I love a silly metaphor.
This morning, I was writing about how I learn and what that means for me as an educator and for my research. I suddenly felt myself sort of wriggle and thought of a worm! So this is where this drawing came from.
So there's me, a blue worm, coming up against a big lump of dirt that is complicated knowledge - the big words, the difficult writing, the expectation that you know a whole lot of stuff already. And my best strategy - well, my favourite one - is to wriggle around that lump.
It might not be a good strategy. Not burrowing through that big lump might mean the next lump is even harder. But sometimes, I wriggle around it, look back and it looks less big and dense and I can burrow through it just fine. Or maybe I realise it wasn't all that interesting or relevant. And I know there are big holes in my knowledge because of ignoring those big lumps.
(But I did get a degree in a biological subject without knowing the difference between meiosis and mitosis. Still don't. I decided it was too hard and time was short in that old instrumental, pass the exam and forget it all mentality I used to have.)
But not everyone is a blue worm who is too lazy to be bothered with dense lumps of knowledge and confident to be ok with it.
End of metaphor: people learn in different ways. Some people cannot wriggle around the difficult stuff. They have to go through it. Too often it's too dense for them at that time. Or they are told they are too stupid so they don't even try. And what is one small wee lump to one person is a massive one to another.
I teach Mad Studies. I research how and what people learn by being involved in activism.
So when I am teaching and when I am researching, I need to remember that not everyone is a blue worm.
