even if you're having to work, you still have more personal time because you can't get out and about like we did in the past, and so now you may have more personal time, and be realistic about it. You know, don't go overboard and just say, I'm going to just go hardcore.
If you spend 15 minutes a day doing something that you want to train on or you have a passion for, those 15 minutes can make a big difference in your lifelong learning, and then we talked about making a commitment, but also making sure that those are realistic expectations, and just try to develop those skills, whether it's sewing, cooking, public speaking, learning a new language, it could be martial arts or skiing in the winter time, learning a new exercise, or learning a new device, you know, whatever it is for you, I encourage you to engage in this and renew your motivation for lifelong learning, because we are all lifelong learners, whether we do it intentionally or unintentionally, we're always learning something. So on today's episode, we are looking at your view of lifelong learning and how it relates to us on the continuum of life, and I hope that on tonight's episode that you have learned from my small efforts to become a lifelong learner, I have a natural curiosity for a few things in life, and so I'm not afraid to try those things and do the best I can, I guess until I lose interest in it, but I always try to use those things to kind of better for me in my professional career and my personal and social life, so I don't tend to just drop things off, I'm sure that there are things that I have tried that have not been great at, but again, remember the analogy of the symphony, because at one point in your life, all those things that you have learned or all those things that you've gleaned from, those things that you've tried are going to seamlessly blend together, and then you'll have your aha moment and you'll know why you did those things, you'll know why you encountered those things, you know why you explored those things, and all those things will seamlessly blend together, and then you'll know your why, but I encourage you to pursue the things that you're passionate about, be kind to yourself, be gentle to yourself, and be gentle to others, and I am your host, Buffy Williams, and I hope that this episode of Lifelong Learners was helpful for you, and on next week, we're going to revisit the topic of the IEP process, and we're going to expound on our previous segment on that, and so if you didn't listen to our previous episode on the IEP process, I encourage you to go to Spreaker and download that and listen to it before next week's show. Again, I'm your host, Buffy Williams, and thank you for joining us for tonight's show. Cloud, Spreaker, and watch know where I'm going to go.
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