The difference BETWEEN teaching and learning is in the relationship

​I presented at a conference for educational leaders yesterday. In the morning keynote, the speaker shared a slide on 7 ways to make learning stick. I stared at his slide, something seemed familiar about it, and then it hit me, most of the points on his slide were points on a slide I had in my upcoming presentation on building healthy relationships.

Points like tapping into feelings and embracing mistakes and promoting collaboration and empowering the student. I actually snapped a picture of his slide and inserted it into my presentation as a way of asking my group, are relationships and learning actually the same thing?

When we are in relationships are we really promoting learning and when we are learning together are we actually building relationships?

And if so - this is where my mind went on the drive to the hotel - do relationships fall apart when we start focusing on teaching and not on creating a shared environment for learning?

Because when our goal is to simply teach, to get our point across, to promote compliance, it's easy to skip the reality that in order to learn we need to first feel safe and then connected. Then and only then are we in a position to learn.

I was in a school environment. So, thinking about learning through this safe and connected lens in the teacher/staff and student relationship was easy. It easily translates. And I leave these events more and more encouraged by all that is being done to promote physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual safety as the foundation to a healthy learning experience in our schools.

We have a long way to go, but we are moving.

But is this understanding moving in the right direction in other relationship structures? In our friendships and marriages and work environments and faith communities etc.?

Do other relationships start with the idea we are in this to create the best environment to learn in together and not an environment where one side of the relationships takes on the role or responsibility or felt sense of ownership to be the teacher? Because when the goal becomes to teach and not learn together, it's a slippery slope toward disregarding the need for safety and connection.

It's a slippery slope to disregarding the need to empower one another, and to avoid connecting with each other's feelings and emotions, and to adopting domination and not collaboration, and to lording accountability over one another for mistakes and not embracing them on the way to growth.

I suppose the definition for relationship differs from one relational setting to another, but maybe one relational dynamic that should go with us to each of those settings is a shared desire to create a healthy learning environment. A shared belief we are in this to learn and grow together and to cheer each other on in that process.

If you're in a challenging relationship of any nature, as a starting point for better understanding the challenge maybe ask, is this a relationship that is committed to learning and growing together? If not, it's likely not a relationship that is mutually committed to making each other feel safe and connected.

It's my observation that more and more people are suffering from a lack of connection. Maybe the solution is realizing we have a lot more to learn from one another than we do to teach one another.

I don't think the desire to teach one another lessons has served us well.

Maybe it's time to shift our desires.

Maybe it's time to desire to learn all we can from one another. But first, we'll need to focus on creating the healthiest learning environment of all. One that makes everyone feel safe and connected.