Formal and Informal Education for Our Students

This morning I woke up at 5:00 a.m. because I had to put on paper my feelings about a very special person. My uncle died this past weekend and I wanted to share with others the important role he played as a teacher in my life. After completing this effort, I thought about what I said about my uncle and how it relates to our work as secondary educators. This is what I wish to share with you today.

People are educated in two ways during their life, formally and informally. Formal education relates to learning at school through classroom experiences, reading, and discussions around specific curriculum and content. Informal learning comes from the daily experiences that we have in our lives that are not attached to classroom lessons with standards and specific learning outcomes in mind.

Most of our learning is actually informal, but some of those informal lessons are learned in school. This does not imply that informal learning is less important than what we learn in a formal setting. In reality, thinking about what I learned from my uncle was much more important than what I learned in any class. I may not have experienced academic success without the informal learning experiences that I have had in my life.

I often tell people that my academic high school experience did not prepare me well for UCLA, but it provided me perfect informal learning experiences for my career as a teacher and administrator. Our informal experiences are so important and sometimes we as educators lose track of the relative importance of the experiences gained informally by our students from us and from others.

When I think back on my school years, I remember almost every teacher. As an educator, I remember every principal or supervisor that I have worked for. I have learned a great deal from each of these people. Most of the time my informal learning has been positive, but sometimes what I learned was negative based on what I experienced and what I observed. I learned valuable lessons from both types of experiences.

As teachers, counselors, or administrators do we really spend enough time thinking and discussing how we impact our students, not in a formal, but in an informal way? We are role models because we stand in front of impressionable young people, this comes with the job. We may think that we have been hired to teach content to our students, but we have really been hired to teach children. Yes, we teach them content, concepts, and skills, but we also teach them informal life experiences as well.

My uncle taught me the importance of dedication, hard work, fairness, generosity, and how to relate to others. What he taught me was reinforced by my teachers and supervisors over many years. What kind of world would we be leaving our students if we teachers believed that we only taught math, science, English, social studies, the arts, physical education or other electives as defined by the scope and sequence developed by our school district? We teach so much more than that. But we have to be sure that we teach those other qualities thoughtfully and carefully because they are learned by students through their observations of us. They learn from what we say and how we act. Our responsibility is great and extremely important, especially if we are the best or only positive adult role model in our students’ life.

Successful students seem to have the ability to persevere and be resilient. They seem to be willing to accept constructive criticism. They seem to have developed some long term goals that are supported by their education. It may be that these qualities are more important in the learning experiences of students than the content we are hired to teach. In any case, how do we use the students' formal educational experiences to reinforce the qualities that successful students seem to have? Are we consciously supporting our students to be better people and better prepared people for their future world?

We rarely hear about the informal influences we have on our students’, but make no mistake, we are informal teachers to every student we have, and our teaching needs to provide a positive experience for every child we touch. If we are doing that, then we are doing a Herculean job of educating our students. But if we are not, then we could cause our students pain and suffering through out their life. Each of us has to make conscious choices about how we do our job as a teacher and how we use the power of being a role model for our students.