New Mexico is Made for Slow Learning

I read Sir Ken Robinson's book, Creative Schools, and it made me think. I had started with a pretty clear picture and goal for L&LNM -- build a nonprofit program to help adults get their GED, learn to speak English better, and/or gain workplace skills. I was going to run my program as I ran the Adult Learning Center at UNM-Los Alamos. Simple as that. Creative Schools gave me new ideas.

I figured I had enough money to allow myself a year to get my nonprofit going. I didn't want to rush into anything. I started blogging, which forces me to look a little deeper, and which in turn forces me to slow down and think before I write.

During the 2014-15 school year, the standardized testing debate raged, and I became interested in advocating for teachers, having been one myself. I blogged about it and made the plea to give teachers their power back. That is when my ideas about how I wanted to run L&LNM and the philosophy behind what we do began to expand. I started to focus on the "learn" in our name.

You can't look at the testing issue without looking at the politics surrounding it, and so I started looking at the opt out movement, the reform movement, the slow learning movement. I think it was the ideas regarding slow learning that appealed most to me because they were all about learning and community, not education.

I found myself growing tired of politics and the mindset that our legislators know more than our teachers and parents do. I also started getting tired of test publishers calling the shots. I came to believe that if parents, teachers, and students simply worked together and designed an effective learning environment, we would have no need for laws or politicians.

We don't have to start a revolution, as I thought in the beginning. We just have to concentrate on helping our kids learn and do it the way we think best. I no longer hoped that someone would give teachers their power back; I truly believe teachers can fairly easily take it back themselves.

I found myself wondering if L&LNM needs to rethink its position on the GED and concentrate on learning, pure and simple, by concentrating on NM communities at the local and state levels. The GED is no longer a primary player.

With this idea in mind, I took slow learning to heart and started finding out everything I could about NM. I am enjoying discovering other nonprofits and NM organizations on Facebook and Google. There are so many incredible people, things, and places here.

I began with a specific goal when I started L&LNM. That led to a slow learning adventure, which is starting to result in a broader, wiser (I hope) vision and a renewed desire to celebrate the awesomeness that is New Mexico. It is a work in progress.

And that's where I'm at for now. I'm living in the east mountains and loving it. As long as it's New Mexico, it's good. Go out today and learn something slowly!