Feeling guilty about having a good time?

I get this pang of guilt when I learn something and it is actually fun.  When I try to plan a learning activity, whether it is for kids or adults, and find myself trying to make it fun, I question its value.  Why? Why do we do this? Does learning have to be a nightmare? In fact, the best learning, for adults and kids, takes place when we have a positive emotional response to an experience.  Once again, we take what we know about learning and do the exact opposite of what we know is right.  This is especially true for teacher inservice or coursework.  There is some idea out there that if there isn’t a twenty page paper attached or every minute of the eight hour day isn’t directly used to directly acquire information, that somehow the learning is not worthwhile.  I recently planned an professional learning event to help the ninth grade team introduce the aspects of personal learning plans to their incoming students.

On day one, we played a ton of games, did a lot of laughing, learned some theory and made some connections.  Day two was more physically and emotionally challenging.  We learned more theory about self-directed learning and more strategies for integrating these ideas into our classroom curriculum.  We were tired and whining about our muscles hurting as if we had just run a marathon or something.  On day three, we reflected, completed several more games and then came together to plan using the information and tools that we had been given.  We ended the day with a completed plan for Freshman orientation in the fall.  We will need to revisit this information throughout the year as we implement personal learning plans in advisories, so this will give us time to process and revisit what we have learned.  And, this gives us an authentic way to practice newly learned skills that doesn’t require any time outside of the classroom.  Most traditional professional learning opportunities offer one shot learning at times when teachers have other things on their minds. They are then sent off to their classrooms to hastily deal with the routine aspects of starting the year and no time to practice using what they have learned.

There are other subtle hints that we shouldn’t be having fun while we work.  I don’t really know who makes up these rules and placing blame really isn’t my point.  Nobody says it out loud, but, for example, we are no longer allowed to use district money to provide snacks or food during inservice or meeting times.  It is frowned upon for us to take our students out for creemees to celebrate their hard work and effort (even if we are paying for it ourselves).  I’m sure every teacher could come up with an example in their district.  I’m also sure this is mostly due to the fact that it wouldn’t look good to the taxpayers.  Well, I’m a taxpayer and I get annoyed that we pay experts exorbitant amounts of money to talk at us during inservice about how we shouldn’t talk at kids when we have amazing experts right in our own buildings.
The need for fun, food, physical activity and feeling good does have an impact on learning for any human being.  In order to do the kind of complex thinking we need to do as teachers or the kind of complex thinking we are asking of kids, we need to have a culture of learning that meets our emotional and physical needs.  Perhaps even more important, are relationships.  Teachers are far more likely to work hard for an administrator they like or respect and the same goes for kids and their feelings about teachers. In Teaching with the Brain in Mind, Eric Jensen argues that emotions are critical to learning and negative emotions, like fear and stress, can in fact inhibit learning.  It really only makes sense then that we should be creating learning experiences that make positive emotional connections when dealing with new learning.  When the natural frustrations and stress associated with learning new skills do arise, we need to have prepared students with the social emotional skills (check out this self-paced course on social emotional learning) they need to cope with these challenges.  And the same goes for teachers.  We need to change our perspective on fun.  It can be meaningful and it can promote learning.  Smiling teachers are still professionals.  I will have some opportunities over the next year to offer professional learning opportunities and I will have to work hard to squelch my learned tendencies to make these experiences unnecessarily difficult or unpleasant.  What  activities, policies and protocols have others used to promote a make learning more fun?