At the beginning of this school year, I facilitated a professional development (PD) session with middle school teachers about how to use education technology tools for deeper learning. Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine, authors of the 2019 book “In Search of Deeper Learning”, define deeper learning as “the understanding of not just the surface features of a subject or discipline, but the underlying structures or ideas.” Even more than that, deeper learning invokes a kind of thinking and doing that transcends subjects and disciplines, going beyond understanding a concept and investigating deeper truths about ourselves, our communities and the world.
As the Coordinator of Deeper Learning for our district, I frequently present on this topic, but I realized that explaining the concept of deeper learning was not enough for this group of teachers. Instead, I decided to try something new and share a story about one of my first experiences with deeper learning during a history course I took in college:
Based on this assignment, one could argue that my college history class transcended the surface-level exploration endemic to most lessons in school. I became a teacher, then an administrator, because I knew that students needed educational experiences that crack open what they believe to be true and expand their thinking to new horizons.
As I shared this story, I felt every teacher in the room turn their eyes toward me. If they were going to implement deeper learning in their classrooms, it was not enough to just know it. They had to experience deeper learning as if they were students themselves.
A Moment in History Makes All the Difference
To further illustrate the importance of deeper learning, I dove deeper into the story I shared with teachers during my PD session, describing how my classmates and I went about uncovering details from the image that was shared:
When we returned to the reading room, our professor brought this experience into the context of historical thinking. During the next hour, we embarked on the work of historians – uncovering hidden details of the past, weaving oft-overlooked stories into narratives that illuminated our understanding of history, identity and culture.
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