Personalized professional learning should be colorful and varied. The best professional educators, providing enriching learning for students, fill their own plates with nourishment. Doing this energizes us, fuels our curiosity, and keeps us questioning, always asking, "Why?'. Unfortunately, we see some colleagues, who wait, then settle for the plate they're served. Unfortunately, they serve a similar plate to students, and often missing a crucial ingredient.
Why wait for professional learning to be delivered, when it can be grown, gathered, and enjoyed any time, anywhere?
Somewhere along the line of our educators, we learned that the best ideas for education, are only found, in education. To supplement or even replacement for this idea:
Learn from others, both in and out of your typical spaces
Carve out and honor white space
Read widely and deeply
Write to learn
Of course, this won't apply to everyone, everywhere. It's dependent on where you work as well as where you are in your own personal journey. If you're feeling sluggish and under-nourished, why not begin to sample and experiment with one of these ideas?
Here's are a few ways to "spice up" your learning:
Broaden your scope.
There's more to learning than what pops up in your feed.
Some of the best learning I do comes from some of the best educators out there. But the design of social media platforms is such that we primarily see platitudes, opinions, and images that confirm our beliefs. This does little to expand our thinking. As an alternative, consider using lists to curate easy-to-access resources. By exploring and including some that are outside the realm of education, we expose our minds to highly successful people out there who were once students in classrooms. Broadening our scope offers perspectives on thinking differently on learning experiences of our own as well as those we offer to others.
Take a break.
We mistakenly think, sometimes, that if we step away, we'll miss something. Resist this urge.
We see high profile accounts sharing good content, and frequently so. Or provocative thought leaders appear to be "on" around the clock. Again, the design of the platform encourages this in it's users. Alternatively, schedule times when you will and won't check your feed. Be mindful not to do it when your time, energy, and attention should be towards something else, more valuable or important. My best advice, from personal experience: Take a walk, device-free. It's amazing, what your senses do when you're attentive to them.
Read and write, about things outside of the field of education.
There's more to education, than education. Exploring what's "out there" opens our thinking to...thinking.
Visit the public library or local bookstore. Read non-fiction to spark creativity. Turn paper pages in books with a binding to add a sensory element and give your eyes a rest from device screens. Listen to podcasts or audio books. And, write, using any preferred medium. Write to process, dump, or spark ideas. Write to question, wonder. Write, to learn. Do so, publicly, for yourself and for others. With an open mind towards engagement and space to rest, you will fill your plate with nourishment, fuel for learning.