About

Leslie Whitaker

I am a teacher. I am a student. I am a mother. I am a friend. These different roles can be interchanged in different facets of my life. I started this blog for people in all different roles to think about education and learning. Education seems to be an explosion of diversity and contradicting ideologies. We argue so much about what education should be, but don’t we all know for ourselves what real learning feels like – that sheer joy (and frustration of cognitive dissonance) that radiates from our minds and souls when we become entrenched in our learning? When we feel empowered, engaged, and reach new clarity, isn’t that where the real joy begins?

Over the past 14 years, I have taught 2nd and 3rd grade, have led workshops in literacy and math, have coached my peers, and have been a student myself. Over the past three years, I have learned the joys of parenthood, and seen learning from a whole new perspective. As a friend, I have journeyed with others in our own paths of learning, sometimes parallel, and other times intertwined. As a teacher, I have finally learned to become the student -and that is when I finally began to understand.