Planes, Tranes and Cognitive Wheels

In this line of work, I tend to log a fare amount of transit hours. There's an equation with certain variables I tend to use when figuring out how to get from point A to point B. For me, I plug least expensive and most efficient into the route calculation. I used to go solely by least expensive, which saw me going from Portland, Maine to Providence, Rhode Island via Cincinnati, Ohio and New York City to London via Louisville. As the hours piled up at lovely, albeit out-of-the-way airports, train stations, and bus depots, I began to thinking about bumping efficiency up the traveling priority list.

This past September, I spent a travel-heavy day on a string of different trains headed down the northeast coast. I'd long since finished my travel work and was simultaneously dozing and eavesdropping on a cluster of older ladies discussing crab shelling. At some mildly lucid point, it occurred to me that my little travel equation was focused entirely on the solution, my final destination. All my eggs were unquestionably placed in the where and what basket, where I was going and for what purpose. I placed zero value on the how of the trip, how or by what means I got from DC to New York. Which, in a larger sense, was downright hypocritical.

At The Merasi School, the focus above all else is how. We're not that impressed with what kids know. Plenty of little ones are bursting at the seams with abc's, ancient desert rhythms, and 1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2 apples. And that's terrific, but that's just part one of our work. What blows us away, humbles our teachers, and makes our students a bit bolder is part two: that breathtaking moment when students can retrace the steps and demonstrate how they know what they know.

Because, in many ways, the what of learning is easy. It doesn't take too much brainpower for Akram to memorize the spelling of 'India.' But if he can reflect and tell you how he knows the word order, that's a whole lot more powerful. Then he's tapping into his learning process and blossoming an awareness of how he digests knowledge. And (this is the money in the bank slice of the pie) that's when you have a translatable skill that shoots like an electrical current far out beyond the classroom walls.

If Akram says that he's able to remember the spelling of 'India' because the word shape reminds him of a one-humped camel, then we can see that he's a visual learner and begin to work on strengthening those visualization muscles, which have far more expansive, generous and useful application than knowing the spelling of 'India.'

Let's take another example. Our aspiring doctor in residence, Ms Suriya Khan, is an absolute whippersnapper at math. She can crank out double digit problems in nanoseconds, which we're thrilled about. But what will accelerate her learning curve is if she can try to explain how she's able to total 43 and 38 so quickly. Because that how muscle will not only serve her very well as she tackles trickier, more complex problems, but also enable our teachers to work on building up and strengthening her particular learning style.

We focus on identifying and oiling those cognitive wheels so students are able to get from point A, where an unknown or problem is presented, to point B, the resolution, with as much speed, confidence, and constructive compassion as possible, regardless of whether or not the setting is our desert classroom, a vegetable salesmen, or the bank teller.

So, as I hash through Expedia and Orbitz, trying to find the least expensive, most efficient way to get from where I am to where I want to be, I've begun to think just a bit more about what happens along the way. It's not a flight to be gotten over with or a bus ride to slog through, it's valuable hours of our lives that won't be coming back to us anytime soon. And who knows what kind of mountains we can scale, wonders we can work, or riddles we can resolve in those collective minutes, hours, and days?