The Unexpected Lessons of Cancer

I posted this a while back when my wife was going through the perils of battling Breast Cancer, and am re-posting now.

This post weighs a bit on the personal, but I will make educational connections.  Recently, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Cancer is always a devastating diagnosis.  I remember being in the radiologists office when she began her sentence with, "I don't ever know how to start these conversations..." My entire insides felt as if they hit the floor, and I had the conflicting feelings of breaking down myself and being strong for my wife, so I had to quickly pull myself together, for I knew that I would hear more than she would, and that was only a fraction of what we needed to hear. After that day, a string of appointments ensued: Medical oncologist, radiologist, surgeons, terms I did not know, and thoughts of all of the ramifications where there are unknowns.  I always say in trainings with coaches and others I work with on collaboration that where there are lapses in communication or absence of information, we add what we think is the truth, and that truth is usually not correct. So, a couple of weeks ensued where we filled in the spaces with what we thought we knew. There are moments in our lives that make us stop and rethink where we are going and what we value, and this journey (which there is more to come) has certainly done that.  I always try to think about how these lessons transcend all aspects of our lives.  I am lucky in that my vocation in education is rooted in humanity, so these life lessons have application across all aspects of my life. There are three areas that I have been thinking about as we have begun this journey:

Gratitude: Though this sounds cliche, I can say that gratitude has been at the forefront of my mind lately. We are so grateful to the doctors and nurses and all the health care professionals who have been responsive to our needs and have given us a sense of comfort in this time.  The gratitude, however, goes much deeper. Gratitude is a motivator, for sure.  Education is a humanistic endeavor no matter how global we become or how many digital tools we use, the basis of learning should always be humanistic. We need to show that gratitude for others and ensure that people know they matter. When people know that they make a difference and matter, I fundamentally believe that they make space to take in learning.

Power of Experience: In the movie, Shadowlands, Anthony Hopkins, who portrays C.S. Lewis says, "Experience is a brutal teacher. But you learn, my God you learn." Though this quote is not attributed to C.S. Lewis, it rings true across so many areas. (An actual, related quote from C.S. Lewis is “What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing…You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.”- fr. Surprised by Joy).  Though something like my wife having cancer and working through the experience is not something that I would wish upon us or anyone, it is a good reminder that experience exists so that we learn, and I also believe that experiences are put before us for that reason.  So, in the realm of learning and designing learning, we should be designing experiences for students so that learning so that they have space to learn and "fairly test it."  I was watching a TEDx talk the other day that jarred me not because it is overly profound but because it neatly packaged my thinking. Diana begins her talk with examples from her family's schooling.  Her great-grandmother and her grandfather, she explains, went to school because that is where the knowledge lived-- in the building and in the minds of those who taught. Going to school was the experience.  Later, when she was school-aged, she discusses how information crept into her home via The World Book Encyclopedia. Reading the encyclopedia was an experience, but schooling provided more context for that experience.  Now, today we are at times inhabiting the spaces where information lives all the time.  This requires a new skills set, but as far as experience and knowledge are concerned, it comes to us in many forms.

So the question becomes, what is our reason for going to the schoolhouse? Information and knowledge are readily available, so I would portend that going to the schoolhouse is not a useless experience (unless we make it), but it is a place where experience can be created so that students know how to find, interact with and validate information. Experience is indeed a teacher, brutal and otherwise.

Design Process: Last, the magnitude of dealing with disease has been eye-opening and at time awe-inspiring.  As I have listened to the doctors, the nurses, the radiologists. As we have read articles and books and searched on-line, I have begun to realize the mere power of process. All of these doctors and health care professionals are practicing something to treat patients because of the design process.  As we look at statistics and survival rates of cancer, it is interesting to note that the survival rates of women with beast cancer have tripled over the last 60 years according to one study (http://www.breastcancer.org/research-news/20100930). Of course, this advancement is due in large part to the tenacious approaches that health care professionals and research scientists have taken in the arena of cancer research.  These advancements are here before us because these folks have embraced the design process and the scientific process to uncover better treatments, better diagnosis and more education. It is this process that we need to foster in students.  Of course, content knowledge is important, but the process that we give students to use data, skills, content and knowledge is extraordinarily important, and we need to harness the power of schools to be able to create the opportunities to delve into the process.

This process has been a journey, to say the least. As we go through life and learn lessons that life offers us, we can help structure experiences for students to be able to experience real life while going through learning. It is imperative as educators that we build these structures so that students do not have to make as many leaps from the world of learning to life.